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

FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

docs.fcc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 432 posts

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#281

Post by musha68k »

jjcm wrote: post #108
andrewmunsell wrote: post #3

This is nice, but with increased speed, they should also require ISPs do not impose a data cap to be considered broadband.

I'm actually on the opposite side of this. I wish there were more metered options available for data, especially for wireless options. I'd love to see an offering that has a low monthly connection fee (i.e. $1-5), along with a sensible price per GB option (i.e. double the cost of transit so there are decent margins on this, but isn't something crazy like $10/gb). Assuming that for most consumers the end price average…

The metered pricing model doesn’t align with reality of data costs for ISPs which are often negligible (thanks to technological advances and peering agreements especially). This makes the metered model more of a revenue strategy than a necessity. It’s also conflicting with basic tenets of net neutrality.

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#282

Post by nathanfig »

danielfoster wrote: post #221
hipadev23 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit cards almost always side with the consumer if you have meaningful spend and very few issues/chargebacks/claims. If you never use the card, and then chargeback, they'll just deny your claim and drop your ass. It's not about the money of the individual charge (for small stuff like this anyway), it's about keeping you happy and spending on the card. I highly doubt the argument itself was relevant whatsoever.

The claim was $700.

Whoa, was this for multiple parties or a month long stay or something?

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#283

Post by chrononaut »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #259
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm the outlier. I have 300 down / 15 up and never really notice an issue.

You don’t notice because you have never had the capability to host content. With symmetric upload, it would be possible to backup our phones/data to our own NAS at home as opposed to relying on Apple/Microsoft/Alphabet/Amazon. You could stream video from your own device, you could share it, etc. The lack of high quality, high bandwidth symmetric connections to the home (and ipv6) is a huge boon to the entrenched big…

> With symmetric upload, it would be possible to backup our phones/data to our own NAS at home as opposed to relying on Apple/Microsoft/Alphabet/Amazon.

I am not following this one. Why would upload bandwidth at home inhibit backing up your phone/data to a NAS at home? Or are you referring to remote restoration / access?

Wouldn't the NAS be using its download bandwidth to receive backups when your phone is remote? and your phone would be on the local network when you're at home?

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#284

Post by pests »

warner25 wrote: post #250
Workaccount2 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Me too. I tell everyone who will listen that they should look at their actual bandwidth usage. I've looked at the detailed statistics on my Google Nest WiFi router, and my family's peak usage never exceeded about 30 Mbps. That's with me working from home as a CS PhD student and my wife homeschooling our kids during the day. I have 300 Mbps (down) because that's the lowest, cheapest tier that my ISP offers. Maybe peop…

I have 3 days left in my billing cycle on phone and I've used 8.5GB of data. I have WiFi everywhere I go too.

500 for $5 would cost me about $50 - unlimited makes perfect sense.

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#285

Post by itslennysfault »

freedomben wrote: post #217
hipadev23 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit cards almost always side with the consumer if you have meaningful spend and very few issues/chargebacks/claims. If you never use the card, and then chargeback, they'll just deny your claim and drop your ass. It's not about the money of the individual charge (for small stuff like this anyway), it's about keeping you happy and spending on the card. I highly doubt the argument itself was relevant whatsoever.

Hasn't worked for me. Chargebacks are pretty much non-existent. The bank will just contact the vendor, ask them if they delivered "the product" and if they just say "yes" (no proof needed, and they always say yes) they deny my claim. I barely even got it back when my kid stole my credit card and gave it to a scammer selling "minecraft accounts." Maybe I need to find a different bank?

I've done several chargebacks and never had an issue (with Chase).

$500 for items stolen off my porch. So they WERE delivered, but I didn't receive the item.

Over $1,000 for a hotel I booked and they wouldn't let me reduce my 5 day reservation by 1 day (the first day because I realized I couldn't get there on the expected day). I went back and forth between the booking website and the hotel 3 times each with them both telling me only the other could change the dates. So, I charged back the whole stay and found a different hotel for my updated timeline.

