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Broadband Data Improvement Act Clears Committee
MBCook writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the Broadband Data Improvement Act has left committee with a unanimous vote. Among the changes proposed are requiring the definition of 'second generation broadband' (enough to carry HDTV) instead of the current definition of broadband as 200Kbps, and aggregating the data by ZIP+4 instead of just the full ZIP code. The act can now move to the full Senate."
Isn't this par for the course in almost all fields, not just broadband market? In almost every thing the Congress does there is an interest group that funds studies, think tanks, policy white papers all designed to muddy the waters. Everywhere, ODF adoption, credit report freeze, bankruptcy reform, S-Chip, ID vs Evolution ... There is this huge industry whose sole purpose is to force the lawmakers and the public to act in the dark and providing inaccurate and misleading information. Why single out broadband alone?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You are moving too fast, Politicians are not concerned with the details. They have been advised that broadband sucks. The details of making broadband suck less are left to the providers and they will pass that cost on to us........
K
Best of luck getting the content producers to provide you free content at HDTV speeds.
They produce that content so people will boost their ad revenue.
If it takes "giving away" HD content - Yes, they most certainly will.
And best of luck actually switching that many packets per second at the NOCs.
You mean, like the rest of the 1st world (other than the US) has?
Yeah, totally untenable.
Note they aren't mandating 2nd-generation broadband that is a DEFINITION. And it's good they did that, because oftentimes I see advertisements for "broadband" internet that is just a few touches better than a 56k. That's why House Democrats called for a higher definition, right now, that definition includes any connection over 200Kbps, which Markey wants to boost more than 10 times. I doubt anyone on /. would consider 200kbps as "broadband."
Now we'll finally know if crucial ZIP+4 zones like my regional IRS tax return mail basket are getting suitable broadband hookups.
"Why single out broadband alone?"
Well, you have to start somewhere. I doubt this will get anywhere, but if it does, maybe other sectors will be encouraged to do the Right Thing. Again, not likely...
This bill was written solely to upset the current relatively free market of broadband. Because the government will set "standards" of speed, this leaves smaller providers -- who may still be able to provide acceptable speeds -- out of the market. If you won't be able to give the minimum, get out of the market.
Here's why I am against Net Neutrality -- instead of providing for a truly "neutral" pipe, regulations like these will be written by the strongest elements in a market, designed to kill the smaller competitors. It is unfortunate if geeks and techies support these kinds of bills, especially without reading them fully. There is no Constitutional power allocated to the Senate to REQUIRE levels of service. The interstate commerce clause was written so that the Federal government can restrain the individual States from harming commerce -- the word "regulate" in the Constitution did not mean what we think it means today.
Very, very unfortunate.
Internet News has more details and analysis of the act, including comments from Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who voted for the bill but expressed reservations:
"I worry that the provisions addressing broadband speeds and smaller geographic areas in this bill could inadvertently paint a picture of an America without broadband that is not accurate," he said in a statement... I am not sure that Congress, rather than the FCC, should be getting into this level of detail, particularly given technological changes, such as compression technologies that could make these standards a moving target."
I'm not sure I agree with him that the "America with broadband" picture is inaccurate. By most other modern countries' standards, we are far behind.
I disagree, this is a case where the market will adjust because of competition with the end result being overall faster connections for everyone for probably the same prices. This bill does nothing to force improvements or upgrades. What it does do is actually put a realistic definition on the word broadband. So you'll no longer get all those adverts in the mail from verizon dsl or comcast cable telling you how you can have high speed broadband for $19/mo when in reality it is a 750/128 connection. Although I'm still a little bit grey on whether this applies to the current broadband or this broadband 2 or whatever the word was.
In the cut throat isp business eventually one of the big players will push the envelope and actually offer a true broadband for a decent price, and everyone else will have to scramble to adjust, starting a price war.
Sure, initially people who want a faster connection will pay a bit more, but this is a case where the market will adjust for it pretty quick. Competition is just too fierce for it not to. And a price war between two 800lb gorillas (cable vs phone) can be nothing but good for consumers.
