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Besides, if the VM "wipes on logoff", how would the user save his work between one run of the VM and the next, such as for a large project in AP Computer Science?

They'd save it to their home drive like any other multi-user system since forever.

As far as the cost of internet connectivity, there's the lifeline program for those that are on any of these assistance programs which should cover anyone up to a few times the poverty level.

there's little point in linking the legal text but here's the plain text explaination: https://www.fcc.gov/general/op...

Bright Line Rules:

* No Blocking: broadband providers may not block access to legal content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.
* No Throttling: broadband providers may not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.
* No Paid Prioritization: broadband providers may not favor some lawful Internet traffic over other lawful traffic in exchange for consideration of any kind—in other words, no "fast lanes." This rule also bans ISPs from prioritizing content and services of their affiliates.

Do note that the "no throttling" rule doesn't exclude the possibility of traffic prioritization.

The below ones seem perfectly genuine and drive the point home with well-reasoned arguments:

• Hey, Indian cocksucker, you don't belong here. Leave the country now. Do not fuck with my Internet connectivity. You're a real jagoff.
• I support strong net neutrality backed by Title 2 oversight of ISPs. Also, Ajit Pai, you're one weird little man. You seem like the Jehovah's witness that even the other Jehovah's witnesses find off-putting. You seem like the guy no one wanted in the Frat, but your dad was a legacy. Also, this is just a hunch, but I bet you're pretty doughy with your shirt off. Not, like, FAT fat, but just fat enough to be gross. Also, you talk with the cadence of a 90s valley girl, it's really weird. And stop quoting the Big Lebowski; you're not a freshman film student, you're a fucking adult. Anyway, to reitereate, I support net neutrality backed by Title 2 oversight of ISPs, and over-sized novelty mugs are for guys with small dicks.
• No one gives a fuck about your giant coffee mug, you arrogant pencil-dick. I want the internet to remain neutral, and support net neutrality backed by title 2 oversight of ISP's. Go fuck your whore mother like everyone else has. Just looked it up and Ajit Pai is married. Bless that woman's heart for being with him. Don't really know she allow's her body to fuck that guy. Really seems like a bad time. Please leave net neutrality alone and not block my shit. I like to see a specific types of dick and if that is slowed or blocked i'm just going to be really sad. I'm sure most of you have a liking to types of porn. Thanks
• WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU CUNTS THINKING!!!!! HOW CAN YOU MAKE INTERNET FREEDOM ABSOLUTE! DO YOU KNOW WHO DOES CONTROL THE INTERNET? CHINA!!! FUCK YOU PAI, I HOPE RUSTY FORK GETS JAMMED DOWN YOUR THROAT

Browse FCC for more.

The below ones seem perfectly genuine and drive the point home with well-reasoned arguments:

• Hey, Indian cocksucker, you don't belong here. Leave the country now. Do not fuck with my Internet connectivity. You're a real jagoff.
• I support strong net neutrality backed by Title 2 oversight of ISPs. Also, Ajit Pai, you're one weird little man. You seem like the Jehovah's witness that even the other Jehovah's witnesses find off-putting. You seem like the guy no one wanted in the Frat, but your dad was a legacy. Also, this is just a hunch, but I bet you're pretty doughy with your shirt off. Not, like, FAT fat, but just fat enough to be gross. Also, you talk with the cadence of a 90s valley girl, it's really weird. And stop quoting the Big Lebowski; you're not a freshman film student, you're a fucking adult. Anyway, to reitereate, I support net neutrality backed by Title 2 oversight of ISPs, and over-sized novelty mugs are for guys with small dicks.
• No one gives a fuck about your giant coffee mug, you arrogant pencil-dick. I want the internet to remain neutral, and support net neutrality backed by title 2 oversight of ISP's. Go fuck your whore mother like everyone else has. Just looked it up and Ajit Pai is married. Bless that woman's heart for being with him. Don't really know she allow's her body to fuck that guy. Really seems like a bad time. Please leave net neutrality alone and not block my shit. I like to see a specific types of dick and if that is slowed or blocked i'm just going to be really sad. I'm sure most of you have a liking to types of porn. Thanks
• WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU CUNTS THINKING!!!!! HOW CAN YOU MAKE INTERNET FREEDOM ABSOLUTE! DO YOU KNOW WHO DOES CONTROL THE INTERNET? CHINA!!! FUCK YOU PAI, I HOPE RUSTY FORK GETS JAMMED DOWN YOUR THROAT

Browse FCC for more.

