Live data from Hacker News

FCC Officially Raises Minimum Broadband Metric from 25Mbps to 100Mbps

pcmag.com

161–170 of 233 posts

Re: FCC Officially Raises Minimum Broadband Metric from 25Mbps to 100Mbps

#161
post #66

IMNSHO, latency is more important than raw bandwidth, and raw bandwidth for consumer Internet is more useful as a latency improvement (because the high speed drains the buffers that much faster) than for actually using the bandwidth. If you've got actually decent Internet, or you actually do use the bandwidth, great! My experience is that only a few applications will max out my 115Mbit/s connection, and given I have…

> My experience is that only a few applications will max out my 115Mbit/s connection, and given I have semi-decent kit and a decent ISP using the full bandwidth doesn't have a big impact on latency so I can be streaming, downloading, and have multiple people video-calling and that's fine. My experience is that people rarely feel constrained by bandwidth because everyone is fighting to optimize every last bit, often u…

Can’t forget low bit rate “4k” saves them tons of money on storage and bandwidth costs as well.

Re: FCC Officially Raises Minimum Broadband Metric from 25Mbps to 100Mbps

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoom recommends 3.8Mbps for uploading 1080p video. Being able to do 1080p video conferencing is an expectation of broadband. Raising the definition of broadband to meet this basic requirement is clearly a win. I do think 25Mbps up is more than what's required for a large number of households (>33%). I have advised family that 15Mbps is adequate when they needed to do office work from home. Perhaps the only good thing…

I've been coping with 6 Mbps upload speeds from Xfinity for years now. This morning I got an email from them saying they were raising my speeds at no cost, and after a modem restart I'm now getting ~20 Mbps up. This whole time I've been told that Xfinity couldn't provide decent upload speeds because of infrastructure reasons, but now that's been proven a lie.

I got the same email. I was kinda assuming it was spam.

Re: FCC Officially Raises Minimum Broadband Metric from 25Mbps to 100Mbps

#163

I like they raised the broadband minimum upload speed from 3 to 25Mbps. Spectrum's 300 Mbps broadband is only 10 Mbps up. Let's see how fast they change their statement that "an upload speed of 3 Mbps is enough for most households" [1]. [1: https://www.spectrum.com/resources/internet-wifi/what-is-a-g... ]

Zoom recommends 3.8Mbps for uploading 1080p video. Being able to do 1080p video conferencing is an expectation of broadband. Raising the definition of broadband to meet this basic requirement is clearly a win. I do think 25Mbps up is more than what's required for a large number of households (>33%). I have advised family that 15Mbps is adequate when they needed to do office work from home. Perhaps the only good thing…

3.8Mbps 1080p is an atrocious bitrate. You'd want at least 6Mbps.

Re: FCC Officially Raises Minimum Broadband Metric from 25Mbps to 100Mbps

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoom recommends 3.8Mbps for uploading 1080p video. Being able to do 1080p video conferencing is an expectation of broadband. Raising the definition of broadband to meet this basic requirement is clearly a win. I do think 25Mbps up is more than what's required for a large number of households (>33%). I have advised family that 15Mbps is adequate when they needed to do office work from home. Perhaps the only good thing…

I've been coping with 6 Mbps upload speeds from Xfinity for years now. This morning I got an email from them saying they were raising my speeds at no cost, and after a modem restart I'm now getting ~20 Mbps up. This whole time I've been told that Xfinity couldn't provide decent upload speeds because of infrastructure reasons, but now that's been proven a lie.

The 20Mpbs is definitely very welcome and so far it’s pretty constant. I hope one day we will have symmetric connections everywhere.

