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Major ISPs Seek To Lower Broadband Definition
denobug sends word that major internet service providers in the US are seeking to redefine the term 'Broadband' to mean a much lower speed than in other developed nations. In recent filings with the FCC, Comcast and AT&T both came out in support of a reduced minimum speed. 'AT&T said regulators should keep in mind that not all applications like voice over internet protocol (VoIP) or streaming video, that require faster speeds, are necessarily needed by unserved Americans.' On the other hand, Verizon argued to maintain the status quo, saying that 'It would be disruptive and introduce confusion if the commission were to now create a new and different definition.' A public interest group called Free Press also filed comments with the FCC, recommending that the bar should be set significantly higher, and evolve in a way that corresponds with technological improvements.
What I got from reading my Verizon DSL service agreement was that they were making no warranty at all concerning the actual throughput on my line, regardless of the advertised speed. And they wonder why I don't want to subscribe to FIOS, which seems to have the same disclaimer. It would be interesting to know if other countries' ISPs commit to provide the advertised throughput.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
... lower the bar
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
When will these people stop trying to change definitions. Broadband is a technology not a speed. All DSL is broadband, but ethernet and (most) cable is not even though they can offer higher speeds than ADSL.
...for now making it easier for me to decide to add you to my ISP blacklist.
It is in the FCC's interest to keep lowering the speed required for something to be classified as "broadband". This allows a greater percentage of the country to have "broadband saturation" and thus, it makes the FCC look like they are doing a great job.
These distortions of statistics are already used by the government to great effect in other areas, such as unemployment and GDP, and the public eat it up.
I used to limp along with a standard 28.8K modem; but now with my US Robotics 56K V.92 broadband-enhanced supermodem, I cruise along the Information Superhighway at a blazing 56Kbps! Thanks Comcast!
#DeleteChrome
Every industry does this, including my own. It costs less money to pay off politicians or lobbyists than to upgrade the system. My company pays our lobbyists to modify the laws to favor our system vs the competitors. Politicians listen to the lobbyists because it is easier than doing the research themselves, and the only thing we can do is a massive grass roots effort to make things better. I've got to say that I'm just too lazy to start another one of those. Why can't I just elect someone to take care of these things?
There was just recently a large discussion about this topic on NANOG. The mailing list archive where the thread begins can be found here: http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg20241.html
Gee, I wonder why Verizon would think that consumers don't need VOIP? Perhaps competition has something to do with it...
America: Now With Lower Standards! Only $29,95!!!
... what they call it? Deceptive? sure ... but users are going to notice the speed immediately when they start surfing the net or downloading items. If Major ISPs lump it all together and call it broadband ... the online community will give it new names ... like "Crappy Broadband" and "Good Broadband"
Is it odd that Verizon is now a bit of a hero for trying to maintain the status quo? I wonder how often this happens in other industries. I may have to ask to weigh my quarter-pounder burgers before they're cooked now.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Just like the agribusinesses trying to change the definition of "organic" so they can cash in on the trend.
Whatever happened to actually making a good product and letting quality do the heavy lifting on the marketing end? I know sometimes a company is left selling a shit sandwich but it seems like these companies go out of their way to turn their products and services into a shit sandwich before they sell them. It's like these companies are all run by secret coprophages and they're spreading the love.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I think for CALEA ('lawful intercept', aka warrant-backed-spying of your traffic, at least in the US), calls broadband anything > 128kbps broadband (or there abouts.. it reminded me of something like shotgunned ISDN lines). The difference being anything less then that they can just get a run-of-the-mill telephone wire tap from the local Bell.
I'm sorta wondering how any definition the FCC passes will get abused in the future. This should be fun to watch.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
What ever happened to quality? What ever happened to people, and companies, recognising that lower cost came at the expense of higher quality? What ever happened to production and purchasing being an optimisation problem with price, quality, speed and other factors thrown into the mix?
All I see nowadays is price, price, price. Price is everything. All encompassing, all considering and the sole and only consideration in nigh every walk of life. Companies are gouging their businesses in order to save pennies whilst their products stagnate or regress. Consumers care not for long term value or even short term utility as price is the first and last arbiter in their purchase decisions.
ISPs in the US seek to redefine broadband because they want their packages to be treated like commodities; like wheat and coffee beans. You don't care where the bean comes from, they're all the same. So you buy the cheapest one. If all internet connection packages are "broadband", can you guess what people are going to do? ISPs aren't the only industry that wants to do this, or indeed that is doing it.