The below ones seem perfectly genuine and drive the point home with well-reasoned arguments:

• Hey, Indian cocksucker, you don't belong here. Leave the country now. Do not fuck with my Internet connectivity. You're a real jagoff.
• I support strong net neutrality backed by Title 2 oversight of ISPs. Also, Ajit Pai, you're one weird little man. You seem like the Jehovah's witness that even the other Jehovah's witnesses find off-putting. You seem like the guy no one wanted in the Frat, but your dad was a legacy. Also, this is just a hunch, but I bet you're pretty doughy with your shirt off. Not, like, FAT fat, but just fat enough to be gross. Also, you talk with the cadence of a 90s valley girl, it's really weird. And stop quoting the Big Lebowski; you're not a freshman film student, you're a fucking adult. Anyway, to reitereate, I support net neutrality backed by Title 2 oversight of ISPs, and over-sized novelty mugs are for guys with small dicks.
• No one gives a fuck about your giant coffee mug, you arrogant pencil-dick. I want the internet to remain neutral, and support net neutrality backed by title 2 oversight of ISP's. Go fuck your whore mother like everyone else has. Just looked it up and Ajit Pai is married. Bless that woman's heart for being with him. Don't really know she allow's her body to fuck that guy. Really seems like a bad time. Please leave net neutrality alone and not block my shit. I like to see a specific types of dick and if that is slowed or blocked i'm just going to be really sad. I'm sure most of you have a liking to types of porn. Thanks
• WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU CUNTS THINKING!!!!! HOW CAN YOU MAKE INTERNET FREEDOM ABSOLUTE! DO YOU KNOW WHO DOES CONTROL THE INTERNET? CHINA!!! FUCK YOU PAI, I HOPE RUSTY FORK GETS JAMMED DOWN YOUR THROAT

Browse FCC for more.

The below ones seem perfectly genuine and drive the point home with well-reasoned arguments:

• Hey, Indian cocksucker, you don't belong here. Leave the country now. Do not fuck with my Internet connectivity. You're a real jagoff.
• I support strong net neutrality backed by Title 2 oversight of ISPs. Also, Ajit Pai, you're one weird little man. You seem like the Jehovah's witness that even the other Jehovah's witnesses find off-putting. You seem like the guy no one wanted in the Frat, but your dad was a legacy. Also, this is just a hunch, but I bet you're pretty doughy with your shirt off. Not, like, FAT fat, but just fat enough to be gross. Also, you talk with the cadence of a 90s valley girl, it's really weird. And stop quoting the Big Lebowski; you're not a freshman film student, you're a fucking adult. Anyway, to reitereate, I support net neutrality backed by Title 2 oversight of ISPs, and over-sized novelty mugs are for guys with small dicks.
• No one gives a fuck about your giant coffee mug, you arrogant pencil-dick. I want the internet to remain neutral, and support net neutrality backed by title 2 oversight of ISP's. Go fuck your whore mother like everyone else has. Just looked it up and Ajit Pai is married. Bless that woman's heart for being with him. Don't really know she allow's her body to fuck that guy. Really seems like a bad time. Please leave net neutrality alone and not block my shit. I like to see a specific types of dick and if that is slowed or blocked i'm just going to be really sad. I'm sure most of you have a liking to types of porn. Thanks
• WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU CUNTS THINKING!!!!! HOW CAN YOU MAKE INTERNET FREEDOM ABSOLUTE! DO YOU KNOW WHO DOES CONTROL THE INTERNET? CHINA!!! FUCK YOU PAI, I HOPE RUSTY FORK GETS JAMMED DOWN YOUR THROAT

Browse FCC for more.

  THis is interesting coincidence::
https://www.comcastroturf.com/
enter Butterfield as search term
End up at
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/searc...?

With results of 17 Butterfield surnames all reporting
exact same text . All submitted their FCC filing
on exact same date. Huh.

I"m sure there is nothing to see here so safe
to assume FCC will just accept them all as legit.

FYI for everyone: You don't need an 'app' from some Slashdotter, you can get a list of stations in your area, by zipcode, direct from the FCC's website: https://www.fcc.gov/media/engi...

Here is a good representation of the reasoned and classy arguments, that the well-informed Progressives put forth to advocate their position.

