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

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201–210 of 246 posts

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

#201
post #180

I live in Poland and I am BAFFLED at how bad internet in US, supposedly one of the most developed countries on Earth, is. I have commercial (ie high priority), 600Mbit/120Mbit broadband with extremely stable (under 15ms, over 99% of th time) round trip to most of the Poland, for equivalent of 20 USD per month. I know its not the same everywhere in Poland, but consider I also have three mobile internet plans. One of t…

So Poland has two things going for it: (1) Poland is a LOT smaller than the United States. It's not much bigger than the state of Wyoming, yet it has more than 60x the population. That makes building infrastructure a lot cheaper and more profitable. (2) The US had the Internet FIRST. That's not an advantage when it comes to infrastructure. For example, England had roads hundreds of years before the US did, so roads i…

Tangential, but I remember a tour guide at the Colosseum saying they could flood the floor of the arena for “naval” shows in less time than it would take you to flush the toilet twice in many apartments in the city today. Unsure how accurate that was, but impressive description.

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

#202
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

namely healthcare. it's an absolute disaster if you have to do anything beyond the simple "annual health examinations." I literally hate going to the doctor because the various billing departments are often nightmares to deal with.

I literally haven't been to the doctor in four years, because the last time I went in for an X-ray they charged me immediately, and then later sent a bill for some more charges on the same X-ray. My insurance and medical provider are the same entity, which I thought was supposed to avoid this exact situation. Now I just avoid any medical treatment unless it is completely unavoidable, because I have absolutely no trus…

And that’s with insurance. Imagine how it is without. Though I think most Americans could learn a lot about the importance of taking care of themselves better by going without insurance for a while. It tends to drive a healthier lifestyle IME.

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 25/3 Mbps is a very reasonable speed for most people. the issue is that its provided on a best effort basis that is never maintained for long, if at all. netflix says thats enough to stream UHD[0] Please expand upon your point. Why exactly is 25/3 reasonable for most people? I'm not necessarily disagreeing; indeed, this would be a god-level speed compared to what's currently standard for most of Latin America. Howe…

> your point about Netflix is irrelevant because not every use case can be buffered nothing special about netflix, just a service that most people use. even their highest quality offering is streamable if we actually got advertised speeds. just trying to say that 25 isnt a meaningful cap for most people. > require better up speed than 3Mbps with bad ping and high jitter rejectfinite makes this point downthread and i…

> 100Mbps download so that multiple people can simultaneously stream 4k video is not a sane default.

Yes it is because this is how many people already live. If you’re a typical family of four everyone has at least one device they stream content on.

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

#204

I am genuinely perplexed reading the comments here about how bad US internet is. Knock on wood, I have basically never felt bandwidth or latency constrained in practical terms once the dial-up days ended. I forget what plan I pay for with my cable provider but I just tested to 200 Megabit down and 18 up. That sounds low compared to numbers people throw around here but in reality my wife and I are able to Zoom or stre…

> We're in NYC

Exactly, this conversation is about how terrible internet is when you aren’t in the most densely populated urban areas. Yes, it’s mostly fine in cities and even ok inside some small towns. It’s usually terrible when you live outside of the small-town city limits and not on a state highway.

> and it works well enough so we’re not going to tear it out

Your 200Mbps connection is definitely not on original infrastructure. For the 50 million plus people living with DSL connections which get barely 6mbps download on a good day, they would not agree that the older infra we have “works fine”. I know many people with this story because I’m from a part of the country like that — drive across America, and you’ll see that nearly everywhere is very sparsely populated. That covers a lot of people! You might be able to experience this yourself eventually if you go on a road trip and stay at a hotel not in a large city.

I don’t think it’s nonsensical to suggest that the US could also be building out a nationwide fiber network, and I think we should be striving towards that.

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

#205

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 live in Portland, OR and pay $30 for 240mbps down, 6mbps up. It’s part of “Comcast communities”, which is something the apartment complex signed on to for everyone here. A bit cheaper than normal, I suspect.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> -regulating ISPs as a free market is, to be hyperbolic, a disaster. there is effectively a monopoly in most parts of the country. starlink is changing that, as these articles and letters are being written.

I agree that Starlink will be a game changer for many people, but I just don't see how they can be expected to replace traditional terrestrial ISPs in major population centers. Beaming internet from space solves a ton of problems for anyone out at the ends of rural copper, or using p2p systems, or where there simply isn't another alternative. But using myself as an example, I live in a part of NYC where there is fibe…

Not to mention there’s only so much rooftop space for satellite dishes. Dishes, especially the ones pointing up, tend to require clearing maintenance in northern latitudes. It doesn’t seem very practical for areas where people are stacked on top of each other.

What I hope to see from Starlink is some freedom for more knowledge workers to work remotely, as in more rural communities.

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

#207

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.

how close together is everything in your lands?

You can drive from one end of the country to the other (long way) in like 3 hours. Basically it’s like driving from Seattle to Portland.

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

#208
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one reason for some caps, which is that you'll always get oversubscription in the cities, and the caps could reflect that to prevent 100% utilisation. They don't have to be so small that people actually think about them. Basically set it at 1TB for residential for the lowest plan and forget about it.

1TB goes by shockingly fast with 4k video streaming (5-10 gigs per hour) and game updates that weight in at tens of gigs each.

Yep. I used like 2TB last month. And that‘s with 2 people in the household. Granted, I‘m certainly a fringe user. But with 4K streaming, YouTube/Twitch, PS5 downloads, Steam, server stuff, usenet, video conferencing, WFM, etc. it kind of stacks up.

I‘m so glad I have a local fiber provider.

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

#210
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…

Or always pay them after they complete a part of the network instead of upfront?
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