Verizon Fios still advertises in my building at an amazing 50 mbps. They have an old hookup from a decade+ ago when the building was first constructed. Meanwhile, our minimum cable speed available for purchase is 300 mbps. I still get contacted by Fios people every so often. They want 70 per month for 50 mbps!
FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
191–200 of 432 posts
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#192I started with Comcast with 12Mbps service. Over time, they increased the base speed they offer to 20, 25, 50, and now 75. They have done this because they want to have x% of their customers on "broadband", per the federal definition. This is all well and good, but they keep increasing the price, and refuse to offer lower-tier service. I probably wouldn't want 12Mbps anymore, but 20 or 25 would suffice. I wish I coul…
I'm in an area with competition and I think I'm paying like $60/month for 10Gbps.
What? I wasn’t even aware consumer speeds got that high. No caps I hope?
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
So that someone's grandma who hardly uses her connection can subsidize your extreme over-consumption of digital media?
This is how consumption of any resource works, in any group where the number of people using it is more than 1. If I drink less water than you, am I subsidizing your water usage. I'd say so! Not the hill you want to die on, trust me.
Except in many places you pay water by amount used (Islamic and some other countries excepted). This is the case for loads of resources.
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would it actually be that much less costly to give you 20-25 vs 75, though? My uninformed assumption was that it was largely artificial once you get to a low enough speed.
Agreed, I suspect the cost is in providing the larger amount of bandwidth to the block or neighborhood (better cabling, cable modems, etc.) Once in place, the individual subscriber usage probably all costs the same for Comcast.
Nope, the big ongoing cost is in support. Humans.
The big upfront cost is trenching. The rest is potatoes. If you think the "big heroes" of an ISP are the router wizards, oh boy. It's the permit people. A ransomware gang has nothing on the uppity council of a town of 4000 people.
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#195Honest question: at what point, with real life usage, is 1 Gbps actually necessary for home users? I find that latency rather than throughput is what determines my perceived quality of an Internet connection. But am curious how others think.
Download a PS5 game or Steam game.that you want to play shortly.
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#196I started with Comcast with 12Mbps service. Over time, they increased the base speed they offer to 20, 25, 50, and now 75. They have done this because they want to have x% of their customers on "broadband", per the federal definition. This is all well and good, but they keep increasing the price, and refuse to offer lower-tier service. I probably wouldn't want 12Mbps anymore, but 20 or 25 would suffice. I wish I coul…
In an extreme ironic twist, me, the techie nerd guy, has the slowest internet of the regular-folk friend group of mine. Everyone has got 1Gbps and here I am with 300Mbps.
My friends in third-world countries get faster and less expensive service than me in Silicon Valley. On top of that, there is no fiber connection in my neighborhood, and they've been on fiber for over 5 years. And there is a data cap also. It's just crazy and sad.
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#197Does everyone really need that much bandwidth though? Usally 20mbps is enough for most things. 50 is plenty and after that it’s mostly bragging rights.
It's the difference between playing the game you just bought in 20 mins or having to leave your PC on until the next day.
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would it actually be that much less costly to give you 20-25 vs 75, though? My uninformed assumption was that it was largely artificial once you get to a low enough speed.
Well, if there's not a cost difference, why do they keep trying to double my pricing when the base tier goes up? My sense is there is some cost savings at these lower tiers, but more importantly it would prevent ISPs from jacking prices up while using higher speeds as the rationale ("Look, we just tripled your speed, and it only costs double!"). ISPs would be less likely to double prices without any service improveme…
> Well, if there's not a cost difference, why do they keep trying to double my pricing when the base tier goes up?
Because you keep paying for it. It's not like you're going to not pay for internet, and you probably don't have many alternative options.
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
They already charge for bandwidth. People pay more for 500mpbs than 50mbps. We are talking about total monthly data caps, which have nothing to do with bandwidth.
False. A month is a discrete amount of time that yields a potential maximum amount of data downloaded, this amount is clearly related to the bandwidth provided, hence caps. To think otherwise is to falsely believe they support unlimited throughput. Furthermore the bandwidth itself literally is a function of the transmission material and infrastructure, which also isn’t free…
I have a 500 Mbps connection with a 1TB data cap, both pretty standard numbers in the US. If I used the connection at its advertised speeds, I would exhaust my monthly limit in about 4 hours. So no, that relationship is non-existent. The data cap math instead is "99% of our users use < 1TB, so we will charge the rest more because we can".
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#200This is nice, but with increased speed, they should also require ISPs do not impose a data cap to be considered broadband.
They should also require the ISP to use a reasonable method to count the amount of data if there is a data cap. No matter how I count the data in and out of my gateway running OpenWRT, Comcast/Xfinity consistently counts and charges me for at least 20% more data with no discernible reason why.
I think somewhere in fine print they claim they get to round up to the nearest KB or MB every minute or some asinine made-up scale that only benefits them.