The problem with Title II is that it replaces the free principles that the internet was founded on with overbearing regulations. An example: Let's assume that your neighborhood wasn't adequately served by internet service. You decide to do something about it. You start a small internet provider for your neighborhood, convincing all of your neighbors to invest. You go get an expensive resellable gigabit (or 10 gig) internet feed, and then run fiber from the feed to everyone's homes. Or use wireless technology to distribute it. Everyone is happy, until you realize that you are now an internet provider and have to also jump through the Title II hoops, which include a pile of regulations, and have to hire employees simply to comply with the government mandate.

There are many many small, independent internet providers out there which are feeling the pain of Title II. This isn't pain because of anything they've done wrong. If anything, they all are shining examples of how network neutrality should work. Fortunately, much of the regulatory burden of Title II has been deferred for these providers, and now won't be implemented - but this level of regulation definitely has a much heavier impact on a small internet provider with a handful of employees.

Everyone who is considering their position on this issue really should go read Ajit Pai's disssent on the original passing of the order classifying ISP's under Title II. It's available at on the FCC website. I would encourage everyone to read it to truly understand Commisioner Pai's position.

I am not a specialist but looking at the comments it seems that a bot has been posting the same text *against net neutrality* (starting with "The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama Administration imposed on the internet is smothering innovation..."). It looks like a bot because the messages appear to come from people that posted in alphabetical order of their first name/last name combination: Brittany Mccain, Brittany Proctor, Brittany Sharp, etc. in the view sorted by date posted. https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/searc...

Go here: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/searc...

Click this: "+ Express"

Someone posted this link above. Putting 17-108 in the first field there worked for me.

I dare you to look up what they billed the taxpayer for the website and compare it to the workload it can handle. Then let's talk "perfectly acceptable".

I don't know the exact cost, but they actually took action to reduce their IT costs, as required by federal guidelines established under Obama:

https://www.fcc.gov/general/fe...

Basically they're moving all their stuff to the cloud. They already saved millions with that, you can get all the details in their budget review (which is public).

The Commission made a concerted effort to curb the escalating IT operation and maintenance
(O&M) costs back in FY 2014. Prior to FY 2014, the FCC faced ever-increasing costs in operating
and maintaining its aging legacy IT systems. To counter these escalating O&M costs, the FCC IT
team took the first bold step in early September 2015 by physically relocating over 200 different
legacy servers from the FCC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. to a commercially hosted federalcertified
facility located in West Virginia. These servers contained almost 400 different program
applications. By physically relocating these servers to a commercially hosted provider, not only
will O&M costs be reduced, but it will also allow for improved resiliency and a shift of many legacy
applications to the cloud, similar to the Commission’s Consumer Help Desk.
In FY 2014, 86 percent of IT funding was utilized for O&M and only 14 percent was utilized for
development, modernization, and enhancements (DME). Those percentages are expected to change
to 49 percent O&M and 51 percent DME by the end of FY 2017. The savings that will be realized
on the O&M side will be redirected to delivering new capabilities.

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub...

To put things in perspective: the entire FCC budget is 380 millions. They have 1800 employees, which already eats about half of that budget. Then there's buildings, power/heating/cooling, furniture, copiers, etc. They're not cheap, but I've worked on project in the private sector where more money that than was wasted on failed ERP initiatives.

I dare you to look up what they billed the taxpayer for the website and compare it to the workload it can handle. Then let's talk "perfectly acceptable".

I don't know the exact cost, but they actually took action to reduce their IT costs, as required by federal guidelines established under Obama:

https://www.fcc.gov/general/fe...

Basically they're moving all their stuff to the cloud. They already saved millions with that, you can get all the details in their budget review (which is public).

The Commission made a concerted effort to curb the escalating IT operation and maintenance
(O&M) costs back in FY 2014. Prior to FY 2014, the FCC faced ever-increasing costs in operating
and maintaining its aging legacy IT systems. To counter these escalating O&M costs, the FCC IT
team took the first bold step in early September 2015 by physically relocating over 200 different
legacy servers from the FCC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. to a commercially hosted federalcertified
facility located in West Virginia. These servers contained almost 400 different program
applications. By physically relocating these servers to a commercially hosted provider, not only
will O&M costs be reduced, but it will also allow for improved resiliency and a shift of many legacy
applications to the cloud, similar to the Commission’s Consumer Help Desk.
In FY 2014, 86 percent of IT funding was utilized for O&M and only 14 percent was utilized for
development, modernization, and enhancements (DME). Those percentages are expected to change
to 49 percent O&M and 51 percent DME by the end of FY 2017. The savings that will be realized
on the O&M side will be redirected to delivering new capabilities.