Is anyone nowadays interesting in something more than getting, or providing, the cheapest deal. Is there room left nowadays for an ISP that seeks to provide the fastest and widest piplines for people that are willing to pay that much extra. I know I would be. But is that how our society works anymore? Did it ever work like that? Is there simply no room for companies that don't cater to misers? Should we really be blaming the ISPs here, or should we be blaming ourselves?
May the Maths Be with you!
It's just a bit disingenuous to change the definition of a word to meet your own needs. Here's to hoping the FCC sees through it.
The Institute of Incomplete Research has determined that 9 of out 10
We've already done a great job at butchering the term anyway. Most usage doesn't correspond with reality.
(if you can't complain about this kind of stuff on a website billing itself as "news for nerds", where can you complain?)
But it just goes to show that carriers feel no need to compete. Most of us have no ability to choose the products we want from them, and with Uncle Sam's help, they can keep us from seeing how lame they really are.
My suggestion to the FCC was for symmetrical bandwidth to be included in the definition. You can't really have cloud-based services, if you can't effectively move data to the cloud.
I'd personally also like to see a 10Mb/s lower bound. This is 2009 after all, and the telecoms have already been paid for 45Mb/s symmetrical bandwidth to everyone.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
BROADband?
The term's already been redefined. Breadth - despite popular misconception - has little or no direct bearing on network speed.
Sometimes unreliable, the Wikipedia entry on the term "Broadband" is fairly enlightening on the topic - particularly in defining both the term, and its various relative contexts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
http://images.wolfgangsvault.com/images/catalog/detail/RS375-RS.jpg
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
AT&T said regulators should keep in mind that not all applications like voice over internet protocol (VoIP) or streaming video, that require faster speeds,
So AT&T says that VoIP requires "faster speeds". Even using G.711 (i.e., uncompressed toll-quality), and including the overhead of the other layers, VoIP requires only ~120kbps. The thing about VoIP is not that it requires high speed, but that it requires low latency.
Once upon a time the string "AT&T" stood for some kind of technical excellence. So, for that matter, did the string "FCC". Now I just want to go hide in a cave while they play their various spin games.
Fuck AT&T. Fuck Time Warner. I'm 30 miles outside of Austin stuck on a modem at 24.4 because no one offers anything better. Cellular broadband doesn't work out here. Fuck you all!
AT&T said regulators should keep in mind that not all applications like voice over internet protocol (VoIP) or streaming video, that require faster speeds, are necessarily needed by unserved Americans.
My mom, who lives less than a mile from a local telco's central office, can't get DSL because they don't care to install broadband-capable equipment in her neighborhood. She's just an ignorant rube who doesn't need all that fancy stuff, unlike the AT&T CEO who undoubtedly needs YouTube to download the daily neurosurgery lessons that fill his Renaissance mind, and who needs Skype to talk to his kids who can't afford telephone service.
Know what? Very, very few people need broadband to their house. However, I bet many people want to fully participate in modern society, but are missing the Internet revolution altogether because it's painful over dialup. To hell with Comcast and AT&T for presuming the right to decide which of their customers need certain services, largely basing such decisions on the customers' zip codes.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
An ISP in our area is advertising their Internet connection speed by claiming it is "Fasterizer". They hope that term will confuse the clueless into thinking that their .V92 or tier 1 DSL service is as fast as my 10Mb/s cable connection.
21st Century business is all about three things: lying, stealing and bribing Congress with campaign contributions to make those actions legal. I suspect that they are redefining decades old terms & understandings simply so they can justify a large increase it their rate structure for the same old service.
Fifteen years ago the cable and telcos bribed Congress into outlawing local communities from filling in the service gap the private sector was ignoring: a high speecd fiber optic internet connection that would be a public utility. After recieving $200M from Congress to "finish the job", they promptly pocketed the money and forgot the rest. Congress failed to include a non-performance penalty, so they had nothing to lose by just stealing the money. Had the telcos & cable companies had any ethics the average US internet connection would be 20Mb/s or more and costing less than $30/month. Can't build any multi-million dollar luxury homes in the Bahamas at those rates.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
In related news, 8th graders petitioned their principal to drop math from the list of required classes, complaining that "it's hard" and would cause an extra 3 hours of homework per week.
Note that if an actual free market for broadband existed, we would have true competition, allowing customers to choose the provider that provided the best pricing, speed, and feature set. It could be as easy as allowing municipalities to maintain large bundles of fiber through a city, exactly the same way they do with roads. (But cheaper, since you don't need huge roadworking machines and tons of asphalt.)
Unfortunately, our elected officials are honest, so once they've been bribed they stay bribed.