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#286

Post by pottertheotter »

photonios wrote: post #261

Everyone here arguing that most people have no practical use for higher speeds at home have never experienced 1 GBit up+down. Once you have it, you'll never settle for less. I have 1 GBit up+down at home, I cabled the whole house with CAT7 cables and set up the best access points money can buy for mobile devices. Everything else is wired. It's an amazing experience and internet everywhere sucks compared to home. When…

I think that people also say that they have no practical use for it because they don't have access to it, so they don't realize all the practical uses. For instance, I've worked with a lot of engineering companies that collect a lot of lidar data. Having reasonable speeds (1Gbps up/down) would have a huge impact on how and where we can transmit and process the data.

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#287

Post by duffyjp »

Analemma_ wrote: post #75
bscphil wrote: post #37

It's 100 Mbps down / 20 Mbps up as the proposal, and 1000 Mbps / 500 Mbps as an eventual goal. I imagine the 20 Mbps upload target is useless for most of us, even those on asymmetric cable, but there's a good chance that if the ISPs were forced to provide 20 Mbps up at their lowest broadband tiers, it would raise the ladder quite a bit. For example, on Comcast I get 800 / 20, but there's also a 400 / 10 tier (and may…

> I imagine the 20 Mbps upload target is useless for most of us, even those on asymmetric cable I wish this were true. I'm in Seattle and Xfinity will only sell me 5 Mbps up, even at 480 down, unless I pay out the ass for a symmetric gigabit connection I don't need. Very much looking forward to the FCC forcing at least 20.

I'd recommend looking into the 5G home internet services all the major cell carriers offer. They're all cheaper than I was paying Spectrum for their minimum tier. None are offered at my address unfortunately but being in Seattle I'd bet you could get one.

I had fiber installed this summer and until they finally sent a staff engineer out it was going down 2-5 times a day. I work from home so I had to tether to my phone for Teams meetings to make sure I'd stay connected. It was actually completely fine and I only get 2 bars of LTE at home.

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#288

Post by mjrpes »

endisneigh wrote: post #219
paxys wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Or more accurately, to disincentive excessive use. They don’t need a cap to simply charge you more money, they’ve been doing that just fine with or without caps.

If that was a big issue, why are smaller ISPs (like sonic.com) able to offer 10Gb ethernet at a flat rate with no caps?

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#289

Post by tracker1 »

Jiocus wrote: post #248
huytersd wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? I wasn’t even aware consumer speeds got that high. No caps I hope?

Started seeing consumer 10Gbps back in 2018 (in Sweden). The problem was there wasn't many consumer router devices around back then to support that kind of link. It might have even been unheard of, so one ISP solved it by designing their own custom device to specification - just so they could offer 10Gbps asap.

That would be my problem... my router has 2.5gbps ports, and I've only got 2 devices on my network supporting 10gb (nas and my desktop)... everything else is 1gb or 2.5gb. I'm not sure what the hardware costs would be to support that.

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#290

Post by joe5150 »

warner25 wrote: post #250
Workaccount2 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Me too. I tell everyone who will listen that they should look at their actual bandwidth usage. I've looked at the detailed statistics on my Google Nest WiFi router, and my family's peak usage never exceeded about 30 Mbps. That's with me working from home as a CS PhD student and my wife homeschooling our kids during the day. I have 300 Mbps (down) because that's the lowest, cheapest tier that my ISP offers. Maybe peop…

Netflix 4K streams seem to top out around 25Mbps and I'd guess other services are comparable, so 1Gbps is still a lot of bandwidth for even large multi-streamer households. I think a lot of families will reach the limits of cheap, basic wifi routers before they start actually pushing against their bandwidth caps in these situations.

My issue in the past with cable gigabit service was the relatively tiny upstream bandwidth of 20-50Mbps. This made for some challenges a few years ago when suddenly everybody in the house was on Zoom all day long.

Post reply on HN