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub...

To put things in perspective: the entire FCC budget is 380 millions. They have 1800 employees, which already eats about half of that budget. Then there's buildings, power/heating/cooling, furniture, copiers, etc. They're not cheap, but I've worked on project in the private sector where more money that than was wasted on failed ERP initiatives.

The link above provides you with another link to here where you should be able to click "+ Express" but the link doesn't seem to work.

To leave a comment you need to go here, put 17-108 in the first field and then fill out the rest.

The link above provides you with another link to here where you should be able to click "+ Express" but the link doesn't seem to work.

To leave a comment you need to go here, put 17-108 in the first field and then fill out the rest.

You now have to go to https://www.fcc.gov/restoring-... instead.

Wrong.
In the US, the FCC has mandated that home owners associations & landlords *must* allow dishes. I have fought an HOA, and won.
Summary: https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/...

More to the point, why do you assume that you will even need a dish? The GPS in your phone is currently receiving signals from space. Existing Iridium cell phones have no dish. It's a fair guess that the Elon network would have at least as good technology.

SpaceX expects its own latencies to be between 25 and 35ms, similar to the latencies measured for wired Internet services. Current satellite ISPs have latencies of 600ms or more, according to FCC measurements.

Cellular is a God damned natural resource (Radio Waves) and we gave it away to businesses

They may have ben given away in the beginning, but since 1994, spectrum licenses have been auctioned

As a technology director for a public K-12 school, I'm very concerned about what I'm reading in the headline. But the "article" is an extremely biased report, citing just as equally biased an article, and neither article really gives me a clue as to what's going on here.

So, let's start at the source: Here is the actual FCC draft order specific to this change. Now, in the course of working on and completing E-Rate filings with the USAC to receive reimbursement for internet and network services for our school district, I've read a few 60-70 page FCC reports before. They're not fun, but they're necessary. That being said, I'm about 20 pages in, and already I'm disturbed. Here's why:

FCC reports that I've read in the past are boring, dry reads, but at least they're factual and unbiased. Not so with this one. Three sentences in, and we get this: "The FCC has historically subjected the provision of business data services by incumbent local exchange carriers (LECs) to price regulations." And the spin continues..."eases the regulatory burdens"; "spur entry, innovation and competition in the vibrant business data services market"; "competition is robust and vigorous in the markets." And this is still just the first page. The draft order is littered with biased political spin, something that has not been present in my reading of previous FCC draft orders. Because of this, I can't even depend on a government document to give me an unbiased report of the rationale behind the decision, nor can I depend on it to help me determine what the consequences of the decision will be. So, I'll have to create my own... here goes.

Local Exchange Carrier (LEC) price regulations have been there historically specifically to protect subscribers from LECs that had monopoly or near-monopoly controls over their service regions. Most regions throughout the United States historically were not served by competitive broadband providers. Recently, this has begun to change, where some communities now have competitive service providers come in, giving subscribers a choice. The FCC began to look into this issue back in 2012, before Trump. According to the report, "In December 2012, the Commission released the Data Collection Order FNPRM, to collect data, analyze how competition, “whether actual or potential, affects prices, controlling for all other factors that affect prices,” and “determine what barriers inhibit investment and delay competition, including regulatory barriers." By not controlling pricing, the FCC claims in its report that LECs will no longer be limited entry into a potential market, where capped rates would not allow for a sufficient recovery of the investment necessary to build into a new market area.

But, here's the flaw in their reasoning: trenching fiber costs a lot of money. A lot. If service provider A already has fiber, service provider B is not going to install fiber if it does not believe that it can earn back their investment in a reasonable amount of time. Even if prices are artificially inflated by provider A, just because they can, if provider B tries to compete and trenches their own fiber network, both A and B know that A can lower its rates to a competitive level to drive out provider B. So, B has no incentive to trench, leaving A with the monopoly.

The easiest solution: make internet a utility. It's silly to think that it's a smart idea to run multiple fiber lines to a building. (I should know; our school has two of them, and both are dark.) It would be just as silly to have multiple electric taps, or multiple water pipes. But, that's not happening anytime

8 years seems to be average for their leases.

http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsAp...

See the section titled dates.

Spectrum isn't sold it is leased, so it is as you want.

http://wireless.fcc.gov/licens...

https://www.fcc.gov/document/f...

