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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.
... lower the bar
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
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.
The major difference between our service and theirs is that our plans aren't rated by data transferred per month. In the EU, Japan, even Australia, end users have 5G, 10G, 25G plans et al. We're "unlimited" in the sense that we could download every minute of every day of a month and with the exception of being throttled (by either the company or our flatmates) could hit theoretical maximums well outside the financial means of these international customers.
Our method is to limit traffic use by limiting how much you can use at any one time.
Theirs is to limit traffic use by letting you get whatever you want as fast as you want... but make you pay if you go over a certain line.
God help us if Broadband pricing guidelines become Wireless pricing guidelines.
-1, Disagree is not a valid option. Troll, Flamebait and Offtopic are not a substitute.
Trying to educate the masses about the difference between "baseband" "broadband" and "wideband" is pretty much useless at this point, IMHO.
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.
How is that different from any other ISP that does the exact same thing? If you want guarantees on your throughput you're going to have to shell out for a dedicated line.
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...
Not necessarily. One way you can educate the public is tell them that broadband allows them to stream their porn real-time.
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
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
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?
So we are unlimited except for throttling and undocumented caps ? Sounds like a rather brain dead interpretation of unlimited to me. Which ISP do you happen to work for?
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!
The whole point of "broadband" is that it does support streaming audio and video.
If they want to offer some kind of medium-band fast surfing speed, then call it that. Don't try to lie about it.
How about "not quite so-broadband"? Or "grampa-band"?
Politicians love to do this kind of crap, though. Want to divert federal money for the Great Lakes to your precious little local lake? Fine, just get Congress to declare your late a Great Lake For The Purpose of This Bill.
People who make carrot jelly upset you stupidly legally defined jelly to be made with fruit? Fine! Don't get rid of the definition as over-intrusive actions of the government. Rather, just redefine carrots as fruit.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
...and encryption technology as munitions, for that matter.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Correct. It's not reasonable to expect an ISP to guarantee a certain speed if the line is shared (as if the case with cable and DSLAMs). I have Verizon DSL and except when a truck ran into the switching station and turned it into scrap (knocking out phone service), they've provided exactly what I pay for, so no complaints here.
As for Europe versus United States, making comparisons of tiny EU states (poland, slovak) versus a continent-spanning federation makes little sense. The USA is *big*. It took me 4 days to drive from Boston to Seattle... and another 5 days to go from California back to Boston. And in-between there's a whole lot of nothing. Here are the stats when you compare large federations versus large federations:
Russian Federation 7 Megabits per secomd
E.U., U.S. 6 Mbit/s
Canada, Australia 5
Brazil, China 2
Mexico 1 Mbit/s
And if you prefer to look on a state-by-state basis of the EU, US, and Canada then you get:
1 Sweden 11 Mbit/s
2 Delaware 10
3 Washington 9
4 Netherlands,Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts 8
5 Virginia,New York,Colorado,Connecticut,Arizona, Germany, British Columbia 7 Mbit/s
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It's the culmination of the Reaganomics era, where everyone "learned" that the almighty dollar was the only thing that mattered, and you get your bonuses based on quarterly performance, not on long-term performance.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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.
Letting you know right now, Hungary is smaller than Indiana in size, and has 4M more people. Why does nobody get that it's much easier to cover a much smaller country???
The telecoms were given $200B in financial incentives in the 1990s to provide symmetrical 45Mb/s bandwidth and universal service. Read this, or at PBS. Or just Google it yourself.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Don't Blame Reaganomics for this. Blame short sighted greed, where next reporting cycle is all that matters and long term performance is ignored.
If you look at the .COM bubble, the Housing Bubble, the Credit Bubble, and all the other bubbles, the whole thing was based on the next reporting cycle, and not core values and needs.
And most of those occurred under Bush and Clinton. And does anyone remember the fantastic job Carter did with the economy /sarcasm.
Sorry, but real economics is about improving products (and services), lowering cost of production (increasing productivity) and strong competition.
Our current system is broken, because Politics has dictated that it be broken. Every time some new regulation goes into place to stop some asshole from being an asshole, it affects everything else.
I blame both the (R) and the (D) for these problems, as both sides have passed ill advised and onerous regulations on production, which don't serve anything other than to drive up costs.
So now we have a country burdened by so many regulations it is cheaper, easier, and less hassles to hire a Chinese company that is unburdened by any regulations to make products for us. And quality doesn't matter because it is cheaper to replace something that is broken than it is to get it fixed.
If you want a good example of what I'm talking about, take a look at why Snapper Lawnmowers aren't sold at Walmart. And then don't buy crappy one season lawnmowers from Walmart, and get a real one from Snapper.
Snapper forsook short term gains for a long term outlook, and I applaud them.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Yeah, cable used to be like that, too. Just wait till the rest of us get connected and then we'll all know what it's really like.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Because that's the same BS argument trotted out and destroyed every 5 mins. Fine, go by population density - why do major urban areas (NYC, LA etc) still have sucky internet?
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.
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.
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/
I have crappy internet in Toronto, in Montreal, and in Philadelphia, all of which are in small, dense urbanized zones closer to Eurasia than to most of America in density. Why is Alaska, the Great North or the plains states trotted out as an argument? Sweden has the top broadband speeds for Europe, and it's 9 million people spread over the area of California!
NYC has great internet.
Yup, America... whee. Moving into a Dark Age faster every year on every front and in every sector.
You guys have the world's most fucked up regulation of the private sector, largely because of the long-term failure of your political class. You can see this over and over; both the current healthcare problems and the "broadband" provision debacle are instances of the wider problem. Given that, is it any wonder that you're getting screwed over by your private sector's modern-day robber barons? And I suspect that fixing the problems will be a very painful process. But that's what happens when politics ends up in hoc to one very specific special interest group; the already rich and powerful. (By comparison, here in the UK we have a different problem: the bureaucracy is too powerful and too metropolitan.)
Interestingly, your current Administration looks to be the most inclined to fix these problems for a long time (at least since the Carter era, and possibly longer; I'm not that good on US domestic history that far back). Pity that Congress doesn't look to be aligned here, so things are unlikely to move much.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
thanks for the informative article. maybe next you could link a source for the much-disputed numbers you posted?
do not read this line twice.
The users of speedtest.net choose to use the service, so it's a self-selecting sample. This is not a good thing if you're looking for a scientifically rigorous study.
Grandma won't be running speedtest on her 56k: she already knows that it's slow.