Nobody could expect us to keep up in education or communications with the prime movers of the Technology Universe, Japan and South Korea. It's just not realistic. We should be happy that our roads are paved and are children is learning.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
In Hungary, T-online has announced today that they're rolling out 80mbit FTTH to 180-200k subscribers by the end of the year. (This is a country of 10M).
They've also changed the minimum package from 2 to 5mbit, bumped up the non-fibre/vdsl package to 15mbit and drastically increased the minimum guaranteed bandwidth to 1mbit for the 5mbit connection and to 5mbit for the 15mbit connection.
Personally, I pay 50 EUR / mo for IPTV and 33mbit VDSL. I do not consider anything below 8mbit "broadband" these days.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
The term's already been redefined. Breadth - despite popular misconception - has little or no direct bearing on network speed.
You're confused. The term comes from the mathematical and engineering field called "Information Theory". The key result is called the "Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem", which relates the amount of information a certain amount of spectrum (band width) can carry.
Guess what: 2.4GHz signals can only carry so much information. DSL signals are band limited (that is, there is an upper bound on the frequencies at which DSL modems operate). So are cable modems.
Your link explains this much, so I am not sure why you're confused.
Whether broadband is defined as greater than 128 kpbs or 128 Gpbs makes little difference (ok, neglecting subsidies and such). Broadband is just a marketing term like low sodium or fuel efficient. It's the actual throughput of the service that counts. For example, I'd take 100 mpbs labeled as "slow" over 2 mbps broadband any day.
What is really needed is competition with a solid metric to compare services. For a metric, it should be something like the minimum throughput for 99% of customers 95% of the time (yeah, 1% of customers do worse and all do worse but only 5% of the time).
Getting actual competition in place, uh, that's beyond my pay grade.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Single page link
Greasemonkey can make this automatic.
When I subscribed back in 1999, Verizon only offered 768k down/128k up, and the CIR was 16 Kbps bidirectional. That's right -- they promised that my connection would be at least almost half as fast as a 33.6K modem. Except, of course, when it wasn't working.
Here from the Netherlands (or Europe, for that matter), I am more amazed every day how you all in the US put up with this stuff..
A difference in price, availability and quality: too bad for the US customers, but that's how it is. But a redefinition of terms because companies can't live up to them?
That's like redefining the meter because companies producing rulers can't get their products larger than 90 cm.
This allows the !@#$%&'s to scale back the amount of infrastructure they need to build out to serve their customers, while still charging everyone exorbitant prices for simple text messages and keep on making a killing for their shareholders. ??? Profit!
F'em.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I thought it was a group of overweight instrumentalists.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I used to believe that this country would pride itself on being at the bleeding edge of technology, but now I hear more and more about how other countries have provided for their citizen in the area of technology far better than we do here in the USA. In many other countries, you don't get dropped cell phone calls. In many other countries (yes smaller) they provide wireless everywhere. Heck we can't even get digital or basic cable to some rural areas of this country.
Simply, because this country is all about profit. What's the least amount of goods and services we can provide and charge the highest amount for? We are charged large fees for telephone / cellphone / text / internet services. Cable providers are outrageous too. Where we should flourish in modern technology, we have become stagnant.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Imagine if when the national highway system was built ... if the builders asked to only build enough lanes to just barely serve the parts of America with the least number of cars.
Broadband is critical infrastructure and if the US is serious about being a modern nation we need to catch up ... not fall further behind
Create a new ISP with a *guaranteed* minimum bandwidth!
Offer it to *everyone*.
But detail everywhere and exactly, where the money you would have to pay to get it, would go!
Everything. Which material, which work, external contractors, taxes, etc.
You have that data in your business's database anyway. It's easily automatable.
Nearly everything of that ISP would be automated anyway. And client-owned too, in a way.
If you live in the swamp seas of east-ass-hicksville or Gaylord, KS, you will then have the choice to tunnel it trough other ISPs and pay their price, or lay your own wire, and pay that.
Therefore an offer would be, to commit to a specific user-defined payment, so as soon as there are enough people to finance the construction that part of the line, it would be built. Other choices would include buying a local ISP, etc.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
There is no such thing as "guaranteed" bandwidth on the internet. ALL bandwidth is shared, somewhere.
Your ISP does NOT have 40 megabits of bandwidth for every user. Do you know how much you would be paying if they did? Your connection would be hundres of dollars a month, not $60 or less.
If you want to bitch about the price of bandwidth, bitch to the big telcos that own most of the fiber in the US, and charge exorbitant fees to use it.
Once again we see businesses seeking not to improve their quality of products and services, but to merely boost the appearance of the quality of their products and services by changing definitions.
We see it happening in food. We see it happening in data storage. We have been seeing this in ISPs already with their deceptive and even fraudulent use of the word "unlimited" to describe usage.