Is there a definition on the minimum upload required for a connection to be broadband? I hope so. Because 128kbps up is absolute bullshit.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
...I'm not sure I follow your logic.
Let's say that, suddenly, all home internet connections were magically transformed into Gbps pipes (I'm assuming that's enough for HDTV; I don't actually know that, but it's irrelevant to my point, anyway).
How would that force slashdot to stop providing free (or at least, ad-supported) content? Or, if we don't consider slashdot to be a content producer, how would that force the hojillion bloggers out there to stop providing free (and you get what you pay for) content?
I don't get the leap you're making between high speed home connections and suddenly expensive content.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
It's ok, you don't know who you're talking to.
If it takes "giving away" HD content - Yes, they most certainly will.
Perhaps. 20 years from now, at earliest. The ad revenue today cannot pay for video at drastically lower frame rates and with low quality audio. The video sites have been scrambling to stay online with no imminent hope of profitability (for the video divisions, at least). You make a highly uninformed statement, here.
You mean, like the rest of the 1st world (other than the US) has?
And another highly uninformed statement. There are pockets of very high bandwidth in some places, however that high bandwidth is a) typically only usable within a network segment (size of which varies), while the rest of the Internet is no quicker than you expect it in North America and much of it is slower because of distant network adjacency. Also, many places where you can get "100Mbps Ethernet," you are getting a 100Mbps shared connection to an oversold (which is not the bad word you probably think it is) transit point. Oh, it says 100Mbps on the sales brochure but you're not downloading your Liveleaks any faster than a guy in Alabama on a wireless access point.
Internet bandwidth fanboys are some of the most delusional, annoying people...
...Steve
29.99, ADSL2+, includes TV and free international calls (VoIP). Free modem and HDTV PVR set top box provided.
All that in socialist France. The only gov't improvement is in aggressively enforcing competition. You know, the real free market thing, not that corrupt semi-fascist oligarchy you have in the US.
The content that is expensive is video. If customers have huge Internet connections that are capable of HDTV, they will want to use them. With the current layout and cost of Internet transit (and for the foreseeable future for that matter), delivering free HDTV content is a non-starter.
Personally, I'd be surprised if delivering paid HDTV content anytime soon is a profit well.
...Steve
..where it was promptly shot down by senators who listened to the lobbyists who went on and on about how it would bankrupt their companies, when in reality, they would just pass the cost directly to the consumer.
"Oh, BTW, we're increaseing your rates by $100 a month, starting three months ago. Congress is forcing us to do this, we'll call it the broadband tax."
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I just wonder why what cheese eating surrender monkeys do (as free HDTV content via ADSL, though limited to this day to sport events or concerts) in the USA is "not possible".
"This bill was written solely to upset the current relatively free market of broadband. "
Because we have an aggressively pro-competition regulating agency in France, you have a dozen way to get broadband in most cities. And you basically can't get anything below ADSL2+ those days.
At the moment I pay 29 euros a month for 24/1Mbps, HDTV service, and free international phone (analog and voip). They also provide me with a free router, Wifi AP, HDTV PVR set top box and analog telephone adaptor.
No cap on data, no filtering whatsoever, no shaping. Quality of service is good, and has been improving steadily. You have the occasional day long outage (two last years, none this year so far), but other than that downloading speeds are stable and pretty much max out my line 24/7.
And the reason for this is that ARCEPT has been given a lot of power to enforce competition in the broadcast market. None of those services are subsidised. They haven't been so successful with cellphone, OTOH. But they're working on it.
They're going to be laying down a lot of new tubes.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
"Free HDTV" sourced off a server directly in their own network is different than getting it off the Internet.
...Steve
It's rated for 24Mbps. I usually get around 1-2 Mbyte/s on a single download TCP stream. I can basically max out the bandwidth with multiple simultaneous downloads anytime.
And I pay 29 euro a month.
