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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

#221

Post by rrr_oh_man »

superkuh wrote: post #43
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #14

Official release: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-increases-broadband-speed-b...

It's always funny sad when I try to open a link on fcc.gov or congress.gov and get blocked by an impassible cloudflare wall. You'd think these services would be important enough to have a non-default cloudflare configuration. Here's a mirror of the text I grabbed from another computer/IP for anyone else getting blocked: FCC INCREASES BROADBAND SPEED BENCHMARK Annual Agency Assessment of High-Speed Internet Service De…

Blocked? Why?

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

#222

Post by kelnos »

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25Mbps up may be adequate in a pinch, but it’s laughably outdated.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…

Yep. I've never had more than 35Mbps up from home, and it sucks. When talking about WFH, a lot of people focus on the uplink bandwidth needed for 1080p video calls (another commenter said Zoom recommends 3.8Mbps), but there's a lot more to it.

I might be building some software locally and uploading it to a cloud server to test it. The built artifact might be tens or hundreds of megabytes and take several minutes to upload.

This isn't even solely a software developer thing. Someone who does video production certainly needs to send around large quantities of data as well. I'm sure we could come up with examples from other industries.

It's pathetic how limited the coax infra is in the US these days. Supposedly this will be improving soon with DOCSIS 4.0, but c'mon, it's 2024...

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

#224

Post by gnicholas »

partiallypro wrote: post #220
gnicholas wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your parents aren't able to simultaneously stream with 40mbps?

The example was 2-3 simultaneous streams plus a "work environment" (a zoom call?). My family of 4 doesn't ever have that much usage, which is why I don't enjoy being forced to pay for 75mbps — Comcast's lowest tier. We cap out at two simultaneous streams, which is probably the same for your parents. It has literally never been an issue — even when we had 25mbps.

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

#225

Post by cogman10 »

danaris wrote: post #214
rsynnott wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, whic…

I have direct family members that own and operate rural telephone companies. I'm well aware of the practicalities of maintaining technology standards.

Rural telco is heavily subsidized already. To the point where I've literally personally done a run of Internet to a mountain house in the middle of nowhere.

The issue is that bigger telcos like spectrum and time-warner, simply do not care.

There's a reason Google was able to start doing urban fiber installation (which is more expensive than rural installs) and they were able to advertise $100 1gbps speeds 10 years ago. That wasn't all due to deep pockets.

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

#226

Post by danaris »

cogman10 wrote: post #225
danaris wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, whic…

I have direct family members that own and operate rural telephone companies. I'm well aware of the practicalities of maintaining technology standards. Rural telco is heavily subsidized already. To the point where I've literally personally done a run of Internet to a mountain house in the middle of nowhere. The issue is that bigger telcos like spectrum and time-warner, simply do not care. There's a reason Google was a…

I...did you miss the part where I said I have Spectrum, in a rural area, with over 100Mbps speed?

Like, I can totally believe that there are places where they are perfectly content to shrug their shoulders and ignore entire populations (I actually know of some not too far from here). But to say that as if it's a universal constant is patently false.

Regardless of what the particular geographic parts of Spectrum you're familiar with do, it is demonstrably possible to get 100Mbps+ internet service over coax in rural areas, from them specifically. Thus, to say that you're "realistically looking at fiber" to go over 100Mbps doesn't hold up.

If you want to just bump that up to 1Gbps+, instead, your statement will hold pretty true.

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

#230

Post by rsynnott »

theodric wrote: post #208
rsynnott wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ima…

> The places that have service have post-launch prices far exceeding that of Starlink

… Eh?

“ In Ireland, Starlink costs €65 per month with a one-time installation fee of €450.”

There are a bunch of providers on NBI, but with the cheaper ones you’re looking at ~45EUR/month for 500Mbit/sec, no installation fee.

(In general, unless you’re planning to switch provider every year, you should avoid introductory offers, at least in this country; Eircom’s 75EUR after a first year at 35EUR, say. If you avoid this type of ‘offer’, though, it should be in the 45-55 range.)

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