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FCC Proposes 100Mbps Minimum Home Broadband Speed
oxide7 writes "The US Federal Communications Commission unveiled a plan on Tuesday that would require Internet providers to offer minimum home connection speeds by 2020, a proposal that some telecommunications companies panned as unrealistic. The FCC wants service providers to offer home Internet data transmission speeds of 100 megabits per second to 100 million homes by a decade from now, Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said."
Good thing I got fiber to my house a month ago in my house out in the sticks. Now I get 20Mbps down/4 mbps up and my ISP (Smithville Telephone) has plans going up to 100 down/25 up I think, although its like $140/month.
That would be all well and good if it were the Government's place to mandate minimum speeds. Frankly I'd rather see them focus on keeping the 'net free and neutral or forcing the telcos to expand broadband coverage like they were supposed to after all the incentives they got. Let market forces deal with bandwidth.
...I'm going to have to side with the ISPs on this one. I think requiring them to offer high-speed internet to that many people is realistic by 2020, but at that speed? That's pushing it...
The only way to really get ISPs off their collectively slow asses is to increase competition. Too many areas of the country are stuck with only one or two choices...which isn't a choice at all.
Living With a Nerd
Bad idea. Have you seen what most ISPs charge for 15?
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Google just announced their plans to do lay high-speed fiber... and now the FCC is defining a minimum bandwidth. ;-)
Looks like the internet in that little country called the US will finally catch up with the rest of the world... Maybe i'll finally get some speed from US P2P users now...
Awesome, so now we have ten years to catch up to what Japan has now. Lead the charge, FCC!
Sounds like some sort of feint by the telcos to battle Google's ISP plans?
I rarely get anything served to me at higher than 400 KB/sec.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
That would require that the U.S. take the world lead in internet development. It's completely unrealistic to expect something so unprecedented.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Because 100mbps is the bandwidth required for the telescreens?
There is a war going on for your mind.
I like how we Americans think its fine that the rest of the world is surpassing us in everything else, bandwidth included.
World's most powerful nation going at the speed of fail.
They do it in the most dense areas. The big cities where fiber is already running and put users on it.... that is cake. Now for us out in the sticks if we can get 1.5mb by 2020, that would be a great start.
This is the IT equivalent of Bush's "We're going to Mars" announcement.
It will be followed by actions which will make it impossible. (The equivalent of cutting Nasa's budget and programs)
So my money is on...reducing competition, letting infrastructure fail, and killing net neutrality for the Trifecta.
Who'll give me Vegas odds on these?
...that 100 million people by 2020 should have a pretty pony. This will result in 50 people receiving tainted horse steaks by 2035.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Oh really? I completely disagree, 100megabits is 100% realistic, I live in the darned middle of nowhere and got 1/12,5 of that speed! And we are talking 10 years, an entire decade! How can it no be realistic.
And its megaBITS not megaBYTES(1 byte = 8 bits).
I, for one, welcome our new pony-mandating FTC overlords and our rainbow-mandating EPA overlords. Every American should have the government-granted right to upload pictures of their pony galloping under a rainbow at 100 Mbps speeds!
From the article:
"First, we don't think the customer wants that. Secondly, if (Google has) invented some technology, we'd love to partner with them,"
Almost sounds like a troll to me. I think most consumers would love a 100Mbps connection -- assuming it was reasonably priced. That being said, Verizon already offers FiOS at speeds up to 50Mbps, so 100Mbps isn't that much of a stretch.
Sadly, I'm stuck in an area where it's either ADSL1.x or cable.
The troll with karma.
Now if only they could force companies to unbundle their services and keep the cost proportional to the service. By that I mean, if they bundle tv, phone and internet for $99/month, they can offer each service for $33/month.
Which is not the case at the moment. I cannot get internet service from either Verizon or Comcast (my only two providers) for $33/month at the same speed as they offer for their bundled service.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
That would require that the U.S. take the world lead in internet development. It's completely unrealistic to expect something so unprecedented.
Clearly a humorous post but according to some metrics (The Connectivity Scorecard) the United States just lost the telecommunications lead to Sweden as they quietly eke past us.
My work here is dung.
WTF is the FCC doing, making suggestions about my dealings with my local ISP over a link that doesn't cross state lines?