Yeah, yeah, competition drives prices down. Unfortunately, broadband markets tend towards duopoly (or worse) -- not free competition. A price war would be great, but telecom companies tend to prefer using FUD and lock-in to maintain their customer base.
(IANAL)
Ed Markey is my rep. and he is really pissing me off lately. I tend to agree with him on the issues, but he doesn't give a damn about his constituents. In our district an organized crime figure has been buying up large houses and turning them into flop houses, exploiting some state loophole for "rehab" facilities. They are not properly regulated or registered, but for somereason, the municipalities are unable to shut them down. In my neighborhood the guy converted a beautiful $900,000 greek revival. Now the neighborhood is littered with used syringes and crawling sketchy characters with no roots in the area. The mayor and our state rep. have been battling him but have hit a brick wall. They went to Ed and he said the problem was local to our neighborhood, not district wide and he wouldn't help. This despite the fact that this guy owns several other such "sober houses" in the district and I read a newspaper article about one in the next city over. Ed is too busy clawing his way up the Democratic leadership ladder to take time to rescue his constituencey from an organized crime fueled slide into decrepitude. Unfortunately Ed knows he is invulnerable. He has too much money and is too entrenched, what are we gonna do, replace him? With what, a Republican? Good luck. Democracy in action.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Why do you think that? I'm more inclined to think that the ISPs will act as a cartel.
Blar.
It's ok, you don't know who you're talking to.
Props to the low UID (and I probably would have withheld the sarcasm had I noticed), but I disagreed with your original statement, and still do.
Historically, content has grown to fill the pipes available to it. 300bps modems, we had text-only forums. 14.4kbps, image-light web-based content. 56k, image-heavy content. 1.5Mbps, YouTube. 12MBps, and we've just started seeing standard-def VOD.
I see no reason for that trend to continue - If we all have 100M to 1G FTTP links, we'll see realtime HD streaming content appear to make use of that. FIOS already demonstrates that, though in more of a dedicated provider push-format than on-demand service.
As for pockets of high-bandwidth, true, they do tend to occur mostly in cities; rural areas still get the short end of the stick, and probably always will, by comparison. But compare the US East coast to North-Western Europe, which has a similar population density, and we pay 4x as much for comparable services, and rarely even have the option of home-level connections over 12MBps.
If they aggregate by Zip+4, then I'm my own little broadband kingdom of one household. This means the original idea that as long as one household in the measured area has broadband, the whole area is considered to have broadband, becomes a binary truism.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Cool your jets!
I don't know of any smaller provider(s) who run their own cable/wire to your household. They piggyback on the big monopoly telcos and cable providers. As such, they have the same available line speed options available as the monopoly providers. If they can't meet new minimum broadband requirements using the same delivery infrastructure, then there's a serious question if they should be in the market at all.
Your post just sounds like an anti-Republican rant.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Really? I'd think "geeks" like myself would criticize the fact that "broadband" is a term that describes how the signal is carried, and has nothing at all to do with speed in any way, shape or form.
Turns out my baseband Ethernet connection has been "broadband" for all these years. All those books, and all my teachers, have been lying to me for many years...
Great! With lossy compression, there is practically no minimum bitrate at any resolution, and quality (aty any bitrate) depends significantly upon the content of the video in question.
I could say my 200Kbps connection can stream HDTV, and you have no grounds to argue with me.
And that's without even mentioning the vast quality/bitrate differences between codecs, and the fact that "HD" is rather loosely defined as well.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
THEY WILL, AND HATE YOU FOR IT!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The problem though is that it needs to be both possible and feasible for competitors to come into the market, as well as some means of ensuring that the businesses doing business in the area can't wall themselves off from the rest of the market.
Sometimes this doesn't happen, one of the better examples is the incompetent energy market in Texas. There regulators foolishly decided to allow market forces to encourage companies to invest in the infrastructure to produce electricity as well as build the lines to carry electricity into and out of the state. Big problem, there was no incentive to maintain or build the capacity, because they could raise their prices as high as they wanted, to match the demand. So as a result Texans pay similar rates for electricity as New Englanders and Californians, but rather than getting cleaner, more expensive power, they get to pay gas prices for coal generated power. Both expensive and extremely dirty. Whereas southern California is getting cleaner, Areas like Dallas and Houston are getting worse and worse problems with smog.