Isn't it about time we reign this behavior in with tighter laws regarding deceptive practices such as these? What does "unlimited" mean to most people? If your advertising doesn't fit that definition, you should be fined and forced to pay restitution to your victims. I don't care that "megabytes" aren't based on the notion that mega = 1,000,000. We can't have different standards for RAM and Disk storage. The standard had been set from the earliest days and we should either stick with it or unify under a new standard. But mixed standards is a pain in the ass and serves only to deceive and/or confuse people. And don't get me started on food.
There exists "generally accepted meanings" for terms and words and every time I see marketers attempting to manipulate meanings to serve their own interests, it sickens me. It should not be allowed and should be punishable under the law.
This reminds me of an incedent here in Oregon a few years back when Bonneville Power Authority was putting fiber in the ground supposedly to meet a projected forecast. The telcoms evidently believed they had an alterior motive of delivering cheap fast internets to the rural masses, claiming the amount of fiber being laid was "excessive". A court injunction evidently halted the project. Ironic, that they have no energy to improve the infrastructure, but plenty when it comes to halting others attempts at addressing that lack.
Will sure make it easier to satisfy the requirements for broadband stimulus package money.
Comcast wants the FCC to match OCED in defining broadband at 256kbps download. The FCC has previously defined broadband at 200kbps in either direction; in March 2009 they voted to change the lower limit to 768kbps and call the lowest tier "basic broadband". 200kbps to 768kbps is supposed to be called "first generation data". http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9898118-7.html
The rollout of the new definition does not seem to be going well, as recent FCC documents are continuing to use old definitions. From september 2009: http://www.fcc.gov/Forms/Form477/477inst.pdf
I believe there is already a term for slow, crappy internet service. It's Comcastic!
To create a new term for the higher speed (768+), than to *re-define* an older term. Over the years, the only real definition I can come up with for how 'broadband' has been *used*, is, basically, anything faster than 56k dialup. If you want a 'marketing name' for something that meets specific technical values, why not come up with a new name, and start applying the new definition to the new name? That would be less confusing and more useful, IMHO.
56,000 bits per second.
Wouldn't that be 57,344 bits per second?
For historical reasons related to UART architecture, the serial connection between the modem and the PC usually divides evenly into 115,200 bps, such as 57,600 bps. But in v.90 and v.92, the connection to the other modem is based on the 8,000 Hz sample rate of a digital phone line, usually anywhere from 40 kbps (Fs * 5 bits/sample) to 50.6 kbps (Fs * 6 1/3 bits/sample). Modems usually run the PC link faster than the analog link to allow use of LZW-based V.42bis compression over the wire. 57,344 is 56*1024, but I don't see where you get 1024.
Check out http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough It explains why price has become more important than quality to most people. Even if you don't agree with it, it is a good read.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
So if the bandwitch rates drop below VoIP and Video streaming and they still call it "Broadband", then I can give a prognosis for the next 20 years: 56k users, be glad, you won't have that for long.
Seriously, countries like Japan have 100Mbit access on avarage, and the US is struggling with 28 Mbps and it gets' lover?
Man, I'm so happy to not be a US citizen.
Go ahead and let them change the low end definition, but only as long as the executives of those companies are only allowed to have that level for their usage. Nothing higher than the low end, including when they are in the office and on the road. Then they would see how frustrating it is to get anything done on the net with these limited data rates. I live in an area that has no DSL, no Cable (due to Qwest and Bresnan not wanting to spend the money) and I use Sprint's broadband card for my daily usage. It is doable, but at 1Mb it is at the low end of where I want to be. Can't see having to do my work at less than that.
Would love to see the execs reactions to their kids complaining that the internet was slow and they could not watch YouTube or downloading music from iTunes took more than a couple of seconds.
My suggestion is going with this term. Surely this convenience entices you! Pornography and online gaming at hundreds of times the speed of your normal advertising service provider! It's so easy to use, and the surgery to implant it in the base of your skull is so painless that its no wonder we're number one!
I tend to stay away from broad bands...
Down with the career politician! SUPPORT TERM LIMITS
Most providers in the US already define broadband as anything faster than ISDN (128 kb/s). This sucks for those of us who have suffer degraded DSL service due to poor line quality because there is no recourse to complain about the reduced speed since no promises were made up front.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
In most of New Mexico, comcast sells "high speed internet" as 6Mb/sec and above. they also sell 1Mb/sec internet. The funny thing is, that betwwen 6pm and 12pm, no one gets even 1Mb/sec sustained. So basically the term means " would you like to pay double for no extra speed?". Redefining it down makes sense to me since that is how it is now,
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Satellite is not broadband. Only somebody with a vested interest in it would say it's broadband.