If you live in an area that offers decent over-the-air coverage, you owe it to yourself to at least try and see what you can get with an antenna. The FCC offers an online tool to determine what stations are near you by zip code, No Cable offers similar, and ChannelMaster discusses available antennas, signal-strength, and other useful stuff. We're talking full HD TV of the major networks, and probably a few TNT-like channels, all for free like your grandparents remember it when they were growing up, and all it takes is an investment in time and an antenna you can pick up at Radio Shack or Best Buy.

Seriously, it's great. I'm watching the game in full non-compressed HD and not dropping a damn dime for it, thanks to a 14-inch square of plastic I put in the attic.

And the best part, if you already have coax installed throughout your place for delivering Cable, you can re-purpose that same coax to deliver signal from your antenna to every room outlet. Even with a little antenna, coax is so good, even with splitters, the signal from the antenna can deliver HD to all your TV's. The secret is to use as much coax as necessary to place the antenna in a spot in your home where you get best reception, like your attic if you have one, or outside a window. I ran coax from a cable outlet in an unused bedroom into a closet and up through the ceiling into the attic. That connection lit up the remainder of the coax network, via a 1-5 splitter, so that every remaining outlet now supports over 30 channels. Who the hell needs Cable?

Now truly, it all depends on where you live. YMMV. But if you're in an area with good coverage, paying for cable TV is probably losing you money, with or without promotional triple-play deals (there's all those added fees for taxes and cable-box rentals). With an antenna, Internet, and maybe a subscription to Netflix or Sling, most people would have all they need. You got a perfectly good tuner in your TV, so use it.

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-16-148A1_Rcd.pdf

Here's the text of this particular FCC regulation put into effect by un-elected officials. I wonder if these regs were struck down by Congress because of the desire to do away with privacy or because of other more specific concerns with what is in this 200+ page document.

Keep the those knees jerking though!!

FCC Chairman Pai's Keynote to Mobile World Congress, Barcelona

Doesn't seem as bad as the Verge makes it sound.

Read it for yourself.

ISPs are now subject to Title II regulations as common carriers - the rules written for Verizon and AT&T now apply to ISPs. Ponder for a moment how many regulations a thousand bureaucrats have written over the last several decades for phone companies.

The order which lists which regulations now apply to ISPs as well is 400 pages. Here is is for your reading pleasure:

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub...

Note that's not 400 pages of regulations, that's 400 pages of REFERENCES to regulations. The total regulations will be in the thousands of pages.

I just spent two days filling out forms and schedules for the IRS, in order to report the fact that I owe them $3.25. All those forms might make sense for a big company; it's asinine that I had to do all that to calculate $3.25 in federal unemployment tax because I earned $530 from a side business last year. My total tax forms for that $530 business are probably 40 pages of tax forms per year. I fully support distinguishing between a company like Verizon vs Ray Morris Inc when it comes to reporting requirements.

The subject of the present action is categorizing ISPs as common carriers under Title II - classifying them as phone companies. Title II was written with AT&T in mind, assuming the related company will have a team of people dedicated to compliance. It wasn't written for small companies. Here's the Congressional statute (not too bad) and 400 PAGE FCC order on applying it to ISPs:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub...

You say *complying* with the order should be easy, I dare you to even try to READ the order. There are 400 pages in the order itself, many of which refer to other FCC regulations you'll need to read. Make sure to read the part about how you're not allowed to bring up a new connection or remove an old one without a certificate of preapproval from the FCC.

There seems to be some confusion about what the FCC is requiring in the reports. There's an example of the "nutrition label" here:

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/consumer-labels-broadband-services

The fees absolutely should be required to be reported, but other numbers are impossible to report on depending on your network and how customers connect to you. We can connect to our customer's cable modems that we provide to get upstream and downstream connection speeds, but if they buy their own, we can no longer do that. Also, definition of packet loss is not well defined. Packet loss for what layer? I can display the number of input and output queue drops and the number of CRC and framing errors, but that doesn't correspond in any way to what customers think of as packet loss.

The 60 GHz band (57-64 GHz) is open for unlicensed operation. It coincides with the resonance of oxygen gas, which rapidly attenuates any signal so the maximum usable range is about 1 km. That makes it ideal for things like home WiFi use (you can broadcast at higher power without interfering with your neighbors' WiFi at the same frequency), while strongly discouraging companies trying to use it for long-range commercial service like T-Mobile is planning in TFA.

