Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

fcc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 296 posts

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

#121

Post by _lqaf »

koala_man wrote: post #114
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.

Hah, my internet in San Francisco is worse that it was... in San Francisco in the 90s.

My symmetric DSL then was faster than downstream-DOCSIS is now. I also have to keep a backup line, because Comcast here (SOMA) goes out about every other month, and I work from home. So I pay another $35 for MonkeyBrains, which is much slower, but more than nothing when Comcast is dead.

To paraphrase Gandhi, I think American capitalism would be a very good idea.

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

#122

Post by Sunspark »

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…

If Starlink is in your area, this is an option worth looking into.

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

#123

Post by mulmen »

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…

What a nightmare. What if we had to do this for everything. Hey everyone hook up to my rainwater collector. Don’t forget to refuel the generator. Sorry it’s so loud. Keep digging, we have to put the trash somewhere!

The Internet is a utility.

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

#124

Post by jbman223 »

walrus01 wrote: post #117
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 wit…

I got lucky, the subdevelopment I live in has been upgraded from classic Centurylink DSL to “Spectrum” fiber (1gbps fiber line to the house for $60/month, no contract and no equipment or setup fees. Growing up a few blocks away, it was a comcast subscription or a 1mbps DSL line(~10yrs ago).

It’s awesome when a competitor can enter the market.

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

#126

Post by khuey »

Stratoscope wrote: post #40
metadat wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be eligible for ATT [gigabit] fiber? Could be worth a shot. (Unless you're in far-east Menlo) IME the fiber service is faster more reliable than Comcast, but AT&T support is the absolute worst, super incompetent (across the entire company, not just U-verse internet). It's fine as long as you don't need any support and don't try to deactivate anything, but if your account gets messed up it can literally take…

One trick for better AT&T support here on the Peninsula may be to sign up through Sonic instead of directly with AT&T. In some areas like SF, Sonic runs their own fiber, in others they are an AT&T reseller - with the wrinkle that Sonic handles all support with their own local staff. I have been told that they have better insight and connections into the internal AT&T systems than AT&T's own support team. I haven't ha…

> One trick for better AT&T support here on the Peninsula may be to sign up through Sonic instead of directly with AT&T. In some areas like SF, Sonic runs their own fiber, in others they are an AT&T reseller - with the wrinkle that Sonic handles all support with their own local staff. I have been told that they have better insight and connections into the internal AT&T systems than AT&T's own support team. I haven't had much need for support, so I can't vouch for that, but it wouldn't surprise me.

My experience buying DSL from Sonic about a decade ago in San Francisco is that if you run into a problem with AT&T equipment (e.g. lines upstream from the point where POTS enters your building) you're just done because Sonic won't actually get AT&T to fix their stuff. I was never able to get more than 1Mbps down and eventually just quit and switched to Comcast.

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

#127

Post by whoopdedo »

brianwawok wrote: post #78
harikb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I have heard, they could choose to use N out of M channels for either upload or download and they are choosing to keep it the way it is. Probably they need to keep it that way for other reasons (their own cable-TV signal goes through it). But I know nothing about the electronics/signal-processing involved, so I could be totally wrong.

Mostly to slow torrent seeders. A fat up pipe and no data limit means TB after TB go to seed torrents. Otherwise for 90% of users, 90% of their traffic is download. Me legit pushing a 2GB docker image gets hit in the crossfire,

Also so they can upsell business internet. I'm pretty sure most ISPs still have a clause in residential service agreements that you won't "operate a server" and everyone knows that the only reason you'd be uploading a lot is if you're running a server. /s

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

#128

Post by ev1 »

walrus01 wrote: post #118
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.

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-w…

lmao one of my mates has a starlink terminal in the outskirts of los angeles just to get work done because spectrum's gigabit plan is like 1.2MB/s upstream most of the time and in the subkilobytes during peak times

it's comical how bad this is

edit: how we found out about this was also amusing: he sent a group snapchat of the arrival and setup in backyard and we were all "did you move or go traveling?" "no, spectrum is godawful"

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

#129

Post by chiefalchemist »

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…

And! When you lease a Comcast modem + wifi equipment, you then become an Xfinity wifi hotspot provider. Mind you, they don't tell you this. But to charge the customer money to expand their hotspot availability (and marketing bragging rights) is shite.

But like you said, often there's no choice. But even when there is - in my area of NJ - aside from new customer deals both Verizon and Comcast are wildly expensive.

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

#130

Post by jfoutz »

mulmen wrote: post #123
jfoutz wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What a nightmare. What if we had to do this for everything. Hey everyone hook up to my rainwater collector. Don’t forget to refuel the generator. Sorry it’s so loud. Keep digging, we have to put the trash somewhere! The Internet is a utility.

Politically, it's a popularity contest. If you're friendly and responsive, even if not particularly effective, you'll win.

Maybe raincast is less noisy, but if they're jerks and expensive?

Post reply on HN