This would not have happened if the regulators were willing to maintain control of the interstate transmission lines or require that the power companies develop them.
Direct analog signals are baseband. IE they are not modulated, or you could also say, by extension, that they are modulated at 0 Hz. Example: POTS (Plain Old Telephone) ISDN lines are baseband too.
DSL and Cable aren't baseband, OTOH. (Even analog cable TV isn't baseband -- it's modulated around a carrier frequency. That's why you can have several channels on one cable.) They're actually transmitted in several frequencies at a time, definitely qualifies for broadband.
10BaseT, 100BaseT and thinnet are baseband. No modulation either, direct signal. Probably same for 1000BaseT, except that it uses more wire.
Oh and leased copper lines (T1, etc...) are base band, too.
(IANAL)
It depends on your definition of HD. If you speak of what can go over the air (720p60 or 1080i30), you probably need about what is used over the air, 18 to 20 mbps (after figuring in protocol overheads and such). If you want really good HD (1080p60) that cable and satellite could choose to offer if they wanted to use the extra bandwidth, then double that to 36-40. But if you minimize the definition of HD, as the broadband providers are likely to ask for, at say 720p24, then we're talking about a measly 7.2 to 8 mbps, or possibly less if they demonstrate hypercompressed (and ugly) video. That's all with MPEG-2 (what over the air digital will be using in ATSC). But broadband could use MPEG-4 which does better (better quality in less bandwidth) if you believe the proponents.
IMHO a specific number needs to be established. I'd go with "basic broadband" at 18 mbps down and 3 mbps up, "premium broadband" at 48 mbps down and 8 mbps up, and "ultimate broadband" at 120 mbps down and 20 mbps up. Note that copper pair may not be able to handle this. Fiber is the way to go.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The current deployment model for these higher-rate lines actually has the bulk of that bandwidth being used for IPTV provided by the ISP itself.
So you're essentially saying that if you build it, they won't necessarily come. I won't argue with you; HDTV content is expensive to produce and distribute. Whether consumers want to download it on their big fat pipes isn't really material, though. The pipe is useful whether or not there's HDTV being sent down it; the fact that it would be more useful if there was HDTV content being sent down it doesn't change that fact.
I won't argue, though, that it would just be more of the same, but faster, rather than some sort of HDTV over TCP/IP revoultion.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
I work for a small rural ISP. We get customers (and turn a profit) by undercutting AT&T on DSL which we resell for AT&T. We don't give a "special introductory rate," but our real rate is significantly lower, and I've found that consumers have no difficulty understanding this. We also charge the same to businesses as to residential customers (perhaps the biggest taboo of them all). Trust me, the competition model really does work so long as there are regulatory laws requiring competition to be permitted. Absent such laws, of course, AT&T wouldn't be letting us use their circuits.
You are a socialist. I hate that you get a better deal than me.
Even though we were born of your enlightenment, we hate you. Frenchy.
Besides, we don't even like the Statue of Liberty.
Get your Unix fortune now!
T1 speeds don't always cut it anymore - besides, I'm getting a 3mbit DSL connection today for $30/month, a whole $470/month cheaper than your 'solution.
For $400/month many places can afford to deal with a little downtime occasionally, especially home users.
Heck, if I was a business user, I could get DSL AND Cable, and still likely save more than $300/month. Sure, my NAT solution would be a bit hairy unless the two companies are willing to cooperate, but there's a NAT gateway/router/switch out there* for ~$210 that can do it.
*I do not endorse this product, have never used this product, just pointing it out. There was another one that I vaguely remember having eight ports and costing ~3k.