Re: FCC Officially Raises Minimum Broadband Metric from 25Mbps to 100Mbps

#165

I like they raised the broadband minimum upload speed from 3 to 25Mbps. Spectrum's 300 Mbps broadband is only 10 Mbps up. Let's see how fast they change their statement that "an upload speed of 3 Mbps is enough for most households" [1]. [1: https://www.spectrum.com/resources/internet-wifi/what-is-a-g... ]

Zoom recommends 3.8Mbps for uploading 1080p video. Being able to do 1080p video conferencing is an expectation of broadband. Raising the definition of broadband to meet this basic requirement is clearly a win. I do think 25Mbps up is more than what's required for a large number of households (>33%). I have advised family that 15Mbps is adequate when they needed to do office work from home. Perhaps the only good thing…

The technology to do asymmetric upload/download exists and many fiber-based companies offer it at the same rate as older infrastructure. It is not more expensive to offer symmetric service, but it may require infrastructure being brought more modern.

For example, in the same region of Massachusetts (around Worcester) I previously paid $40/mo for 300/300 Mbps to Verizon FIOS but now after moving I pay $40/mo to Spectrum for 500/15 Mbps.

Re: FCC Officially Raises Minimum Broadband Metric from 25Mbps to 100Mbps

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 nines is reasonable for electricity, if you live in an urban area with no extreme weather or other major natural hazards. When I was still living in Helsinki, blackouts were basically an once-in-a-decade thing, and they didn't last long. Today in California, I'm getting 3 nines in an urban area. Those living a couple of blocks further towards the suburbs are not so lucky. And many people in the mountains don't get…

Hey, 3 nines ain’t too bad! In 2023 our availability only had one nine. We had power ~96% of the year. And it wasn’t like it was a lot of hour long outages that added up or something. Longest was 8 days. I am not in a dense urban area, but I am connected directly to a line connecting a couple of larger towns along a major highway, so we’re generally restored fairly quickly. During the 8 day outage, quite a few people…

That's sounds pretty terrible...

In my Eastern European country the SLA from the (state owned) power company is no more than 6 hours of down time per event, after which they need to pay compensation. Within highly populated areas it's shorter.

Admitidely the most remote place is less than 1.5 hours from the nearest reasonable sized town, so we aren't as remote as some parts of the US. The purpose of this was to force them to make their network more reliable by upgrading old equipment, burying overhead lines (lots of trees used to fall on lines during winter) and ensuring redundancy.

Re: FCC Officially Raises Minimum Broadband Metric from 25Mbps to 100Mbps

#168

As it turns out, a lot of HN is a lot more for government regulating business when it affects them personally. Have you ever seen an HN thread with so much pro-regulation sentiment?

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. HN isn’t a singular entity, a lot of people here have different opinions.

Almost everyone in the world is in favor of some form of regulation of businesses.

Re: FCC Officially Raises Minimum Broadband Metric from 25Mbps to 100Mbps

#169

I like they raised the broadband minimum upload speed from 3 to 25Mbps. Spectrum's 300 Mbps broadband is only 10 Mbps up. Let's see how fast they change their statement that "an upload speed of 3 Mbps is enough for most households" [1]. [1: https://www.spectrum.com/resources/internet-wifi/what-is-a-g... ]

Zoom recommends 3.8Mbps for uploading 1080p video. Being able to do 1080p video conferencing is an expectation of broadband. Raising the definition of broadband to meet this basic requirement is clearly a win. I do think 25Mbps up is more than what's required for a large number of households (>33%). I have advised family that 15Mbps is adequate when they needed to do office work from home. Perhaps the only good thing…

> I do think 25Mbps up is more than what's required for a large number of households (>33%). I have advised family that 15Mbps is adequate when they needed to do office work from home.

Yet my experience when streaming high def video is much better in places with symmetric fiber with much higher upload bandwidth (> 100Mbps) than it ever is in places with coaxial cable bandwidth.

Re: FCC Officially Raises Minimum Broadband Metric from 25Mbps to 100Mbps

#170

That explains why I got this email from my broadband provider this morning: >We've increased your internet speeds to show you our appreciation I was wondering what I'd done to deserve it!

[flagged]

capped data is ass, as someone who couldn't get uncapped until about a month ago when i moved, if someone tried to legislatively require data caps i would be on their ass trying to make them stop SO fast
Post reply on HN