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

421–430 of 432 posts

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

#421

Post by FredPret »

IdiranVibe wrote: post #112
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.

It blows my mind that you guys in the US still have to deal with data caps ... It's been years in the UK since that's been a thing for broadband, and we're close to the point where mobile data will be the same

Western Europe is covered in little hamlets and the odd big city, but it is amazingly densely populated as a region.

So cell service, internet, trains, and cheap flights are all easier to provide there.

Whereas here in the much more sparsely-populated North America, those things are all pricier, and it’s easier to accommodate big trucks, big highways, giant Costco’s, etc.

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

#422

Post by PaulHoule »

dekhn wrote: post #350
PaulHoule wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There also is a step between DSL and cable and fiber. I have a fiber to the node situation that gives consistent and reliable 20 Mbps down and I have two of those with load balancer. With VDSL they could sell 100Mbps service to a few houses close to the node. A real upgrade for me would involve running a cable through a beaver meadow. There is an electric line and crews do go in there to limb up trees and they are pl…

I mean, the beavers would probably also appreciate an upgrade.

I think they moved out. They're like any other lumberjacks, they cut down all the trees in an area, complain that the environmentalists shut them down, then go somewhere else.

We used to go out every day to take apart unwanted dams near our driveway. If you go at it in a disciplined way, taking out the sticks from downstream, then digging out the mud, and never letting the water level to get high enough that they can easily float materials to the dam site, it's not that hard. It was awful, however, if they dammed 3/4 of the culvert pipe in which case you had to work inside the pipe with low clearance and (I think) high CO2 levels and no really good place to put the debris. At least they would never reuse materials that they used once.

I don't think anyone has done that in the last year, I certainly haven't.

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

#423

Post by I_Am_Nous »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #417
ZoomerCretin wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably due to the extreme level of veto-ism in the Bay Area. Everyone wants internet, but if 5 people complaining about yards or roads being dug up can get work to stop indefinitely, costs are going through the roof. There's far more uncertainty in that political environment than anywhere else. For reference, I live in a small town of ~6,000 people, and we're getting fiber laid. For the longest time we only had 25m…

It could simply be that poor people don't complain about infrastructure projects like rich people too. Or they don't have the tools/connections to effectively stop it.

I imagine if you are renting a property, you are less likely to complain about things going on around the property because it's not your property to "defend." If you own (and especially if you are part of an HOA) you might be more likely to complain if there is construction going on for 3+ months in your neighborhood.

So it probably does fall into rich vs poor in the same way that renters may be less likely to be rich.

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

#424

Post by musha68k »

cortesoft wrote: post #391
musha68k wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs face costs for peak usage / level of “playing with the numbers” yes, but economies of scale and exchange agreements reduce these costs significantly. Bandwidth caps not only have a weak financial justification but also run counter to net neutrality.

How do bandwidth costs run counter to net neutrality? (Unless you are talking about certain types of traffic not counting against the caps)

Zero-rating = skewing whole internet playing field, not just stifling small creators; subtly - or not so subtly - influences user behaviour, leading to a constrained experience. Users might feel financially pressured to use certain services, missing out on potentially superior or more diverse options, which goes against the original ethos of the open internet.

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

#425

Post by zerd »

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.

If I take a video on my phone and sync it to the cloud that's easily more than that. And if that takes up the whole 10 Mbit, video calls get unusable.

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

#426

Post by kulahan »

hn_acker wrote: post #347
kulahan wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good definition shouldn't apply to the majority of people?

> A good definition shouldn't apply to the majority of people? If "good definition of minimum broadband speed", then "applies to the majority of people". The converse is not true. It is not the case that if "applies to the majority of people", then "good definition of minimum broadband speed." 1. Whether a speed applies to a majority of people is necessary but not sufficient. 2. You are unknowingly accepting being ri…

I'm not talking about costs, data caps, or anything else. I'm asking if a specified, asymmetric speed is really insufficient for most people. We don't need to define something that covers 99.9% of the population, we need minimums that are roughly sufficient for any given person. If a cable can only move a certain amount of data at a time, why not engineer for the direction the vast majority of it goes already?

>It is not the case that if "applies to the majority of people", then "good definition of minimum broadband speed."

I don't see why this wouldn't be the case. This isn't a physics problem with a right/wrong answer, it's a balance of the wants/needs of corporations vs. individuals. You're only talking about half of the equation to begin with, so forming logical statements on it is incomplete to begin with.

