FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps • Hacker News Board

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#111

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Jul 16, 2022, 1:41 AM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #33

bufferoverflow wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4k during a zoom call would be fine on 100Mb Not sure what bit rate TV is at, but one 4K YouTube stream can take up to 68Mbps, and 8K even more. We're on 400Mbps, and even then I manage to block internet for others when I download a large file at full speed.

I don't think I've ever seen a 4K YouTube stream over 15 Mbit, where do you find a 70 Mbit stream? Even the king of streaming bitrate, Apple TV, is said to peak at 30 Mbps

Yeah, 68Mbps is up there in 4K Bluray territory. And YouTube skimps on bitrate at all resolutions.

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#112

Post by lechatpito1 » Sat, Jul 16, 2022, 1:43 AM UTC

xahrepap wrote: post #38

rascul wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Until the power company ran fiber earlier this year, the only wired option here was 3Mbps DSL from AT&T. AT&T buried fiber all over the area (including in front of my house) years ago, but it sits there unused.

Same where I am. Most of the city has competition because it’s most new developments out here and a few fiber companies were able to get in the ground early. My neighborhood is older so we only have Comcast. But Comcast buried fiber here to “future proof” ages ago, they just haven’t lit it up. And they’re the only company who got their hardware in the ground. So I’m stuck on their cable. As it turns out the service h…

And no need to be in the countryside to experience this. I am living in Manhattan, Upper West Side, one of the most affluent neighborhood in the richest city of the country. It is Spectrum cable or nothing. There seem to be fiber around, but it did not make it to my street (lined with small buildings so maybe not interesting enough?). Meanwhile in France where we have spent some time this year, you get fiber in the most rural and isolated areas... Go figure.

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#113

Post by superkarn » Sat, Jul 16, 2022, 1:44 AM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #33

bufferoverflow wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4k during a zoom call would be fine on 100Mb Not sure what bit rate TV is at, but one 4K YouTube stream can take up to 68Mbps, and 8K even more. We're on 400Mbps, and even then I manage to block internet for others when I download a large file at full speed.

I don't think I've ever seen a 4K YouTube stream over 15 Mbit, where do you find a 70 Mbit stream? Even the king of streaming bitrate, Apple TV, is said to peak at 30 Mbps

Not YouTube, but Sony Bravia Core[1] offers up to 80 Mbps streaming (some TVs only).

[1] https://electronics.sony.com/bravia-core

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#114

Post by koala_man » Sat, Jul 16, 2022, 1:44 AM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #26

The problem, in the USA for most people, is Comcast. Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Upload speed has stagnated. I uploaded as fast in 2003 as I do now in 2022. And as others have said, it's not so much about 1 fast provider as many providers and choice. In my comcast monopoly my plan started at $60/mo in 2011 and without any changes on my end and no change in my upload speed that price has in…

My internet in the Silicon Valley today is worse than I had in Europe 10 years ago. It's pretty disillusioning.

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#115

Post by Wohlf » Sat, Jul 16, 2022, 1:44 AM UTC

prirun wrote: post #93

IMO, the FCC should: 1. make payments to local governments in exchange for monopoly access, illegal. 2. strike down laws that prohibit local governments from providing internet service. 3. stop forcing these speed minimums that also come with price minimums not everyone wants.

The FCC doesn't have the power to do this, and these are likely unconstitutional.

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#116

Post by mawise » Sat, Jul 16, 2022, 1:44 AM UTC

jfoutz wrote: post #105

imoverclocked wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't have a choice. It doesn't matter how good, or bad, Comcast is. They're the only game in town. To extend that, Comcast is on my street but refuses to run a line up to my house because they consider it to be too cost prohibitive. At the same time, they block anyone else from making money in my region. I'm stuck with whatever cell signal I can acquire and that is as good as 5mbps during the day and might d…

somewhat cynical, but I think effective. Look into wireless internet service provider gear and mesh networks. It won't be faster than Comcast. 50Mbit maybe. Make flyers and talk to your neighbors. Call around and ask about pricing for fiber backhauls. Of course you don't want to run your own ISP. But, you could. It's not really that hard. Your neighbors could chip in for gear and be part owners. or a co-op or whateve…

Related reading: https://startyourownisp.com/

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#117

Post by walrus01 » Sat, Jul 16, 2022, 1:45 AM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #26

The problem, in the USA for most people, is Comcast. Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Upload speed has stagnated. I uploaded as fast in 2003 as I do now in 2022. And as others have said, it's not so much about 1 fast provider as many providers and choice. In my comcast monopoly my plan started at $60/mo in 2011 and without any changes on my end and no change in my upload speed that price has in…

The problem is not just Comcast but everything of its ilk, and by that I mean Charter (Spectrum/former Time Warner Cable), RCN/Grande/Astound and similar giant size coax based DOCSIS3 operators. In Canada, Shaw and Rogers.