Conspiracy Theory: Vincent Cerf while employed for Google argues for a 'level playing field' that ultimately helps Google escape the transportation costs of it's massive as-snooping traffic that the NSA considers a benefit to national security. Perhaps less sellable under Trump than Obama post-Snowden. Because despite what the FCC said in 10-201 about the nature of the 'level playing field' I always said to myself that I'd believe it when I saw it. And I've never seen it.

The bottom line- while I may also be able to compete by partnering with
existing cloud infrastructure services companies, am I free to compete on my own, paying the
same published rates for my data traffic on the 'general purpose technology'6 of the internet as
my neighbor?

https://lwn.net/Articles/657561/

http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7522219498

http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-k121024.pdf

https://www.wired.com/2013/07/google-neutrality/

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/google-accused-of-betraying-its-net-neutrality-stance/ (some facts wrong in article)

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/google-fiber-now-explicitly-permits-home-servers/

The two cases are very different. Your dystopic scene is in regards to the content production, whereas the common carrier comment was in reference to the distribution infrastructure.

For the Internet scenario, I think we all agree that, yes, it is a Bad Idea if all websites/content providers (news sites, *media, etc.) are merged into one government-run conglomerate. However, going back to food, the fact that the government maintains the roads which are used to deliver food has not, personally, been a problem for me.

Variety and choice tend to be good things -- but whatever we're doing now isn't working perfectly, as not everyone has access to fast internet. Fiber/cable/etc., like transportation networks, are defined as Good by a relatively narrow set of parameters, and I'm pretty sure 99+% of /. agrees on what those are (namely, it should be fast and low latency both ways, with faster/lower always being better). Food, on the other hand, is a very personal thing.

Sadly true, our local conservatives downgraded the plan significantly when they got into power. Although our fibre rollout is mostly stalled at 39%, we're still on track to get minimum 25 Mbps to every premise, with 90% of wired premises at minimum 50 Mbps.

By contrast, 39% of the rural US still can't get 25 Mbps. Cities are a lot better, with the large majority having access to 100 Mbps, but nearly all of those are available only from a single ISP. Australia's NBN has a single, government-owned wholesaler with all participating ISPs competing to provide retail services to customers.

The large chunks of land with ultra low populations makes the population density even higher in those areas which have populations.

And that is actually why New Zealand is able to do this. I live in a state that is 1/10th the size of New Zealand but has about 50% more people, so the population density is an order of magnitude higher. Yet it takes the top 8 cities combined to match the population of Auckland alone. New Zealand has seven cities with more than 200,000 people; my state has one. The top 10 cities in New Zealand contain two thirds of the nation's population; the top 10 cities in the US don't even have one tenth of the nation's population. Overall, New Zealand has a slightly higher percentage of its population in urban areas (roughly 85% vs. 80%). Factor in the sheer number of municipalities that make up the US urban population (cities and towns in more than 3,000 counties across the 50 states) and the many different layers of bureaucracy that need to be traversed to get anything done and you'll start to get an idea of how complex a program like this would be in the US. For New Zealand, this requires coordinating about as many municipalities as there are in my county. Get back to me when they've done this 3,000 times in 50 different ways.

About 5% (let's be generous, and say 10%) of the US population has access to more than 100Mbps down and 50Mbps up. New Zealand is due to deliver it to 85% of theirs within a couple of years.

(I believe you meant to say "at least" and not "more than" because New Zealand is defining it as at least 100/50, not more than.) In terms of download speeds, you're off by an order of magnitude. No summary numbers are shown on this map from 2016, but a 2014 report put the number at about 60%. Upload speeds vary, with some as high as 100 Mbps for 100 Mbps download service but only 5 Mbps required to count toward these numbers. But that's to be expected with such a diverse infrastructure that has been upgraded several times over more than two decades.

Pai was appointed to the commission by Obama in 2012, so we can answer that based on what he's supported and opposed over the last five years.

In his dissents, Pai has repeatedly expressed his frustration with the commission setting minimums with no reference to changing technology and consumer expectations. He supports looking at the speeds actually ordered by consumers who *do* have the choice, and setting new rules based on that, rather than picking a number out of a bureaucrat's ass - and using completely different numbers from month to month.

Available speeds have increased in the last couple of years, so by the chairman's preferred methodology standards should be higher now than in 2015, but in 2015 he said the commission's standard of 10 Mbps in rural areas was too slow, arguing that 25 Mbps would be better:
https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub...

