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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

#211

Post by andrewaylett »

Shank wrote: post #66
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…

> 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…

I think you're emphasising my point?

If higher bitrates lead to higher latency, most tooling will try to keep latency low enough even if that means sacrificing quality. I've got 1/10 of your total bandwidth, but still seem to maybe get better video quality? I'd attribute that to better active traffic management.

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

#212

Post by partiallypro »

gnicholas wrote: post #198
partiallypro wrote: post #56

My parents to this day still don't have real broadband access. The best they can get is a bad 4G signal to their rural area. Even Starlink only has speeds of 40mbs in their area. They only live about a mile from a fiber line, but AT&T won't run it over because it would only service maybe 10-15 homes, and there are no cable lines. I think this is more common than people think.

What's wrong with 40mbs? I honestly don't need more than 20. The only time I even notice faster speeds is when my podcasts download. I'm curious what types of situations require more than 40mbps, and why the inability to do those tasks would mean that someone doesn't haver "real broadband access". I was pushed from 50 to 75 a while back and seriously hardly notice it.

That's 40mbps at peak, if you're streaming say HuluTV to 2-3 devices and also running your work environment, you're straining that data. It's also just legally speaking -not- high speed internet.

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

#213

Post by gamepsys »

sologoub wrote: post #194
gamepsys wrote: post #132

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…

25Mbps up may be adequate in a pinch, but it’s laughably outdated. Symmetric down/up enables a lot of great use cases including seamless backup. I briefly lived with AT&T fiber symmetric 1gbps (actually more like 940mbps at the router, but close enough). It was a game changer and losing it definitely undid a bunch of great use cases. If you WFH, it’s even more important. Meanwhile our Swiss friends have 10+gbps to ho…

I've seen urban condos in US offering 7gbps to home. The high end is there.

After I first experienced symmetrical gigabit fiber I have only lived in residences that offer it -- it is a prerequisite for me choosing a domicile similar to trash pickup and electricity. My argument isn't that we shouldn't offer faster internet. We should have more places that offer faster internet. My question is what is the minimum viable upload speed for residential service.

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

#214

Post by danaris »

rsynnott wrote: post #63
cogman10 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you pay for internet? Maybe you should be directing your ire elsewhere. I currently pay $60/month for 600 down. An ISP that actually struggles to provide 100mbps down at a reasonable rate, today, is simply one that refuses to update their hardware. 100mbps is not hard to achieve with semi-modern hardware. I know of ISPs servicing remote small communities with 1gbps down at $100/month. 300 down for $30/mon…

It’s less a hardware problem and more a medium problem; to go over 100Mbit/sec reliably you’re realistically looking at fibre (or maybe coax, but coax isn’t particularly cost-effective or practical in the rural areas that tend to have problems in this direction.)

I live in a rural area.

Fiber is not available here, and without significant extra pressure from the government, probably never will be.

We've had internet through Spectrum (and before that Time-Warner) since we moved here a decade and a half ago. 100Mbps has been available that entire time. I don't know exactly what all the available speeds have been at any given time, but in about 2017, we upgraded to 400Mbps, which we still have. It's not always the advertised speed, but it's almost always above 100.

I think your understanding of this technology and the practicalities of implementing it may be misinformed or out of date.

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

#215

Post by gnicholas »

partiallypro wrote: post #212
gnicholas wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with 40mbs? I honestly don't need more than 20. The only time I even notice faster speeds is when my podcasts download. I'm curious what types of situations require more than 40mbps, and why the inability to do those tasks would mean that someone doesn't haver "real broadband access". I was pushed from 50 to 75 a while back and seriously hardly notice it.

That's 40mbps at peak, if you're streaming say HuluTV to 2-3 devices and also running your work environment, you're straining that data. It's also just legally speaking -not- high speed internet.

Thanks for the example. We definitely would never have 3 hulu streams simultaneously while someone else was "running a work environment". At most we'd have 2 simultaneous streams, and we've never had buffering or noticeable degradation when that happened.

I guess we live the simple life!