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

#427

Post by prirun »

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…

> you can get Verizon home wireless internet for as low as $25

I just checked the Verizon wireless page:

https://www.verizon.com/home/internet/5g/

It says $35/mo "with AutoPay and 5G Mobile plans". So to get this price, you have to have Verizon 5G Mobile.

My current cell phone plan is $22/mo. Verizon's cheapest plan is the "Unlimited Welcome" plan, which is $40/mo. Adding Home Wireless Internet to that plan is $40; to get the $25 price you have to have a more expensive mobile plan.

And of course, all of these are introductory prices. They are much higher after the 2-year introductory period.

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

#428

Post by hn_acker »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #402
hn_acker wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It isn’t a “cash grab” at all. If you need more upload you need a new line that isn’t divided so asymmetrically, which means fiber. And once you fiber, there is zero reason to go go symmetric, as you have two lines with the same equipment on either side, to a point where the ISP will charge differently if you cut into their bandwidth too much. Everything else you said could be true, yet not the part about a cash gr…

>Anything worse than $10 for 100 Mbps down and 100 Mbps up from a large ISP is a cash grab now that fiber exists [1], I thought you were serious for a sec. You should open an ISP, it would be wildly successful with your background knowledge.

>> Anything worse than $10 for 100 Mbps down and 100 Mbps up from a large ISP is a cash grab now that fiber exists [1],

> You should open an ISP, it would be wildly successful with your background knowledge.

First of all, the keyword in my previous comment is "large". When I wrote "large ISP", I was thinking of ISPs like AT&T [1], Comcast [2], Verizon [3], and T-Mobile [3]. I was also thinking of ISPs that have been financially successful enough to have grown large. (I could tentatively define "large ISP" as an ISP that operates in at least the entirety of two states, or maybe instead as an ISP that serves at least half the states that Comcast does, but I digress.) I could understand if a new or small ISP needed to charge much higher than the $10 for 100 figure I gave. But a large ISP, which has been around for many years should be able to rely on smaller profit margins.

Second, I did do a simple math calculation to reach my figure of $10. EPB of Chattanooga charges just under $70 dollars for 1 gigabit symmetrical (see my previous comment). Let's suppose that a large ISP like Comcast offers 100 megabits symmetrical. A tenth of the speed (100 Mbps vs 1 Gbps) should be about a tenth of the price ($7 vs $70), plus a bit of wiggle room to account for overhead and discretionary profit. I gave this hypothetical Comcast a 30% margin of error, so that means $10. Admittedly, I may have underestimated the overhead, so $15 to $20 for 100 mbps from Comcast might be more realistic than $10. So yeah, I made a mistake. But anything higher than $20 for 100 mbps symmetrical and $70 for 1000 mbps symmetrical is a cash grab if a large ISP like Comcast is the ISP in question. So let those be my revised figures. (The overhead is about the same for providing both 100 mbps and 1000 mbps because the equipment costs may differ but the marginal cost of transferring data is about the same for both speeds [4].) Once again, this price threshold is only for large ISPs.

By the way, if you think that my pricing idea was unreasonable then I would've been pleased to hear your idea of more reasonable pricing.

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2020/10/06/mississippi-says-att-too...

[2] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/15/report-shows-comcast-con...

[3] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/16/verizon-t-mobile-oversta...

[4] https://broadbandnow.com/report/much-data-really-cost-isps

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

#429

Post by sidewndr46 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #312
mixdup wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

There also is a step between DSL and cable and fiber. I have a fiber to the node situation that gives consistent and reliable 20 Mbps down and I have two of those with load balancer. With VDSL they could sell 100Mbps service to a few houses close to the node. A real upgrade for me would involve running a cable through a beaver meadow. There is an electric line and crews do go in there to limb up trees and they are pl…

what is VDSL and how is it different from ADSL

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

#430

Post by cortesoft »

musha68k wrote: post #424
cortesoft wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do bandwidth costs run counter to net neutrality? (Unless you are talking about certain types of traffic not counting against the caps)

Zero-rating = skewing whole internet playing field, not just stifling small creators; subtly - or not so subtly - influences user behaviour, leading to a constrained experience. Users might feel financially pressured to use certain services, missing out on potentially superior or more diverse options, which goes against the original ethos of the open internet.

Ok, so yeah you are talking about some data not counting against the cap. I agree, that violates net neutrality.

A pure cap that counts all traffic the same wouldn’t be, though.

Post reply on HN