Oh, and $99 month for crippled internet is expensive. Especially when the rest of the world gets faster service for a lower price.
How about from now on, any bill payed within 3 months of it's due date is "on time" and any bill where at least 50% of the balance is paid is considered "paid in full"?
No?
OK, how about we just quit re-defining things in an attempt to look less pathetic?
There's your problem, isn't it? We're running wars in two countries and can't afford 1st world health care. Hell, we still execute citizens and we love it. 150-year-old biology is still controversial and you honestly expect first world tech here?
To be fair, I'd say my internet speed has increased 20X in a decade while my country's social evolution (if you will pardon the word) is sinking in the mud. The carriers look good in comparison.
Call 1000 Mb a Gigabyte instead of 1024!
But he's right in spirit. True that larger frequency bands give you more of a particular type of capacity to work with (though it is definitely not the only factor that determines data rate, much less information rate), but broadband the way it's used today is just a marketing or political term. It probably sounds just technical enough to seem modern and hip while being generic enough that providers can throw it around at will. It might as well not mean anything at all now, which I guess is why they seem to be trying to attach some particular data rate to it. You could replace it with "fastiness" and have just as much technical relevance.
I'm not confused! I see you only confirming my assertions. Unless that is in itself, confusion...
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
I live in Finland and have never heard of an ISP that would have monthly caps.
The data plan in my cellphone is priced as 4 euros (=5.7 dollars) for every 25 megs transferred. I chose that plan because it is for very occasional use (when I really need to check some timetable or something) and I have never exceeded those 25 megs. (I don't even know if it is megabits or megabytes. Haven't bothered to find out. Probably megabytes.)
The data plan on the mobile internet I use for my laptop is uncapped 1mbit/s for 16 euros (=22.8 dollars) a month. I regularly achieve that speed if I am outside (in parks, etc.) but usually not when I was inside a building.
My broadband at home is from Welho and costs 54.90 euros (=78.2 dollars) a month for 110/5 mbit/s. Yes, it's expensive but that high speeds are pretty new in this area (I used to have a 10 mbit/s until this year) so I expect the prices to go down. I haven't yet tried if it can reach that speed but I have no reason to believe I wouldn't. I've heard no complaints about the speeds and when I had my 10/1, I had never any problems in reaching the advertised speeds.
Another ISP, Sonera, delivers a bit slower speeds here. Highest one I could get to where I live is 24/2 mbit/s for 35.90 euros (=51.1 dollars) a month. On it's website Sonera says that advertised speeds are maximum speeds but actual speeds are at least half of that.
These prices may seem high - and they are - but well, Finland is an expensive country. Helsinki is one of the most expensive cities in the world. (In top 10, if I recall). Also, average wage in Finland is about 2.5k euros (=3600 dollars) a month but then again, our taxes are significantly higher... So you can't make a direct price comparison.
I think we should adopt to using the right word, not modify the definition of an existing word.
Broadband existed when most people were on dialup. Many people had it too, in the form of their cable line for cable television. I basically means that the coax cable has a broad range of frequency bandwidth able to sustain multiple separate stations/channels.
DSL, thus, wasn't broadband initially. The term was adopted to it. High speed or not, Ethernet isn't technically broadband either. It's a protocol. Typically it runs over Baseband CAT 5 cable, but it could run over broadband Coax as well. So that cable hanging out of your router an plugging into your PC is Baseband.
We need to user the right terms. Use "I have high speed Internet" or "I had low speed Internet." A 128kb/s DSL line would be baseline low speed Internet in my opinion.
Greetings and Salutations.
If we do nothing but whine about it, there will be no reason for the FCC to NOT bow to the desires of their corporate overlords. So...below is a quote of the comment I just sent to the FCC via their comment page:
http://esupport.fcc.gov/askfccapp/extapp/submitMsg.action?dept_id=bband
If the bureaucrats are slashdotted with comments against this, it MAY be enough to not only halt this foolish move, but, get them to RAISE the definition of broadband speed to something "reasonable".
I often wonder why it is that so many other countries can get much faster broadband speeds, at MUCH lower costs than Americans? It could not be because of corporations striving to such as much money out of our pockets for the shareholders, instead of trying to provide the best service possible at the lowest cost now could it?
regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
I see that there is a push by some broadband providers to LOWER the definition to 1/3 of its current minimum, from 768 mb/s to 256 mb/s. I have to strongly urge that this action NOT be taken, but, rather, that the minimum broadband speed either be left alone, or, preferably raised to 1500 mb/s.