That rhetorical question has kind of a quaint ring to it. Let's face it: America has certain expectations from their government, regardless of legal concerns. So let's just legalize it. I propose two constitutional amendments:
Congress shall have the power to do whatever they think is a good idea. All previous amendments conflicting with this, are hereby repealed.
The right to be subject to physics shall not be infringed; other rights are negotiable.
Pretty soon, we'll have 1Gbps connections to-the-home with 1GB monthly transfer limits. I can't wait. I'll be able to transfer my monthly quota in mere hours now!
Speeds doesn't matter one god damn when usage is so restricted. Telcos and Commcos win again!
I agree, it is unrealistic to expect the telcos to do a little work and actually try and earn the paychecks they're pulling in. But hey, wishful thinking.
They should federalize all franchising so that local and state governments cannot limit which telecoms and cable companies can operate where.
I am glad I heard that Devo is back to sing play out the end of days. While I agree that things will probably get twisted, I would like to see higher band-widths available to the general public. The general demoralizing and insulting response to something the government is *trying* to improve is funny. It's like kids getting upset with their parents promising a pony for a birthday. Instead of being happy at the COMPLETELY ridiculous gift, the insults and concerns of: well, if I even get the pony, who is going to feed it, where is it going to stay, my parents aren't even going to give me time to play with it, it will probably kick me, nobody else is going to get a pony, I already bought my own pony...
Lighten up people, you will have enough time to complain when things fail.
Until we repeal the government mandated monopoly. Or they'll just redefine 6 Mbps as 100 Mbps. I certainly wouldn't put such douchebaggery passed Comcast, I mean Xfinity, to do so.
In the mid-90s the Telecom industry was given 200 billion dollars to roll out 45 megabit internet across the country. Nothing ever came of it, and the telecom industry got to pocket that $200 billion.
Sounds to me that the telecoms should know a good thing when they hear it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
As long as they are just saying that to be called (the word they are 'defining') you need to maintain such a minimum speed, slower offerings should be allowed, but just can't claim to be .
Just as their are regulations on what is given the name 'organic', we still allow non-organic foods, but they aren't allowed to claim to be organic.
100 Mbps? Does the FCC not realize that 99% of all residences only have copper cabling to them (either twisted pair or coax)? It is impossible to get 100 Mbps out of such a transmission medium over any meaningful distance. The only solution to this would be to overbuild the entire telecommunications infrastructure with fiber optic cable. Phone and Cable companies aren't going to like that--they already have billions of dollars invested in the current copper plant out there.
Is 100 Mbps feasible? Yes. Is it feasible by 2020? Yes, but certainly not to everyone.
I have a bad feeling about this...
If the FCC, (government), wants this speed, then what does that allow them to do? What could you do with that if you were in their shoes and had their resources?
Hmmm. 100 megabits/sec. At that rate, my 2 gig cap would be reached in
2000 megabytes * 8 bits/byte / 100 megabits per sec = 160 seconds aka 2 minutes 40 seconds
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The truth is by 2020, everyone should have 10 Gbps fiber to the home. Anything less will make internet speed the limiting factor.
Let's also remember that Sweden had common, affordable 100Mbps to the home almost a decade ago.
However, I think it would be better if the FCC would give tax benefits to companies that hit the minimum specs rather than fining them for not hitting the mark...
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
It is the government's responsibility to ensure consumer satisfaction. Raising the standards is not government interference. Interference would be to aiding one provider against another. We the people must demand minimum standards. We the people must protect our privacy. We the people have other choices as well, including denying access to public networks and spectrums for any vendor who does not meet our minimum needs.
Those who claim that their DSL speeds are adequate now, can continue to use those speeds without harm. Higher speeds don't mean your slow connections will be cut off or be affected.
If these simple tenets can be adhered to, maybe we will have a chance to catch up with a dozen other countries who enjoy these speeds and benefits right now.
What ever happened to free market offerings. If there's a market for slower speeds then isp's should be allowed to offer them. I just hope I stash enough money in time before the government takes control of absolutely everything...cuz i'm f'n outta here as soon as I'm there. USA is such a police state now it SUCKS..
Besides FCC not having authority to do this, why is this the government's job? What's next, mandating home delivery of groceries? This is government run amok.
Just think, if we passed laws against stealing and killing, then nobody would steal or kill right? I thought Congress was given power to regulate trade between the States, not REQUIRE trade between the States.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
100MBps in 10 years ???