They are absolutely determined to squeeze every last dollar of ROI out of that existing coax cable plant by doing asymmetric RF channels for downstream/upstream. And not overbuilding themselves with GPON FTTH.

There's a limited amount of RF spectrum in a given coax segment and they bond it together in such a way that 85% of it is used for downstream, and some paltry amount for upstream. On a heavily loaded DOCSIS3 segment it can also be 12-13ms latency to the gateway which is an eternity in metro area networking fiber terms. So you end up with something like a 200 Mbps down x 15.5 Mbps up cable connection.

Obviously the abusive bait and switch customer acquisition and retention tactics are also a huge problem. Now they're doing additional bullshit like making special offers to bundle your cellphone service and cable together (Comcast is a MVNO on some nationwide cellular carriers), for a "discounted" price, so that it makes it more painful for you to switch your ISP service in the future if you're unhappy.

Eventually they will need to spend a spectacular amount of money to overbuild themselves because in some places the local phone company (centurylink, ziply, verizon, others) is building 1 strand of dark fiber to each house, running it to some neighborhood level splitter, and going 1G or 10GPON on it for service that approaches real symmetric gigabit to the customer. To individual single family houses.

Comcast is just the most obvious example of the problem in the incumbent cable operator industry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbHqUNl8YFk

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#118

Post by walrus01 » Sat, Jul 16, 2022, 1:54 AM UTC

rascul wrote: post #29

superkuh wrote: post #26

The problem, in the USA for most people, is Comcast. Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Upload speed has stagnated. I uploaded as fast in 2003 as I do now in 2022. And as others have said, it's not so much about 1 fast provider as many providers and choice. In my comcast monopoly my plan started at $60/mo in 2011 and without any changes on my end and no change in my upload speed that price has in…

> Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Until the power company ran fiber earlier this year, the only wired option here was 3Mbps DSL from AT&T. AT&T buried fiber all over the area (including in front of my house) years ago, but it sits there unused.

and people wonder why folks in not-very-far-out suburbs are buying and using starlink or other options, if all they have is ultra long loop length copper DSL and no DOCSIS3 available and no GPON or active ethernet fiber based service.

i've seen starlink terminals in places they have absolutely no logical need to be if the local terrestrial incumbent phone company and cable companies with rights to the ROW (right-of-way) would get off their asses

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#119

Post by walrus01 » Sat, Jul 16, 2022, 1:56 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #44

What resources does a 100 Mbps connection give access to that a 25 Mbps connection does not? You don't need 100 Mbps to access educational content. Khan Academy looks fine in 1080p. And even if it didn't, Netflix says their 4K streams only need 15 Mbps. You don't need 100 Mbps to be a remote knowledge worker. Video calls need a stable connection with low latency—I wish more people used ethernet—but that connection do…

> What resources does a 100 Mbps connection give access to that a 25 Mbps connection does not?

a 25 Mbps connection might be at the absolute top end of what's possible on some old degraded infrastructure that the local phone company has held together with the metaphorical equivalent of duct tape (like a VDSL2 DSLAM in a street cabinet attached to your copper). It can never get any better until replaced with a totally different technology.

100 Mbps at least requires something like reasonably well built DOCSIS3, if on old coax, or it could be a low tier service plan on something that is actually capable of gigabit. There's people out there right now buying cheap residential 100 Mbps accounts on GPON ONT that are actually capable of full gigabit.

by requiring providers to meet a metric of 100 Mbps down, it is one method of ensuring that whatever tech they use to provide the 100 in the last mile is at least somewhat future-proof.

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#120

Post by gtvwill » Sat, Jul 16, 2022, 1:58 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #44

What resources does a 100 Mbps connection give access to that a 25 Mbps connection does not? You don't need 100 Mbps to access educational content. Khan Academy looks fine in 1080p. And even if it didn't, Netflix says their 4K streams only need 15 Mbps. You don't need 100 Mbps to be a remote knowledge worker. Video calls need a stable connection with low latency—I wish more people used ethernet—but that connection do…

You never lived in a modern house with kids I take it? We got >10 devices online at all time. Phones,4k TV's, between 1 and 6 computers, up to half a dozen tablets. Live video feeds coming in (up to 4k in res), online gaming, live video chat connections going out, system updates, vpn into work, constant content streaming, software downloads, web apps, web games. Can easily fill a 100mb connection. Hell we do most of the day.

On the other side...you know once you have fiber pairs in the ground in good network layouts...its about 80 bucks per user for the infrastructure on each end to get the user 10gb symmetrical connection. In rural areas you can roll fiber cheap as chips, lil vibratory plough + conduit. air blow fiber from poi straight to peoples front door so to speak. Its actually quite a cheap process given the infra lasts for about 20 years.