While it may be to the economic advantage of some of these companies to drop the lower limit, there is no benefit and several likely costs and downsides for the consumer. For example:
1) By lowering the minimum speed, it will allow the providers to change their rate structure, increasing the cost for "higher" broadband speeds - so what is an already high cost today will simply increase, likely causing many Americans to have to downgrade their service.
2) Over the past several years the Internet has changed radically in the content available to the browser. It has gone from websites being mainly unadorned text with a few, small pictures, to websites that are very content heavy with much hidden control information sent to the browser, allowing font changes, large images, animations, and other content-rich presentations.
3) The types of content available to the browser have also changed radically in the past few years. Such services as streaming audio and/or video, voice over IP, etc, have made the Internet a much more useful tool for the consumer. However, these technologies will not work at any acceptable level if the minimum broadband speed is dropped below its current levels.
4) Since consumer grade broadband service in the United States is, typically, a "best effort" service offered by the providers, even today there are many cases where the consumer is paying for 1500 mb/s service, but, in reality is receiving much slower speeds, sometimes as low as the 256 mb/s speed that the providers are pushing for. I am sure that, if this lower limit is allowed, then, consumers will quickly see their "broadband" speeds dropping down to the 50 mb/s area, which is no better than the dial-up speeds available with standard modems from the 1980s.
For these and other reasons, I would strongly urge the FCC to refuse to drop the lower communication rates defining broadband, and, instead, would urge that they be raised to the suggested 1500 mb/s.
respectfully
Dave Mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
Fiber to the home in urban areas, fiber to the curb or property line in suburban and rural areas. Get rid of the copper which people steal in increasing numbers. Fiber is more reliable because people don't steal it. Only accept copper in the last 100 feet or so, up the driveway or down the block.
Simple, clear and unequivocal.
Broadband means fiber.
What the hell does that have to do with the post you replied to? Are you trying to say broadband used to be a euphemism for Rob Malda's penis or something?
Not to be snarky, but when you write to the FCC you should probably try to get your units right.
I see that there is a push by some broadband providers to LOWER the definition to 1/3 of its current minimum, from 768 mb/s to 256 mb/s. I have to strongly urge that this action NOT be taken, but, rather, that the minimum broadband speed either be left alone, or, preferably raised to 1500 mb/s.
respectfully Dave Mundt
1500mb/s? surely you mean 1500 kb/s. Have you sent the comment already? :)
Did not read the link. But broadband means a combination signal sent over multiple carriers simultaneously, like ISDN. A single, exact 2.4GHz clean carrier you describe is a baseband signal. Even though I think 2.4GHz would actually be implemented in some sort of spread spectrum, usually though...
Take off every 'sig' !!
I've posted comments to proposed rules before, but I could not, for the life of me, find the proper link to let me leave comments this time around. Is it just me, or is the process for posting comments on proposed regs rediculously painful?
I read about the comment period in the news, but the column did not provide a link to the page that would let me post comments. I went to Regulations.gov and searched on the reference numbers provided in the column, only to face pages and pages of results. Is it just incompetence (on their part *or mine*), or is their site for comments simply too Byzantine and complex? I tried searching five ways to Friday and eventually gave up. It almost seems as if they make it more complex to discourage too many people from commenting.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
If Hutchinson/Three can get away with calling *this* connection "Mobile Broadband", you can get away with fucking anything. I speak as an ex-dial-up user of many years, this is FAR worse than dial-up.
What a load of crap, anyway. What next, are they gonna call the abacus a microcomputer? These terms should *never* regress.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
You're confusing m with k.
Do you guys just complain a lot or do American companies in general have no pride in delivering the best product they can. You know just for the heck of it.
"We want to keep raising our profit margins, we know we'll get our asses handed to us if we raise prices significantly, so we'll use the shrink-ray on the product instead."
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
broadband means a combination signal sent over multiple carriers simultaneously
It sounds like you are describing not broadband communication, but spread-spectrum communication. While you may or may not be technically correct in whatever field you are referring to, the term 'broadband' can mean a number of things based on context (or in this case, whether people are allowed to give you less and call it the same thing).
And somehow I missed the fact that you mentioned spread-spectrum yourself. Apparently I fail.
I thought the definition of broadband was already quite low. I'm guessing they basically want to redefine the limits to more appropriately reflect what end users are experiencing, likely so that they don't have to be held liable for under-performing.
I'm currently subscribed to Optimum which advertises 15Mbps down. I'm lucky if I get 8 or 9Mbps. Over the past few months performance has been even worse. The only other option I have is AT&T DSL, which isn't offered at the same speeds as cable, but at least seems to perform closer to those promised speeds. Verizon advertises FIOS constantly which is ridiculous considering the service isn't even available in my state.