LOL!!!!
By then Japan and South Korea will be at 2,000GBps!!!
I lived in Japan for 16 years. Back in 2006, I had 100Bps FTTH for $79.
The US is falling further and further behind.
Soon, we will have to travel to Cuba to get fast internet ... just like proper and cheap health care.
Carlitto
At least then there's no reason for you jerks not to seed.
You are clearly a conspiracy theory nut job.
and other government proposals include ensuring that all americans will have an above average income by 2016.
Cingress is also going to change the laws of thermodynamics to make internal combustion engines 100% efficient.
but why exactly is the FCC telling companies what to do, or for that matter what we want? Perhaps this is why we have a 12 trillion deficit. Its not the FCC's job to make sure we all have internet. It's their job to make sure the internet we do have is fair. This is just another piece of job security masquerading as good intentions.
Thinking back 10 years, we had 56k around here 10 years ago. Now a days 10-16 MBit is very common (central Europe) in urban regions (where around 1/3rd of the population lives). Projecting that to 2020, we'll be at 200-300 MBit. If the US does not manage to upgrade their infrastructure to at least 100MBit in residential areas by then, it will probably declared a developing country or something.
Hell, around here we even have most of the fibre laid already, just have to get the switch from copper based endpoints to fibre (building wiring).
So do the telcos in the states really think 100MBit in 10 years is unrealistic? Weird nation..
IEEE-USA has been advocating bi-directional gigabit broadband for several years. The telcos have offered dumbed-down, legacy speeds because they are trying to become more closely associated with the entertainment industry than with telecommunications. The entertainment and other content industries do not want the competition that comes when every subscriber can become an originator.
The failure to mandate that broadband is at least 100 mbps places the US way behind other countries and makes our innovators much less able to develop new concepts in broadband-based applications. That is why Japanese who come to the US are said to feel like they are entering a telecommunications third world.
The FCC is moving to have the US join the developed telecommunications world.
Good!!!
100 Mbps? Does the FCC not realize that 99% of all residences only have copper cabling to them (either twisted pair or coax)? It is impossible to get 100 Mbps out of such a transmission medium over any meaningful distance. The only solution to this would be to overbuild the entire telecommunications infrastructure with fiber optic cable.
Maybe you don't realize, but yes. That is exactly what they're going for here. A complete overhaul of the US telecommunications infrastructure.
Put a 48-port Netgear switch on each phone pole and run Cat6 to the house. Done!
rooooar
I would be happy to just get a true 1 mb/s. I live in a rural area, and other than dial-up, the only option I have is WiFi to an access point that is overloaded. Everybody in the area uses it, and on a Saturday afternoon and evening, it is not much better than 56k dial-up.
Not that it would matter what speed you get if they keep they extremely low max caps.
and why 100Mbps, it seems so excessive, I find my 5Mbps adequate. And what about upload, if their is not a similar increase in upload speed you would not see any benefit form 100Mbps unless you download from many many servers at the same time. With 100 Mbps you will be able to run out of bandwidth for the month in a few minutes.
And their is probably a lot more important things they could be going for: net neutrality, increased caps, stopping the angry phone calls from ISP (complaining that you are ruining it for everyone) when you actually use close to your max rate you paid for.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The telescreen that made it possible for Big Brother to constantly observe the population of Oceania never seemed practical when I first read the book back in 1975. How could you have that much bandwidth available for so many two-way video links, and who could possibly monitor all of them 24/7?
But now we've got computers for emotion, face, and voice recognition, so all you'd need is a few hundred techs to work the Automated Crisis Avoidance Machines run by the Department of Mental Health (soon to be a Cabinet-level position) and we could make sure everybody loves Big Brother, even in the "privacy" of their own homes.
If we only had the bandwidth...
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
I bet ISPs will be rubbing their hands together over this: "100mbps minimum? No problem - just make everybody pay for a T6 connection!"
No sig today...
My 20 Mbps comcast works great and is more than fast enough even with all the HD movie's I download. let market forces determine connection speeds.
there are 10 types of people in this world, those who read binary and those who don't. which are you!
> Umm... Where in the Constitution does it authorize the federal government to do this?
The ICC of course. The fact that all of the major players are engaging in activities across state boarders makes it a pretty obvious fit. You don't even have to bend it out of shape too much.
