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Broadband isn't Broadband Unless its 2Mbps?
quanticle writes "According to House Democrats, broadband isn't broadband unless its at least 2Mbps. The view of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications is that the FCC's data collection standards are hopelessly outdated, and is proposing a number of updates to their criteria. For one, they want 'broadband' reclassified to at least 2mbs, up from 200kbps. Another requirement will change the FCC's outlook on broadband availability. Just because one household in a zip code has broadband access, that will not longer mean everyone in the zip code does. 'The plan went over well with the consumer advocates who appeared before the subcommittee. Larry Cohen, president of the Communication Workers of America, said that the US is "stuck with a twentieth century Internet" and that he would support increasing the "broadband" definition to 2Mbps. Ben Scott of Free Press echoed that sentiment, suggesting that the definition needs to be an evolving standard that increases over time, which is in contrast to the current FCC definition; it has not changed in nine years. "We have always been limited by the FCC's inadequate and flawed data," he said.'"
But its too correct (according to the summary, I didn't RTFA). Something else has to be behind this, given american politics.
Fat tubes for all!
Let's aim high. In the future, it is likely many individuals will run media servers, VPN in to home, download a ton of video and use services like VOIP that rely on quality bandwidth. Instead of going piecemeal into this future, let's design for the next fifty years, roll out the hardware, and enjoy a nice long depreciation curve. It will be cheaper in the long run...
technical writing / development
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So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?
If the downlink is required to be 2Mbps to count as "broadband", I think the uplink should be a minimum of 512Kbps. Far too many people are stuck on lines that have 128Kbps up and far too easily saturate the uplink and bog the whole connection down.
I read the internet for the articles.
There's people who think 56kbps is enough. Those people use the internet for emails.
I thought 56K was broadband when I upgraded from my 14.4K modem. Of course, that was back in 1998.
Yeah. But the poster mentions 2mbps. 2 milli bps. Now that is slow. Five hundred seconds to get one bit. SI prefixes are case sensitive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix
Broadband, as opposed to baseband, is technically defined as anything not at the base frequency of 0Hz. Baseband is at the base frequency and up, broadband is at a higher frequency and up.
FCC can't even seem to get a technicality right.
When I was in college back in the triassic period, broadband had nothing to do with transmission rates, but with the fact that multiple channels were transmitted through a single wire (like TV) over a more broad frequency band than single-channel narrowband transmission, regardless of speed. Every time I hear someone say "broadband" in reference to the speed of some sort of internet connection I sort of cringe inside.
One good thing could come out of this. Setting a definition for broadband will reduce misleading "broadband" offers from cable and dsl companies. Either they raise their data rates or they have to call it something else. Most will choose to increase bandwidth since having to admit they are slower would be an advertising nightmare.
You and your wife are boring. I can saturate both directions on the T1 at work without any help.
If you want to tell us to get off your lawn, just put up a sign.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm going to expand a little on that with a simple line: what about consumers who want that bandwidth? Why should we have to wait for anything to download? And by wait I mean longer than instantaneous.
The definition also needs to specify up/down speeds. I don't consider a satellite connection with 1.5Mbs down and 56K up (phoneline) a broadband connection.
As much as I loath the US Congress, and celebrate Wikipedia, I haven't quite gotten to the point where I think that the the later should be able to overrule the former.
Around here, AT&T and Comcast, among others, have been pushing cheap "broadband" that turns out to be in the 600kbps range. If the hapless FCC is forced to adopt realistic definitions, so much the better for consumers and for the communications industry in the long run. I have yet to find a downside explained in all the lazy cynical-posing comments.
You and your wife are boring. I can saturate both directions on the T1 at work without any help.
Your boss lets you look at porn at work?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Broadband is a signaling method - as long as the Congress is deciding what speed of Internet connectivity is appropriate, can they also legislate a more appropriate term?
It's all politics. You redefine "broadband" (in this case, the new definition in a way consumers will like, since they want more of it) so that you can say come election time that only x number of homes have broadband, and blame the lack of availability on the previous administration. (Or you can even say that the number of US homes with broadband went down, though that looks worse if you're called on the definition change.) You can fit a single statistic into a good sound byte, but politicians aren't good at fitting an explanation for why the statistic is ridiculous into a sound byte.
This is similar to changing the poverty formula--or any other similar metric--in advance of an election.
What kind of SCSI do you have?
