Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 246 posts

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#121

Post by rayiner »

Retric wrote: post #104
rayiner wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1996 telecom act had an unfunded statement of policy to that end. But the universal service fund wasn’t used for broadband until 2013: https://connectednation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/caf_p... . Larger carriers weren’t covered until 2015. And it has not been a lot of money: https://www.telecompetitor.com/ahead-of-rdof-caf-lives-on-as... > AT&T and CenturyLink accepted all funding for all states for which th…

Your numbers are misleading. “On October 27, 2011, the FCC approved a six-year transfer process that would transition the money from the Universal Service Fund High-Cost Program into the new $4.5 billion a year Connect America Fund, effectively putting an end to the USF High-Cost Fund by 2018.“ “In March 2014, the FCC approved "Phase II" of the transition to the Connect America Fund, adding $1.8 billion a year in fun…

What's misleading about the numbers? I cited actual distributed money over 7 years for one carrier (AT&T). You're citing proposed amounts to be distributed for the whole program. The program has hit numerous delays, and most of that money has not been distributed. Regarding Phase II, for example: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/02/fcc-gets-ready-to-kick-off... ("The fund was proposed back in 2013, but for various reasons never saw the light of day.").

For the most part the money never materialized. The Phase II support, for example, ended up being just $1.49 billion over 10 years, not $1.8 billion per year as in your quote: https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/connect-america-fund-ph...

It doesn't matter if the subsidies cover 100% of the costs or not--the point is that the funding is a tiny fraction of what the industry already spends, and isn't enough to move the needle outside a small number of very high-cost rural places. The replacement for the connect America Fund, the Rural Broadband Opportunity Fund, plans to distribute $20 billion over a decade: https://thecounter.org/fcc-20-billion-dollar-rural-broadband.... (Again, plans.) Wireline providers invest about $40 billion annually--or around $400 billion over the next decade.

The notion that subsidies are more than a drop in the bucket (and should be expected to significantly move the needle on broadband deployment) is just false.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#122

Post by LeoPanthera »

jonplackett wrote: post #115

100 upload would be amazing. I'm in central London and can only get 15mbps upload despite 350mbps down. Is this the same ratio in the US? My friends in mainland Europe seem to have much more symmetrical up/down streams

I'm in the SF bay area and have a cable connection which is advertised as 1000/40, but in practice its actually 900/25.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#123

Post by toast0 »

betterunix2 wrote: post #114
toast0 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If the network is more heavily used, it will require more capacity where it connects to other parts of the network or other networks. More ports and more wires means more failures of ports and wires and more diagnosis of ports and wires and more replacement of ports and wires. Or, if capacity is not increased to meet demand, you need more people at the callcenter to ignore customer complaints.

That sounds like a fixed cost to build the network, not the cost of running the network. I agree, building a higher capacity network is more expensive, but how does the cost of running a network change with utilization? If a network is underutilized does it somehow cost less to operate?

More capacity is more things to break and fix.

If it's underutilized, you can save money by delaying replacement.

Let's keep things simple and say in one interconnect you'e got 4x 10G ports. If your utilization peaks at 5 Gbps, you way overbuilt that connection, but if one port breaks, you don't need to fix it until another port breaks; you can wait until three out of four ports are broken if you feel lucky. That delays hardware replacement and eliminates service trips and probably reduces technician time. If that connection peaks at 35 Gbps, you should fix any issues ASAP. (And start planning for capacity increases).

Of course, if the connection is to another network, they may bill for usage too; although I'm pretty sure US dominant ISPs are not paying for usage on most of their connections.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#127

Post by gabereiser »

technofiend wrote: post #27
Panino wrote: post #3

> The funding is going to a mix of cable, fiber, and fixed wireless providers, plus SpaceX's Starlink satellite network. I think cable providers should be left out. They were already gifted many billions of dollars in the past for this same basic purpose but they pocketed the money. They can just use the free money they've already been given. Instead, the funding should go to existing munipical fiber ISPs to expand t…

>They were already gifted many billions of dollars in the past for this same basic purpose but they pocketed the money. They can just use the free money they've already been given. I mean they could but they wont, and there was no reason to with Ajit Pai running the place. I daresay they'll have to be sued into compliance to do it now. Not that I object to that: they need to refund the taxpayers' money or do what the…

They’ll just claim something something 5G and will be back in the feds good graces. Honestly the cable industry is a monopoly and has grown beyond government oversight. This needs to change but we don’t have any other option than nullifying anti-municipal fiber laws and start laying down new lines.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#128

Post by jjcm »

Panino wrote: post #3

> The funding is going to a mix of cable, fiber, and fixed wireless providers, plus SpaceX's Starlink satellite network. I think cable providers should be left out. They were already gifted many billions of dollars in the past for this same basic purpose but they pocketed the money. They can just use the free money they've already been given. Instead, the funding should go to existing munipical fiber ISPs to expand t…

Including cable providers is fine. The issue is how this money is structured. It needs to be a loan where the debt is forgiven once you reach certain milestones. The issue with the money earlier was there wasn't any teeth when it came to enforcing what was to be done with the funds.

Make the loan be equally competitive - any company can apply for any amount of money, and a small amount of the loan is forgiven per user they bring above the 100/100 mark (with possibly a bonus to rural users). Any backbone infrastructure created with these loans needs to be peerable as well.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#129

Post by partingshots »

It’s a point to note that without Google Fiber bashing in traditional telecom, we’d still be at 10Mbps upload/download being deemed “blazing fast internet”.

Keep that in mind the next time you pay your monthly bill for AT&T/Time Warner/Comcast/Verizon. They could’ve given you gigabit speeds the entire time.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#130

Post by nerbert »

filoleg wrote: post #113
martin_bech wrote: post #91

Hi from the developed world.. just checked, the slowest available broadband here is 200Mpbs/20Mpbs. Default is 200/200, I and most people I know went with 1000/1000Mpbs.

Seems pretty condescending. I hope you realize that the US is not uniform as a single entity, because I live here, and I can also say "hi from the developed world", given I have at least 2 providers here willing to give me symmetrical 1000Mbps up/down for $50-70 with no data caps (and I have been using one of them for the past 2 years and couldn't be happier). But this is far from being the case everywhere in the US.

It's condescending but there's truth to it. Internet speed in the US is a symptom of a larger issue that the country has with incentives towards good governance, which is more often seen in poorer countries.
Post reply on HN