Where am I? Where is this thing called Slashdot?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
There are 350 million people in the US - and probably more than 400 Million by 2020. This mandate means that 75% of the population will be excluded from the mandate, and probably put on the back burner to make it law. I have decent internet (3Mb/$25) but there are folks just 20 miles down the road who pay more than $70/mo for 384k/128k service.
I like the thought, but I'd rather see better regulation of what the various terms mean. "Unlimited," or any term which suggests that there is no cap on download quantity should be forbidden for any line which does not have a allowable greater than (max burst d/l+u/l speed x 30 days). I'm okay with defining terms for internet speed, as long as all ranges have a defined name (think of RF spectrum bands).
If they want better rollout, they need to include more than just the city centers.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
100 Mbps? Does the FCC not realize that 99% of all residences only have copper cabling to them (either twisted pair or coax)? It is impossible to get 100 Mbps out of such a transmission medium over any meaningful distance. The only solution to this would be to overbuild the entire telecommunications infrastructure with fiber optic cable. Phone and Cable companies aren't going to like that--they already have billions of dollars invested in the current copper plant out there.
Is 100 Mbps feasible? Yes. Is it feasible by 2020? Yes, but certainly not to everyone.
OK, first of all, I'm thinking your "99%" estimate is a bit out of whack. Not only am I seeing every NEW subdivision layed out with fiber everywhere, but they're also working quickly to retrofit a LOT of areas with fiber.
Also, my cable provider in the area is offering speeds upwards of 40Mb over coax now, so giving technology another decade, I'm pretty confident we'll be able to mux a 100Mb stream across existing coax infrastructure, if we can't already do it today.
Lastly, the "billions of dollars invested" with regards to "current" copper? Don't you mean 40-year old copper? If any telcos are out there laying NEW copper instead of fiber, they're insane. You can't really sit here and talk about "billions" in PAST spend when referring to future outlay. Water under the bridge, and I'm QUITE certain the telcos made their billions back on the 40-year old copper runs. Sorry, but the taxes I paid to my telcos for years, along with the monopoly they continue to carry into the fiber world, I shed NO tears. It's not like we as customers won't eventually be paying for whatever they invest in infrastructure anyway.
And IPv6 will be in wide use by then, too, right?
This is over the next 10 years. Europe already has 100Mbps to the home and Japan has Gigabit to the home. It's not that hard to do, cable (DOCSIS 3.0) already supports 300Mbps down/100Mbps up. VDSL supports 100Mbps too. In 10 years, the rest of the world most likely will have gigabit or 10Gb to the home.
The issue is that the carriers rather suck you dry than offer you better service. All they have to do is enable the service and maybe put some more effort in expanding the backbone. There is enough dark fibre and even lighted fibre that is ready to support those speeds. How much do you pay for DSL/Cable? How much subscribers does your ISP have? How many years did you have the same speeds now? 5 years? 10 years?
The really small ISP's just rents/leases somebody else's hardware and cables, when the parent company goes up in speed, they will go up too.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The FCC needs to untie the hands of Municipalities. Countless Cities would deploy their own public fiber network and offer it as a public utility. They can't now because the telco's would(and have) sued them on non-complete clauses (and such). Get the ISPs out of the infrastructure business and let the Cities handle the last mile. Then, wealthy communities will pay for their own. A government subsidy on production of fiber optic stuff might help.
Basically everyone with a phone in the USA has been paying an extra fee for decades now to fund rollout of broadband to rural areas. Not only have the rural areas not gotten it, even a lot of built-up areas don't have it. In fact, when municipalities have tried to create their own high-speed networks, the telcos have gone so far as to sue to prevent it. Taking $200 billion to do something, then making efforts to prevent that something from even happening? Evil.
I'd like the FCC to ask the telcos where the $200 billion went... and if the telcos want to claim things are impossible, maybe the FCC can ask them to give that $200 billion back, since we all know there's a company (Google) that's chomping at the bit to install super-fast FTTH.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
The government says: "Provide 100Mbps for home broadband service. Seriously, guys. Cut this shit out."
The telcos and ISPs say: "ZOMG NOOOOO there is no way we can do that now give us another $200b like bak in teh 90s plz kthx"
Google says: "Look, shut UP already! We're working on it! Just give us more fiber lines already! Geez!"