I'm curious to know how many people in foreign nations actually experience the high speeds we hear about here. From my experience people aren't getting anything near what I hear about, often they get worse performance than I do. I mean, for a country that supposedly lags behind the developed world in terms of broadband I find it a bit odd that the US is the world leader in terms of rich web content. One important distinction, however, is that because providers in other countries seem to compete more directly, and often there are more competitors, their prices tend to be lower. I'm convinced that improper and excessive regulation has led to the situation we face in the US where only a handful of providers can thrive and they pretty much get to control the market. Companies don't need to innovate and they don't feel the pressure to lower prices.
If the free market decides that broadband should be slower, then that is obviously the more efficient choice. If you think you can offer a faster service at a better price, you're free to compete. Just don't expect the government to step in and make things fair for you.
The one thing that still bugs me is just they still use those bits-per-second thingy.
Quick way to get 30% Funny 70% Troll: defend Opera browser on
Thank goodness you used mb/s as the suffix instead of kb/s as the suffix; they'll really take you seriously since you're quoting OC-xx rates instead of typical DSL/cable rates.
I propose that we leave the term 'broadband' alone, leaving it to its current 'definition' in the various contexts outside of 'true' speed. Rather, we enforce the use of another statistic that indicates what the consumer should expect in 'real world' scenarios. The providers should be forced to put that statistic, with very clear labeling, in their propaganda.
There is a typo in #4:
consumers will quickly see their "broadband" speeds dropping down to the 50 mb/s area,
Should be 50kb/s.
I think that the minimum up & down speeds to be considered broadband should be 1Mbps of delivered/measured bandwidth. No 'up to' clause there. The innovation of the net is severly restricted by allowing the current low upload speed that's been defined.
a few years old ISP just offered 100/10 MBit/s (no limits whatsoever) for 29 USD on FTTH.. you americans are getting SCREWED.. royally.. and who cares about the area mass, in densely populated areas (where lots of y'all live) you should have FTTH everywhere and from multiple ISPs at that..
...to lower the minimum threshold for for terms "weasel," "scum sucking capitalist pigs" "lying corporate trash" and "fucking leeches on society" so as to encompass these pricks.
This space available.
2.4GHz signals can only carry so much information.
Says who? Seriously read up on what makes something broadband vs. what isn't. Hint: it has nothing to do with the frequency you are on...
I'll explain: The big advantage with using bandwidth around 13cm (where wifi devices live) is there is way more of it where as the lower in frequency you go there is far less. Example - the *entire* HF spectrum (30 mhz to 2 mhz) is only 28 MHz, where is the 13cm band alone is more than 150 MHz wide. Its the same reason they moved all the TV stations in the USA to UHF. They were gobbling up precious bandwidth (7 MHz per channel!) in a place there really wasn't much to begin with.
Some people on here sit around and act like Comcast/AT&T etc are doing the best they can, but I have to laugh as when I was living in Scotland of all places I could purchase 30 megabits (cable internet) for about the same as my crappy 768k Verizon connection costs and it came with tv and phone. I was playing WoW on US servers with lower ping too than my Verizon connection.
s/mb/kb/g
hey, it was probobly retorical yet I feel obligated to reply.
/w comments and modding like /. here does (even anon accounts posting what HAS to be posted, a mighty weapon if the pen beats the sword...a computer must be a cannon then eh? ;) ;) :D (well, that's what "I" call them, please mod waaaaaay up the MAXIMUM modding....*sigh* digg.com's moddding is kinda nice sometimes....to actually have 100+ people all saying some PM, MP, Senator is an idiot is nice)
Kinda like how EVERYONE here understands the greedy ISP's and lazy FCC guys (profit and lack of upgrades causing actual WORK)
You can't elect someone to actually REPRESENT you as the party system as it is today is flawed.
1. You vote for the least evil guy. (you THINK...LMFAO)
2. Everyone else votes for their least evil guy or someone with a nice catch phrase ("I'm not a crook!", yeah, that sounds catchy!)
3. If yer on the "winning team" (voted the same as the mainstream population) then you'll STILL lose your voice from lobbyists and large corporations wineing and dining your vote into oblivion.
4. Lack of public charts, stats, and records open sourced/fully disclosed = unlimited theft from trusted public officials w/o recourse.
5. Also must point out that RE-ELECTED officials are done from lack of just HOW MUCH theft/diabolical actions are recorded for public views.
Next election I'm voting open source party.