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

#217

Post by astrostl »

faeriechangling wrote: post #42
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

25mbps being "broadband" is a bit of a joke, a single 4k stream can exceed that. 100mbps is about what is needed for todays "broadband" applications. Raising the floor to 20mbps for uploads is also fairly important for more practical things, having to backup a laptop at 3mbps was wholly impractical. 20mbps is a good bump if you're running some backups overnight, or uploading a 4k video file. I don't see any reason to…

> 25->100 is more of a luxury then a necessity > a single 4k stream can exceed that

I think this is an odd choice of a counter-example. Is 4k streaming a necessity or a luxury? How many people could even tell the difference in an A/B test between 4k and 1080p on their televisions at their viewing distances?

> 20mbps is a good bump if you're running some backups overnight, or uploading a 4k video file.

I agree that it's a good bump. Back to necessity vs luxury, how many people back up entire laptops (with or without a sense of urgency) and/or upload 4k video files?

> we're not talking about replacing a ton of last mile wiring

Of course we are, unless it's delivered wirelessly. A huge percentage of last miles are relying on DSL over lousy POTS lines. I use DSL as a backup connection because cable is so unreliable for me, and the fastest I can get in a major metro area is 25-30Mb/s against AT&T's "Internet 50" plan.

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

#218

Post by prirun »

jdminhbg wrote: post #9
hedora wrote: post #5

With how many 9's of availability, and at what latency? Frontier is advertising 3 nines average network-wide availability for their new fiber network. Three nines is completely unacceptable, but our neighborhood barely got one nine last year. Based on their current behavior, there's zero chance of them providing the bandwidths they're advertising for the new build out, even when the network is completely up and compl…

> Three nines is completely unacceptable Less than 9 hrs of downtime per year is unacceptable for consumer internet?

Depends on how the 9 hrs of downtime is distributed. It could be 6480 5-second outages (packet loss). There are 3650 10-hour workdays in a year. If those 6480 5-second dropouts occur during waking hours, you're looking at 2 5-second dropouts every hour, which is going to suck.

I had a bad connection because of bad coax cable, and it's infuriating because each dropout causes long delays while TCP recovers.

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

#219

Post by Cody-99 »

gnicholas wrote: post #195
Cody-99 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange logic IMO. Internet service providers already receive money from the government through grants, loans, and other programs. Opposing increasing the pretty low requirements on ISPs who already receive this money just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Millions of people are getting an increase in their internet speed (including many in this thread!) at the flip of a switch. Seems like a pretty big win. >Anecdot…

> If 40% of the county can't get a basic 100mbit/20mbit internet package then something should be done to address that. The problem isn't that they're offering higher speeds. The problem is that they're getting rid of lower speeds. I've been repeatedly forced off my old plan as Comcast has sunset them. It appears very clear that their moves are in response to FCC definition changes. I wish I could still have my 25 do…

That is frustrating. Although nothing is stopping Comcast from offering plans lower than the FCC definition of broadband. IIRC they did this for years where they had a $10-15 plan for certain areas/people that was 15mbit download and I don't recall the upload.

I suspect the issue you are describing has more to do with Comcast than anything the FCC has done. Comcast realized they can extract more than $19 from your household and others like it so they axed that plan. The major phone companies have done the same thing in past decades. Comcast is notoriously sleazy! This is the same company that at one point required customers to pay $25 a month to get the full speed of their internet package (in addition to their monthly bill of course). Realistically it costs Comcast the same amount of money to provide you with 25/3, 40/5, or 100/20 so a slightly higher broadband definition should have 0 impact on what they charge.

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

#220

Post by partiallypro »

gnicholas wrote: post #215
partiallypro wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's 40mbps at peak, if you're streaming say HuluTV to 2-3 devices and also running your work environment, you're straining that data. It's also just legally speaking -not- high speed internet.

Thanks for the example. We definitely would never have 3 hulu streams simultaneously while someone else was "running a work environment". At most we'd have 2 simultaneous streams, and we've never had buffering or noticeable degradation when that happened. I guess we live the simple life!

I used that example because it's a real-life problem my parents have faced, you're paying for DirecTV and also Starlink? That's going to be closer to $300+/mo. If you just had high speed internet and HuluTV (or similar) you'd be paying a lot less. Many people that live in rural areas simply can't afford both.
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