I don't read AC A human right
Why would you think a cartel? Cartels are used when the driving force is supply and demand. Cartels influence the demand by controlling the supply. The ISP market is a service. The service industry uses a different model. To increase your profits you need to grow your customer base. The customer base comes from either brand new users (whom you need to convince to go with you instead of someone else), or you have to convince people to leave their current provider. To do this you lower price (or provide a better service) so that you gain more customers and revenue than the price reduction costs you.
Actually, where I live (admittedly, it's a very small town) and in several of the surrounding communities, there are 2 choices for internet access. You can either get DSL/cable (the communities here that have DSL don't have cable, and those that have cable don't have DSL) or you can get dialup.
There isn't even a cable company that offers cable TV service in my town, let alone cable internet.
I currently pay $45/month (taxes/fees included) for a 384kbps down/128kbps up DSL connection, because I have no other choice for access. I don't consider dialup to be a viable source for my internet access, as I run a small computer repair business.
Don't talk to me about how there are 3 or 4 choices for internet access. I would welcome some competition here. Many of my friends and customers would as well. GP is correct in stating that there are *far* to many mini-monopolies when it comes to telephone and cable companies. And the problem is even WORSE in rural small-town America.
You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories.
I'm paying $40 (after taxes) for 1.5mbps down and 50kbps up. Not good.
sheesh, minor gouging.
the ISP i work for (Sasktel) gives 1.5m/256k for $35 CDN. you can also get 5m/640k for $45 or 10m/640k for $55.
and that's CDN, so knock off a few percent.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
stands for "Asynchronous".
Next year they're upgrading to 50/50Mbps FTTH anyway. At the same price, btw.
Of course I'm not offtopic employers are not going to stand for increased fees, taxes and duties after they spent 5 years unburdening themselves of overhead. If telco's think they can simply snap their fingers and ratchet up prices w/o a fight they are wrong.
Now? do you get it?
Probably, maybe, you're right. But then why is the difference from which server the TV come from is of matter? it's still possible because of solid 20mbps copper lines. Thats the thing I don't get: if we had fiber optics already, but no it's just the old copper infrastructure that is enough to provide optimal speeds, of course depending on the distance from the dslam. Certainly the USA will find a solution that fit their particular needs, possibly a more modern one, but in the meantime it still seems strange to see that near modem speeds are considered broadband and good enough, like this other poster who seems honestly happy with 50kbps up, wtf ?
Another thing I may add, the quick development of ADSL here came from competing, innovation driven, startups.
The historic national operator is required to let other operators use its lines (thought they have developed an expertise in this domain by now), lines that where in their time funded as public service. This operator seems closer to the US companies: ADSL service is not as good, with low speeds like 8MBPS, poorly thought set top box, high price of around 45$ a month, no real TV and Tivo-like services, AOL style installation softwares when I just had to connect a RJ-45 for my ADSL line to be recognized by XP. So I guess that it's a very good thing that Google looks into it, if I understood well what happens now in the US.
While I appreciate the cynicism, countries that have far more regulation than here, S. Korea, Japan, Switzerland, to name a few, have speeds significantly faster than our speeds for, a fraction of what we pay. Cell phones are another area where regulation creates cheaper (and likely more reliable) service. Unregulated capitalism ends up creating needs and wants for things of no inherent value (so they can be infinitely replicated by a producer and continually sold to consumers who gain nothing). Healthy capitalism fosters some healthy competition that increases benefits to citizen -- cheaper prices for real goods, or making previously unaffordable benefits available at lower cost to more people.
But the practice of removing people's current "rights" or "property" in order to sell back smaller and smaller pieces of the previous "product" (which may have no inherent physical value) is "Dark Capitalism". It is the point when capitalism is no longer benefiting the society, but is becoming a cancer on society. It gets used to financially oppress an underclass who must constantly buy and re-buy worthless goods that gain them little (or nothing), while those owning the desired "worthless" objects can continue to sell them for the "real value" the working class has created via their labors. The capitalist corporations at the top become leeches living off the working class while giving little or nothing in return.