Regular customers say: "YAAAAAAY! Now I can download my E-Mails and my internet faster! That'll make my computer crash less!"
Slashdot says: "But that won't even let me download HALF my hentai and anime torrents in a single day! What is WRONG with you? Priorities, people!"
Ten years ago I was surfing the internet at 56kbps. Today I can get a 30Mbs connection for around the same price I was paying for my metered 56kBs a decade ago. That represents more than a 500 fold increase over a decade. To think that the next ten years will only provide a mere 3 fold increase is somewhat depressing.
My botnet will be able to pump out ONE THOUSAND times the spam that it does now.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
That's what the auto-industry said about the catalytic converter (too expensive, too hard to change over, will ruin competition). As a rule, I don't like government meddling in these types of things, but it's obvious we're not doing the internet thing right when we look at the rest of the world. It's amazing what you can do when you HAVE to. This goes for companies too.
Sorry about the mess.
I live in Sweden. The apartment building I live in got fiber to the basement last year. There are standard cat6 Ethernet cables going from there to every apartment. 10mbit is affordable, 100mbit is very expensive right now, but still.. if you are willing to pay $110/month for a 100mbit Internet connection then you can have that. If 100 megabits 10 years from now is unrealistic in the US then I feel sorry for those who live there.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Ten years ago I had a 1.5mb cable modem from Comcast (actually I think I got my first cable line in 1998).
Today I have a 20mb cable modem from RCN (which costs nearly 2x as much as the 1.5mb line I used to have).
Each of these were the fastest consumer lines available to me.
100mb in 10 years sounds rather unambitious really. Consumer usage (I'm assuming) is probably growing at a rate akin to Moore's Law. There would be 6 and 2/3 cycles of Moore's Law in 10 years. My 20mb line should turn into a 1300mb line in 10 years at this rate and consumer usage will probably meet the demands.
Unfortunately by this logic I should have a 96mb line available already, which isn't true at least where I live
Tibbon
tibbon.com
I would honestly be very happy with 10mb to my house, well shit, even 2mb would be nice; better than the only service I can get other than dial up. (1mb wireless)
If brute force isn't working, you are not using enough.
I think it's great that someone is actually defining a minimum speed for what can be called broadband. There are quite a few services available today such as BPL, Satellite and some DSL connections which are really more like old-school ISDN than the other "Broadband" options. Unfortunately anything which is always on and/or faster than a 56k modem often gets labeled as "Broadband" and bought up by consumers who don't know any better.
Still, looking at it that way I would think it's more of an FTC issue than an FCC one. Also, I can't see mandating that companies must sell only "Broadband" internet connections. If someone wants to pay less for a slower speed that's their right. They just shouldn't get to advertise it as broadband.
Now, for what that minimum speed would be? I think 100MB is WAY too optimistic. 8MB should be just fine although setting it at something like 20MB could force a smaller more realistic upgrade which we could benefit from as consumers. Setting it at 100MB seems like it will probably force the price up beyond what most of us want to pay. Unless of course the networks are already capable or close to capable of this and the providers are just holding back so they can take credit for rolling out upgrades later. I often wonder why I keep reading articles about the speeds FiOS is capable of and yet the speeds they offer are so much slower. I find it hard to believe though that the cable companies can get 100MB over their coax lines. Unless maybe if they are using that new DOCSIS version which uses multiple lines per house. That is a stupid idea though because multiple lines just means higher failure rates.
I connected to the Internet over a phone line at 14.4 kbps in the mid 90s, which is was practically as fast as you could connect over an analog phone line to an ISP at the time. 15 years later, I connect to the Internet over cable at 12 Mbps. That's an average bandwidth increase of 57% per year, compounded annually. Going from 12 Mbps to 100 Mbps in 10 years is an average increase of only 24% per year, also compounded annually.
I think the government's effort would be better spent deregulating the industry. If ISPs were forced to compete with each other, prices would be lower, and service would probably be faster.
What's the bloody point of having anything over 512k/sec with those ridiculous monthly caps in downloads.....
And what's with this redicu
If cable companies like Comcast weren't spending more on their cable franchises (monopoly licences/payoffs) than they are on capital. Comcast juices its customers relentlessly. I used to live in the downtown of an urban area about 1/4 mile from their DC, and of course paid the exact same, for the same s**t speed as someone in the middle of nowhere. Good stuff. Free markets rule!
