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FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

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

#151

Post by nine_k »

justinjlynn wrote: post #110
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…

Either that or they'll send a C&D and then file multiple lawsuits to strategically prevent others from having the same idea, sure.

I suppose their monopoly extends to offering service for money, not for having it for yourself (or a collective of neighbors who own the gear and share costs). Were it nit so, they could sue you for sharing the cellular internet around your house.

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

#152

Post by bogota »

nanidin wrote: post #68
pdx6 wrote: post #24

With how slowly these proposals roll out, 100/20 won't be enough. As others said, there is a lack of both competition and pricing to worry about too. In a major tech hub like San Francisco, where I live, it's possible to get 1gb/1gb in some areas for under $90, but which those are isn't consistent nor wide spread. Home cell coverage at 100/20 is spotty at best, and there is only one flat rate vendor (T-Mobile Home, n…

> Fast crypto transactions? Is client bandwidth a limiting factor in crypto transactions?

I can’t actually think of any where the client is the limit. However for some having faster server nodes that are hosted at peoples homes would help speed up some currencies such as nano.

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

#153

Post by Wowfunhappy »

vitus wrote: post #148
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're paying for 20Mbps under the assumption that you'll only need 18Mbps at peak, you'll be frustrated when you end up only getting 15Mbps and all the video calls stutter / cut out intermittently. But isn't that the real problem here? Companies shouldn't be able to advertise a 20 mbps connection if they aren't able to maintain that speed. Dropping one megabit on occasion may be reasonable, but five is at the p…

There are certainly a lot of problems with incumbent ISPs that many other commenters have pointed out: deceptive marketing practices, anti-competitive behavior (ranging from lobby-driven legislation to lock out new entrants, to outright sabotage / destruction of cables), wildly asymmetric up/down speeds driven by economies of scale from 20 years ago, just to name a few. Yes, even 4k video streaming at 20 Mbps is viab…

> But that doesn't mean that there aren't common use cases that benefit significantly from adding more bandwidth, nor does it mean that adding more upstream capacity is useless in the context of these other factors.

I agree! I just don't think it's what we should be pushing for right now.

> Also, let's be realistic: most regulators don't have anywhere close to the level of technical expertise that you'd expect from, say, a network engine

Well, I have higher standards than you do. I think regulators should have a very strong understanding of what they're regulating, or should talk to people who do.

> It's a lot easier to reduce everything to the single dimension that is download speed, and it's a lot easier for a layperson to understand said changes.

To me, this is a bit like saying we should still be measuring all CPUs according to clock-speed, because it's easier for a layperson to understand a single number. (And make no mistake, clock-speed is important!)

People here seem to think I'm letting the ISPs off the hook somehow. On the contrary, I think this fuss over bandwidth is great for the ISPs. People pay more for faster speeds because they think it's making their Zoom calls more reliable, when the actual culprit is just the piece of crap wifi router they're renting for $5 per month...

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

#154

Post by viraptor »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #60
viraptor wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbf, the updates can just take longer to download. Higher speed does not enable them as such, which is what the op asked. Similar for steam - spending extra hour for a download ahead of time is... fine for me.

Great that it's fine for you. Is the fact that you enjoy waiting for downloads a reason to push the same suffering on others?

You've got strong opinions here, but... chill. I'm not enjoying the wait, I'm not pushing it on others and some wait time to play a game is not suffering. The question was what does the higher speed enable - of course it makes lots of things better, but waiting less is not enabling.

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

#155

Post by rayiner »

pdx6 wrote: post #24

With how slowly these proposals roll out, 100/20 won't be enough. As others said, there is a lack of both competition and pricing to worry about too. In a major tech hub like San Francisco, where I live, it's possible to get 1gb/1gb in some areas for under $90, but which those are isn't consistent nor wide spread. Home cell coverage at 100/20 is spotty at best, and there is only one flat rate vendor (T-Mobile Home, n…

Why is broadband so shitty in the heart of Silicon Valley? Why doesn’t Google just wire the whole place up as a tech demo?

Comcast just upgraded my fiber to 7 gbps. It’s spendy ($300/mo) but I also have gigabit Fios available for $80/mo.

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

#156

Post by rayiner »

lechatpito1 wrote: post #112
xahrepap wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Being in an “affluent neighborhood” isn’t really the gating factor though. Many of those places aren’t development friendly at all.

Meanwhile my red county has farms wired up with fiber.

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

#157

Post by rayiner »

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.

How’s your public transit compared to Europe? The number of homeless people/drug addicts? Personal safety?

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

#158

Post by metadat »

Stratoscope wrote: post #55
gnicholas wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm far-west, which isn't served by ATT. There actually is an upstart in the area, Atherton Fiber. [1] But they don't serve my area either. 1: https://almanacnews.com/news/2022/07/05/new-internet-provide...

Atherton Fiber is a local institution, a true old-school ISP in the finest tradition, but with modern technology. I live very close to their service area in Lindenwood, and I remember walking down Ringwood a few years ago when they were stringing fiber on the poles and I stopped and asked them, "Hey! I live just a few blocks over that way. You must have a few hundred extra feet of fiber you could sneak over to me?" T…

"soon" :-/

Even though much of the tech was invented and developed in the Bay Area, we're often among the last ones to receive the rollouts.

Living the fiber dream is a game changer, that sweet symmetric gigabit.

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

#159

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

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 always thought the upstream speed was an artificial limitation so they could upsell "business internet" to people who wanted to host servers - and that they doubled down by reassigning your IP periodically if they saw a lot of incoming connections on layer 4. I did try hosting a server on my comcast cable internet for a while and the IP which I had for seven years prior did start changing every day - sometimes more frequently. Just a coincidence? Or is that really how they play things? When I set up Tor so I could reverse proxy into my server as a hidden service my IP stopped changing - though I did notice my IP got reassigned again a few days after I got a 4K tv and started streaming the UHD content.

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

#160

Post by teaearlgraycold »

eertami wrote: post #43
pdx6 wrote: post #24

With how slowly these proposals roll out, 100/20 won't be enough. As others said, there is a lack of both competition and pricing to worry about too. In a major tech hub like San Francisco, where I live, it's possible to get 1gb/1gb in some areas for under $90, but which those are isn't consistent nor wide spread. Home cell coverage at 100/20 is spotty at best, and there is only one flat rate vendor (T-Mobile Home, n…

> In a major tech hub like San Francisco, where I live, it's possible to get 1gb/1gb in some areas for under $90 As a point of comparison, I live in a small city in Europe (80k population) and we have 10gb/10gb for $60/month. My internal network is only capable of 2.5gbit, but I can upload at that speed indefinitely. I could honestly not imagine going back to ADSL speeds.

TBF I'm in a SF suburb and I get 10Gb/s down and 2Gb/s up for $40/month.
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