Before that, he reasoned that since Netflix customers stream at 3.2 Mbps on average, a true 10 Mbps connection would allow 3 concurrent streams - so here we see his idea of "broadband" gets faster over time.

The new chairman argued strenuously that the FCC should not adopt regulations that discouraged gigabit - the rule enacted by the Democrat majority encouraged 10Mbps and 25Mbps connections in lieu of gigabit, he argued.

He would in general rather promote competition and then gtf out of the way and let companies offer gigabit or whatever, rather than micro-managing, declaring that they must offer exactly this or that. In constrast, the rules enacted by his colleagues were much more along the lines of "Verizon must offer 10 Mbps DSL in these areas" kinds of rules. (Of course the rule is written as "an incumbent telco carrier operating blah blah blah", a description which describes only Verizon).

Anyway, to answer your question, his position is that 10 Mbps was too slow in 2015, it should have been 25 Mbps back then, and it should get faster with time based on what consumers who have the choice actually select.

The FCC opened up the 57-64 GHz range for unlicensed use. These frequencies are right around the resonance frequency of O2 so suffer severe attenuation. Range is expected to be about 30 feet.

So in a house like mine, I'll need to run wires after 30 feet true line of site? Hell, 5 GHz is only semi useable in the living room, a whole 30 feet and two rooms away. But from one side of the house to the other is around 100 feet.

Opening up frequencies that high is more a declaration of desperation than anything else - the last gasps of the bandwidth is infinite crowd.

The FCC opened up the 57-64 GHz range for unlicensed use. These frequencies are right around the resonance frequency of O2 so suffer severe attenuation. Range is expected to be about 30 feet. Devices supporting this frequency are expected to roll out later this year. In addition to the high attenuation, the higher bandwidth (about 600 Mbps to 1.2 Gbps of real transfer speed) means devices won't be transmitting on it as long as they do at 2.4 or even 5 GHz, resulting in much less interference. Mhe beam pattern of those little whip antennas on most routers is omnidirectional in the horizontal axis - their vertical range is limited. And most of the technology uses beam-forming as well, meaning even less interference (highest signal strength is only in one direction).

They're also opening up the 64-71 GHz band for unlicensed use in the future. So there's going to be plenty of short-range bandwidth for devices to use. The bigger question is going to be should these devices be interconnected. I think it's stupid to add WiFi to a refrigerator, toilet, garage door opener (makes some sense for a washer, dryer, and window blinds). But congestion isn't going to be a problem unless you insist on using 2.4 GHz.

The cable co is giving them more eyeballs to sell to their advertisers, the broadcasters need their access as much as the cable cos need their content.

Back when this was the working theory, there was something called "must carry". A broadcast station would demand that the local cable company carry their signal instead of having to pay them to do so. The cable company could find another source for the content and ignore the local station if they wanted, otherwise.

Now that broadcast stations know they can get the cable companies to actually pay them, must-carry is a less-used option. If a station invokes "must carry", then they cannot demand money for the retransmission rights.

Why can't the cable just claim they are retransmitting stuff from over the air? Two reasons. In many cases, the most usable source for the content is a direct feed (not OTA), and in the remaining ones it is because the OTA content is licensed for non-commercial use. Cable companies just retransmitting it without a contract would be infringement.

Here's your reading, for everyone who's too lazy to google.

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub...

Paragraph 4 of the introduction:

"The lesson of this period, and the overwhelming consensus on the record, is that carefully-tailored rules to protect Internet openness will allow investment and innovation to continue to flourish. Consistent with that experience and the record built in this proceeding, today we adopt carefully-tailored rules that would prevent specific practices we know are harmful to Internet openness— blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization—as well as a strong standard of conduct designed to prevent the deployment of new practices that would harm Internet openness. We also enhance our transparency rule to ensure that consumers are fully informed as to whether the services they purchase are delivering what they expect."

The FCC implies that its enlightened rules were key in getting the internets to the state of awesomeness that they are today. However, the FCC rules regarding the interwebs have been shot down consistently by the courts and have never taken effect.

Active links forgotten for my previous message:

1. FCC Open Internet Order

2. Similar question in another comment

Well, according to the FCC filing, at least, it does have Bluetooth:

https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas...

Probably right about that single gig of Ram, though, but I expect that this baby might be just as accurately named the 'Barnes&Noble Cut As Many Costs As We Possibly Could Because Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ We're Really Desperate For Money'.

