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

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

#201

Post by ksec »

gamepsys wrote: post #132
notfried wrote: post #85

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 really think it should be a ratio with minimum cap of 25Mbps.

It would great if DL/UL would be at least 10:1. So 1Gbps user would get 100Mbps upload.

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

#202

Post by ksec »

conradev wrote: post #140
lolinder wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s not a lie – they can’t provide upload speeds anywhere near their download speeds. 20 Mbps vs 6 Mbps is still quite small compared to 1000 Mbps. DOCSIS 3.1, the latest and not fully deployed standard goes up to 10Gbps down and 1Gpbs up. It looks like DOCSIS 4.0 is actually a path forward to symmetric upload/download speeds over the same cables

I was under the impression DOCSIS 4.0 was basically a rebranded maximum feature of 3.1?

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

#203

Post by RacerCrispTaru »

google234123 wrote: post #19

This is over regulation imo. If you support this then you can’t complain about there not being any low cost housing because it’s regulations akin to this that is increasing the costs. 25->100 is more of a luxury then a necessity

You're all getting scammed.

I pay 29€ for 1000/100 (2/3ms to first hop) but the contract is a few years old. I could upgrade to 2500/500 at the same price.

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

#204

Post by Dylan16807 »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #157
Dylan16807 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum speed still requires almost all the equipment to be running.

Yes and no. * Last mile has a downed line, yes that will result in a local outage * Backhaul gets taken out. Re-route traffic. Drop/throttle non-SLA traffic

If you're able to reroute then you should almost always be able to keep Internet service running, just slower. Not many connections are so weak that they can only carry voice.

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

#205

Post by sensanaty »

I live in the Netherlands and have a symmetric 1Gbps connection for 50EUR/month, and I had no idea how privileged that kinda internet speed really is until recently. My ISP's recently told me that they now support symmetric 8Gbps links for domestic networks for 70EUR which is tempting, but even I have to admit it's overkill for my usecases.

I've recently been on vacation back to my home country (Indonesia) where my parents have some $100/month 50 up/5 down internet package, and I was struggling with how slow that is. Things I always took for granted like pulling in Docker images or whatever would take forever compared to back home, and doing anything while on a conference call or whatever was a non-starter.

I'm always amazed when I read about US internet. With the whole tech sector being what it is there, you'd think they'd be world-class in terms of internet speed/stability/price, but it seems basically comparable to the internet you get on a remote island in Indonesia, which is mind blowing to me.

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

#206

Post by throw0101b »

gamepsys wrote: post #132
notfried wrote: post #85

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…

> Zoom recommends 3.8Mbps for uploading 1080p video.

Meta: I wish it was more acceptable to not enable video.

At my last job audio-only was the default, but at the current one people turn it on.

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

#207

Post by whoisthemachine »

tzs wrote: post #121
chandlerswift wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got the same message, also from Xfinity. It does sort of make me wonder: If the FCC declared broadband to be 100/50, would I have 50mbps upload speeds this morning? To me, this seems to be a clear positive outcome of the FCC's change: Xfinity had this capacity, the FCC raised their standards, and now all(?) Xfinity customers have increased upload speeds for zero additional cost. Seems like pretty much a best-case r…

I didn't get a message from Xfinity and a speed test showed no increase, but checking my plan on their website it said 300 mbps whereas it used to be 200 mbps. A modem reboot later and I'm getting 355 down/24 up on a speed test site, and 373 down/25 up on "what my ethernet card sees" test [1]. When the plan was 200 mbps I'd get around 240 down on speed tests. Xfinity has always been 10-20% faster for me than whatever…

In my experience, xfinity will often do speed increases and market them, but leave me on a "grandfathered" plan, which leaves me with the same speed as before, and usually some creeping "service fees". Eventually, as I get annoyed with the increasing service fees, I login and look at their new plans and end up enjoying a nice speed increase and a lower monthly bill.

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

#208

Post by theodric »

rsynnott wrote: post #38
theodric wrote: post #8

I appreciate any effort on the part of a government to exert pressure on industry to deliver a product to citizens that keeps up with the times, but I'm not sure it really matters anymore. Any connection that can stream YouTube at an acceptable resolution is 'broadband' in my eyes, while someone who's rsyncing terabytes daily would probably suck up as much bandwidth as they can get and come back for a second helping.…

25Mbit/sec isn’t really good enough for 4K video. > Good thing the FCC doesn't control Ireland, or I'd no longer be able to declare that I have broadband via satellite! Well, part of the time, anyway. I mean, you can call it what you want, but it’s under the minimum standard set by the NBP in 2012 (30Mbit, 25ms). Fortunately, if that’s the best you can get, you’re almost certainly in an NBI intervention area, so a mi…

December 2026, pushed back twice so far. The places that have service have post-launch prices far exceeding that of Starlink (and launch prices matching Starlink). It's "National" in the sense of being funded by taxpayers, but not in the sense of being operated as a public good. Just the usual operation to funnel tax money to politicians' cousins and friends and set them up for life with a revenue stream.

I can't imagine why you'd need 4k streaming. I can't tell 4k from 1080p on my 65" from my chair, and my phone isn't 4k.

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

#209

Post by andrewaylett »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #179
andrewaylett wrote: post #47

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…

Have you set up bufferbloat prevention on your router? You would restrict your router to only say 100mbps, to avoid saturating the connection.

Even better: my ISP does that for me on their side, and prioritises smaller packets too.

I've got a 115Mbit/s connection for my last mile, and AAISP limit what they'll try to send down it to 95% of the line rate, so BT should never need to buffer anything.

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

#210

Post by andrewaylett »

devwastaken wrote: post #70
andrewaylett wrote: post #47

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…

This is not at all accurate when considering that internet access for one home is on average for 3 people, not 1, and internet is now used for work which requires video streaming and large file downloads.

That would be the situation I find myself in, and I can indeed have multiple people in the house on high quality, low latency video calls at the same time as large downloads from Steam and folk watching YouTube.

Maybe I'd get a faster download with a faster connection, but it's the low latency applications that are of top importance.

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