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

351–360 of 432 posts

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

#351

Post by I_Am_Nous »

Culonavirus wrote: post #160
happytiger wrote: post #61

1000 Mbps down / 100 Mbps up should be the minimum for any first world country. Without mandated illegality of data caps and other Comcast data and modem games this does nothing to change the reality of boots on the ground unfortunately. These speeds only really allow you to close your data cap sooner in the month for the vast majority of customers who use Internet for modern things. A fixed data cap locks in an “era…

Many (most?) people do not even have devices that could utilize 1Gbit/s. My (relatively new) Galaxy Tab S7+ (11ac wifi) has a hard time going over 500Mbit/s (not sure if it's wifi or the slow internal memory, can't be arsed to find out), and it's similar with my (not that old) LG Velvet phone... All of that on a connection that can do a rock solid 1Gbps on my PC through UTP (cat 6)... What I'm trying to say is that m…

This is a relevant issue for people who call our ISP and complain they aren't getting their 250/250 and we find out they speed tested with a 6 year old cheap Android phone that only supports 2.4 GHz wireless.

Wireless is a convenience feature but it gets treated like it should act exactly like a direct wire does.

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

#352

Post by portpecos »

vel0city wrote: post #233
mcoliver wrote: post #216

Should update the title to 100/20. I still find it amazing that companies can list services without the upload speed (eg Comcast). Of course latency and jitter matter too but that's probably above the heads of a lot of consumers. Upload and latency increasingly matter more and more and is essential to many work from home endeavors. Whether you are uploading content for work or play, or have a family video conferencin…

The FCC requires ISPs to publish information about their network management practices. That's how you get sites like this: https://www.xfinity.com/networkmanagement I do wish this was required to be easily accessible from the marketing pages. Usually it takes some digging to find it. But at least they do have to make these numbers public.

>The FCC determined that Comcast’s Xfinity Internet broadband Internet access services deliver, on average, over 100 percent of their advertised downstream and upstream speeds during the busiest periods of the day, known as "peak" times, during sustained testing. Peak times are Monday through Friday from 7:00pm to 11:00pm local time.

>Latency is typically measured in milliseconds, and generally has no significant impact on typical everyday Internet usage.

I took that from their networkmanagement page. Their statements seem to conflict with the consensus of the HN crowd, but I could be wrong.

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

#353

Post by arp242 »

callalex wrote: post #262
arp242 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The costs for your ISP are fixed whether they serve you 1MB or 1TB. I cannot believe how anyone with a straight face can claim that the infrastructure and maintenance required to serve "n times 1MB" is exactly the same as the costs for "n times 1TB". This is so obviously not the case that I genuinely don't even know how to explain it. You can serve your thousand subscribers on a dingy Pentium 1 if they're using 1MB…

There is some truth to what you say but Comcast charges me around $1 per gigabyte over my cap. It absolutely does not cost them that much more money to serve me.

Almost certainly not, no. That it's overpriced is of course a different thing. I suspect part of the reason these costs are so high is that they really don't want you to use more data, so they won't have to upgrade the network.

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

#354

Post by devindotcom »

pests wrote: post #284
warner25 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

not OP, but anyone who streams music regularly or watches videos on their commute, or does video calls on the go, will rack up pretty serious gigs. I'm with you on low bandwidth usage and certainly on the home bandwidth thing, but some people have a very mobile and streaming-centric lifestyle. It's a bit foreign to me but it's definitely common.

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

#355

Post by bonyt »

mixdup wrote: post #240
gnicholas wrote: post #162

I 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…

>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 could pay a fraction of what I'm paying for 75Mbps and get a lower tier of service. It should suffice that x% of customers are offered "broadband" for a reasonable price, even if some choose a lower speed. The problem is that most of the…

> The problem is that most of the costs of providing broadband are fixed costs. To run a coaxial cable from their headend to your house, and to provide employees and crews to repair it and install it all costs the same whether you buy 10 megabits or 2 gigabits

Not sure if this is completely the case when it comes to older networks that might need upgrades because lots of folk are sharing the same coax line. In an HFC[1] network, bandwidth is shared on the coax branches, and a variable number of units can be sharing the same fiber link, which can serve a neighborhood, block, or even unit. And, so upgrades can make a network more "fiber-rich."

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_fiber-coaxial

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

#356

Post by vel0city »

callalex wrote: post #279
vel0city wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Residential internet connections aren't designed for the same kind of usage as some VPS.

Ok but we’re talking about a whole computer with redundant power and connectivity and memory and disk storage compared to throughput on already-installed non-redundant wires. One of those certainly costs way less than the other, but Comcast still charges multiple orders of magnitude more for.

Its not a whole computer, its a tiny fraction of a whole computer. And that whole computer is in a giant datacenter hundreds of feet from massive ISP interconnections and only a few hops of hardware away from it. Meanwhile the residential customer is probably many miles from the nearest interchange, often even hundreds or more miles.

Location, location, location.

I do agree the over the cap costs imposed by residential ISPs are many, many multiples of their true cost, but they're mostly there to discourage use not be a reasonable price. If you want business level usage hop on their business networking where pricing models are more designed for more average load.

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

#357

Post by xattt »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #180
gnicholas wrote: post #162

I 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.

It might be that you’re informed enough to consider that 300 Mbps is more than enough.

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

#358

Post by ceejayoz »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #266
ceejayoz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people need enough for at least a steady Zoom/FaceTime call, and that's only going to increase over time.

You don't need more than 10 mb for that though. How often are people uploading 1+ GB? For me at least the answer is never.

Not many are using gigabit upstream, but Spectrum’s 300 megabit down plans in my area come with like 20 megabit up. I’d get noticeable stutter in calls if I browsed the web during one.

Thankfully synchronous gigabit fiber came this year.

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

#359

Post by ZoomerCretin »

mixdup wrote: post #240
gnicholas wrote: post #162

I 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…

>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 could pay a fraction of what I'm paying for 75Mbps and get a lower tier of service. It should suffice that x% of customers are offered "broadband" for a reasonable price, even if some choose a lower speed. The problem is that most of the…

The UK fixes this by forcing the companies who own the lines to rent and share them with other providers. ISPs in the US vehemently oppose this, of course.

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

#360

Post by bscphil »

linsomniac wrote: post #322
bscphil wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case Comcast is 800/20 or 1000/35, but they refuse to even advertise the upload rate so you don't know when you're signing up. There's a somewhat outdated, very hard to find page that lists these [1] but many tiers (including mine) don't seem to be shown. [1] https://www.xfinity.com/networkmanagement

ISTR, and this was ~3+ years ago now, that Xfinity/Comcast is quite hard to even find out what the upload speed of the different offerings is. I even was chatting with their support and asking and they were cagey, like "why do you want to know?"

Currently, at least in my area, after you've purchased a plan (potentially with a term agreement), you can log onto the Xfinity website and see what your expected upload speed is. Mine says 800 / 20, although I think it's possible that the 800 is really 900 and they undersell download speeds to avoid customer complaints. I regularly max out a Gbit line in iperf tests to nearby servers.
Post reply on HN