"If youre near the crime scene - you COULD be involved" Er, yes. If you are near the crime scene you COULD be. That is why police interview people, you know, that are near the crime scene.

Define near.

Cell phone tower location methods are accurate to around .75 square mile. https://transition.fcc.gov/psh...

Now let's take say, New York City, with it's over 27 thousand people per square mile https://www1.nyc.gov/site/plan...

So let's say half of these people aren't using a phone for some reason. It is still pretty easy to come up with a hellava lot of possible witnesses/suspects for a crime. Regardless, that is a hellava lot of suspects that have to be eliminated from suspicion in some cases.

Toronto itsellf is around 4150 people per square kilometer https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/ce...

This comes out to around 10749 peeps per square mile. For this alone, mass collection is going to be really inefficient. Given the margin of error location wise for the logs, some poor gumshoe may have thousands of people to cross off the witness/suspect list.

I have this vision of interrogation rooms starting to look like sports stadiums.

Nothing wrong with getting location data from a suspect, or even looking over phone logs for data, but turning everyone in the area into a witness/suspect is just so inefficient that you might as well just drag everyone in a square mile of a crime in for questioning.

Why? 60GHz is heavily attenuated by just about everything. If it's in room, you'll get decent coverage either through directly through LOS, or slightly attenuated by multipath. But it won't go through the walls too well, and it gets attenuated pretty quickly even by the atmosphere.

Check out this. https://transition.fcc.gov/bur...

But isn't this bad? Well, if you are hoping to drop a single 802.11ad access point in a building, and hoping to get whole office coverage.

But, if your 802.11 in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz spectrum are saturated, you can drop an 802.11ad AP into conference rooms, or places people use a ton of bandwidth, and offload it. Oh, and one more thing. Pretty much every implementation of 802.11ad that I've seen makes heavy use of either an array of highly directional antennas or beamforming. This just helps out more with spectrum re-use, and non-interference between different 802.11ad devices in proximity.

Originally the Communications Act of 1934 which created the FCC also created a set of rules that prevented ownership issues. The FCC under the Bush Administration worked hard to repeal these restrictions, and now we have our wonderful mass media oligarchs that dictate what we like and what we watch. Something else we can pin on W.

Look up the universal service fund.

OK

We were taxed extra to pay for those lines.

Not exactly. Here is the right information, straight from the horse's mouth.

Universal Service Fund

Prior to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Universal Service Fund (USF) operated as a mechanism by which interstate long distance carriers were assessed to subsidize telephone service to low-income households and high-cost areas. The Communications Act of 1934 stated that all people in the United States shall have access to rapid, efficient, nationwide communications service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 expanded the traditional definition of universal service - affordable, nationwide telephone service to include among other things rural health care providers and eligible schools and libraries. Today, FCC provides universal service support through four mechanisms:

1. High Cost Support Mechanism provides support to certain qualifying telephone companies that serve high cost areas, thereby making phone service affordable for the residents of these regions.
2. Low Income Support Mechanism assists low-income customers by helping to pay for monthly telephone charges as well as connection charges to initiate telephone service.
2. Rural Health Care Support Mechanism allows rural health care providers to pay rates for telecommunications services similar to those of their urban counterparts, making telehealth services affordable.
4. Schools and Libraries Support Mechanism, popularly know as the "E-Rate," provides telecommunication services (e.g., local and long-distance calling, high-speed lines), Internet access, and internal connections (the equipment to deliver these services) to eligible schools and libraries.

I don't claim to be an expert on this, but I can certainly see that the subsidies you are referring to are used to provide service to the exceptional locations, not every customer Comcast serves.

I think not and you can look about. The latter says 8% of urban americans did not have access to 3/25 as of 2015.

Some organizations just hope you're clueless of your rights, but others, particularly smaller groups, are legitimately clueless themselves. It can save everyone a lot of grief if you show up with the FCC OTARD printed out, in-hand:

https://www.fcc.gov/media/over...

If you have an area under your exclusive control (yard or balcony), you can install a dish https://www.fcc.gov/media/over.... If your condo is in a single building, then you might go to the HOA board to have access (not likely). In our case, our condo consists of small lots and the only restriction is to have the dish hidden from common areas, if possible). If you want to try, DirecTV has a program to allow multiple owners to share a disk. If you are brave enough to go to the board with a proposal you might start with https://support.directv.com/ap....