SCSI-1
Fast SCSI
Fast Wide SCSI
Ultra SCSI(1.5)
Ultra SCSI(3)
Wide Ultra SCSI
Wide Ultra SCSI(1.5)
Wide Ultra SCSI(3)
Ultra2 SCSI
Wide Ultra2 SCSI
Ultra3 SCSI or Ultra160 SCSI
Ultra320 SCSI
Nah. Just make the term "Broad Band" a standard that is reviewed every 2 years and be done with it. Otherwise, in 20 years we'll be connecting over the Super double wide ultra fast inter tubes of doom .
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I hate you.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:32(King James Version)
What we need is an FTC rule that advertising any service quality or quantity with the words "up to" or substantially similar language is, by law, considered deceptive. Advertising should have to specify a guaranteed level of service. That would put cable and DSL on the same measurement scale, discourage underprovisioning, and make cellular data transfer rates in ads something you could rely on.
There's precedent for this. At various times in the past, the FTC had to tighten up the definition of "horsepower" for cars and "watts" for audio gear.
I can do 1 Gbit/sec with my station wagon, but the latency kinda sucks.
Also, the MTU (MINIMUM transfer unit) is 4 GB.
Well, 780 MB if you only want to use CDs.
paintball
Cable is the best most people can get (yeah, there might be FIOS in a few cities, but I'm in #5 in the US and we sure don't have it; Utah also has UTOPIA, but I don't trust their lawmakers not to screw it up or censor it somehow). There, you get caps like 20 GB / month total transfer, which make it a complete waste, or worse, you go with Comcast and get unknown limits above which they accuse you of piracy and cut you off with no appeal.
Or you can go with DSL. Good luck if you don't live right next to the CO. Damn phone company took an entire MONTH to find a working line for me. How the hell do you not notice that one of the lines you tagged was in use!? T1s are nice, but way out of my price range. $300-$400 a month is a bit much, even if I understand why they price them like that.
Or you can get satellite. Not bad, but your uplink will be crap and your latency painful. Or, heh, you can go back to dial-up. That's great, if you don't use anything but email...
Compare this to almost everywhere else in the first world, where they have local loop unbundling, the telcos are public utilities (rather than deregulated monopolies) and you see that we're *WAY* behind. Japan is awesome: 10 & 100 Mbps connections for less than you pay the cable companies. Other countries, too, have invested in infrastructure and are just plain leaving us behind. In the US? We gave the telcos billions to upgrade things, and just what have they done? Hardly anything, from the looks of it.
So the story here is that the Democrats want to up the standards so that we in the US will have to stop kidding ourselves about the craptastic state of our internet infrastructure? GOOD! I'm sick of the telcos trying to kill things like Net Neutrality and using "deregulation" as a way to become legal monopolies and screw their customers over.
I'm sick of hearing "We don't care, we're the phone company!" and I'll probably give my vote to someone who seems likely to make them eat those words.
The parent post is a helpful visual diagram of how a high-capacity channel enables more traffic.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
As a Canadian, let me assure you: we have.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The FCC has fairly little independent power; it serves primarily to implement laws passed by Congress. In this case unbundling was part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act passed by Congress. The FCC implemented it and was promptly sued for it. In the U.S., the federal courts have ultimate jurisdiction to interpret legislation, so the FCC was bound by whatever the court ordered. Over the next 10 years it was ordered by the courts to reimplement and reimplement, as suit after suit was filed by the telcos. In 2006 it finally won court approval for its implementation of the unbundling rules, based on a law that was now 10 years old. So if you don't like the way it's done now, look to the courts (and the original, poorly-worded law).
Also: the distinction between a "telecommunications service" and a "data service" is most definitely NOT pedantic. In fact it is the crucial heart of the entire fight over "net neutrality." The two terms are given different definitions and treatments in the 1996 Act--in particular, telecom services are held to common carrier status, while data services are not. Thus when the 9th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that cable modem is a "data service", it exempted it from common carrier status--essentially granting permission to violate net neutrality.
Now the telcos want DSL classified the same way (it's currently considered a telecom service since it is delivered over phone lines), and they are lobbying extremely hard to get it. Plus, they are rolling out things like FiOS, which as a fiber optic line is considered a data service not a telecom service.
In the U.S., the "net neutrality" we took for granted for years was a direct result of the fact that we accessed the Internet over phone lines, and thus it was a common carrier service according to federal law. Now, with cable and fiber access, this protection is largely gone, and a fight for net neutrality protection must be waged.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.