Pirate Party, still better then libs or cons (Canada) but I doubt will get a serious vote from any "normie". Well if their platform is fully disclosing the political process for the public to view online 24/7
Open Source Party would be the new age party to represent anyone here or grandma who just wants her canada.gov website to show pie graphs and nice front end features/aps on the website. Everyone can bitch, mod each other down and vote along side favorite (or least favorite, haha) politician. Polls start coming back showing lack of public demands being met, it's recorded for next election, the public official not acting in the public's best interest (most likely bought by corps/lobbyists while ignoring the public) is BOOOOOOOTED (or rebooted, wow imagine if they were meant to mend and defend and actually lived by a c0de?
Some thoughts.
Guess PP will have to do till OSP gets in. It's the lack of public thoughts like on here that is the weak link in our government. If it's not commenter to commenter w/o sites like cbc news pre moderating yer thoughts before it's "allowed" to be posted then the full array of thoughts from public are missed, sadly.
k, end rant. I'll find another spot to add to........NOW
In the parent post, all the mb/s notations should be replaced with kb/s.
Of course AT&T and Comcast want to get rid of VOIP, they both sell phone service. Keep lowering the definitions and they might eventually get to claim that they complied with the conditions of their multi-billion dollar hand-out by the Fed to build broadband infrastructure to the rural areas of the country.
Pure greed, that's all it is.
every other day, they come up with something to screw americans. yet,noone still came up and called a stop to this morondom.
Read radical news here
1.5 Gbps would be a nice lower limit to have, but unfortunately it's unrealistic.
BTW - I think you meant kb/s.
Who cares WTF it's called? Call it Fred Flintstone if you like, it won't make any difference. When I traded my AppleModem 300 for a 1200, I was switching to a relatively broad band device. The distinction is arbitrary from the start, so arguing over it like it's a quantity is a waste.
Whatever name it's given, it comes with a technical specification and that's how it's sold. If they wanted to take 3M down/.5M up and call it 10M down/1M up, that would be an issue worth fussing over.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Both extremes are ridiculous. Lowering the definition to 256kbps is absurd -- my parents have a 256kbps DSL line now, it's not fast enough to even watch youtube. Sorry, but just being able to load web pages is not what people consider broadband. I'm not sure if 768kbps (which is apparently the current definition) would quite cut it or not but at least it's close.
On the other hand, claiming 5mbps minimum is "broadband" is equally absurd... ideally, it'd be great for everyone to have that, but it doesn't enable any major new services compared to 1mbps or so... and if someone has, for instance, 20,000+ foot phone line length, no cable, and are like 10-50+ miles from the nearest cell site, they can get 1mbps or so with current EVDO technology, but even with LTE or Wimax are unlikely to get much faster (the higher speeds would require being nearer to the site). Someone who gets wimax, LTE, some directional wifi, whatever out to these places (or indeed EVDO or in theory WCDMA) should get credit for getting wireless broadband covering places like this.
Yeah, take it, customer. Ooh, you like that? Yeah, baby. Take all three and a half inches of it, you whore. Only don't mention it to the FCC, we told them it was 10 inches.
No la, Malaysia has its own definition - it's broadband if it's > 56kbit/s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_malaysia
My 70RM (USD20) / month 512kbit/s has recently started to frequently exceed the local threshhold for broadband. For the previous 2 years, the line was completely dead for several days per month. This is the kind of 'competition' US ISPs are presumably focussing on.
Ain't it funny? The two lamest "broadband" providers that did not want to make the investment in sound broadband technology now want standards lowered so they can be considered competitive with the rest of the world. Talk about corporate welfare.
Shouldn't that be Kb in stead of mb?
Isn't that what they call Windows 7 in Europe, after it's been emasculated by having its Internet Explorer removed?
Thanks for the link, I posted a letter / comment as well.
...and inventiveness is constrained by greed.
With ever more data available, ever larger data sets must be moved over the 'net. Should this pressure to redefine what is broadband in order to slice and dice more profit out of the pipe succeed, some cost-constrained hobbyist, student, or interested scientist or engineer in the U.S. who suspects something interesting that may yield something tangible exists in a large dataset may be forced to give up because - under the artificial speed constraints that they face - it would take forever to get the data down to where he or she can manipulate it...and the U.S. loses out.
Seriously: How will the U.S. compete, when in the U.S. the greed of individuals and private entities is allowed to supersede the national interest while other nations do not have that handicap?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
from 768 mb/s to 256 mb/s. I have to strongly urge that this action NOT be taken, but, rather, that the minimum broadband speed either be left alone, or, preferably raised to 1500 mb/s.
Really, Dave. mb/s! A great letter, except for your lack of proof reading. At those speeds my dream of downloading the intarwebs would be almost tangible.