My porn will finish before I do.
It should be easy in the major metropolitan areas. We have lot's of area though where there are only a few houses per square mile. Who's going to wire up all of that? Cable and DSL have been slowly expanding into the countryside but that expansion will probably be put on hold for quite a while. Also, even in more populated areas wiring an apartment for high speed is not the same as wiring houses. It's just one fiber connection and some CAT-6. I really doubt your fiber connection to the building actually supports 100MB at the same time for all apartments. Your resources pooled provide that nice connection and it shares well because you aren't all likely to be downloading at the exact same moment. How would you wire up 100MB to every single family house of a suburban block? How about a suburb full of such blocks?
It is actually pretty reasonable, if you're talking about peak service. I mean, this is already commonplace in South Korea. Hanaro Telecom rolled it out and in six months, had 200,000 customers on DOCSIS 3.0 at 100Mb/s... back in 2007. Today, most of the country is on 100Mb/s fiber. This all started with a mandate back in 2003.
This year, the UK's already taking about a similar program, to wire the whole country at 100Mb/s by 2017. The USA simply has to say something, or we're going to look more like the hillbillies of internet connectivity than we already do.
-Dave Haynie
You must be new here.
The Constitution grants the Federal Government the right to pass laws to deal with some things not specifically addressed in the Constitution, and the States rights to deal with others.
Given that radio waves, much less fiber optic internet, had not yet been discovered in 1787, this is a very clear case in which one needs not simply heed the Constitution, but all of the law built on top of it since.
You may now return to drinking that teabagger kool-aid.
-Dave Haynie
Same thing is happening with the "Smart Grid" for broadband over power lines. The government is giving us money, everyone down the chain is saying "Sure, we can do something if we had the money", and the engineers at the bottom are saying "No! You are giving the money to the wrong people! Spend it over here and you can get it done!" But... If the engineers at the bottom yell too loudly, they get fired. As such, the engineer at the bottom will say "Sure, just give me the money and we can make something work."
So they give the money to multiple companies, hedging their bets that someone will get it done. Then, when it is all finished, none of the companies really have enough money to complete the project, and it dies because every company is asking for more money.
But, if we give it to a single company, then you get monopoly issues.
So, who do you give money to? You can't give it to the current companies. They get stuck in the past and what has worked/failed. You can't give it to a brand new company, since they don't have the experience required. So how can you make sure you have the proper company and the proper $$ amount?
Hopefully, these threats will cause the industry as a whole to focus on the higher datarates. Hopefully, the next design from Cisco/whomever will not be a cost-reduced hardware for the current system, but a higher datarate device.
IMHO, the only thing the government Can do is provide tax incentives and very low interest loans earmarked for high-speed internet. Giving money only works if the technology already exists.
Also, keep in mind that many of the cable companies run really fast fiber to the neighborhood node. So you're not really dealing with coax over crazy distances. I don't think anyone's running new copper for this kind of thing, it's only the last mile or less issue, whether you fiber, coax, or well, nothing, to the home.
-Dave Haynie
Yep the telecom stole $200 billion and are still taking money from people that was supposed to be spent on broadband.
Read the report, over 400 pages showing how telecom stole and continues to steal from consumers.
http://www.teletruth.org/docs/broadbandscandalfree.pdf
We paid for this with the Telecom Act of 1984.
We paid for it again in the '90s.
We paid for it again in the '00's (aughts?, naughts?).
Maybe now it is time for them to deliver.
If not, legislate them into hell and let the municipalities take over like water and electricity.
Not so sure I want my government to be the first one to touch my data (instant man in the middle), but the telcos/cablecos give the feds anything they want, so it is not much different.
Arguments that the government should not mandate higher bandwidth, or anything else for that matter, and should be left to market forces are all well and good. The problem is that 'market forces' is an economic term of art which is a just a fill in the blank phrase which is the same as saying 'let's see what happens'. It does not guarantee that you get the desired result. The market will settle at some equilibrium where prices will be relatively stable and people will be able to pay a certain amount of money for a certain amount of product/service and companies will make a certain amount of profit.
So, you can look at this any number of ways, but here are a few:
1) We are at the equilibrium point today (ignoring that there is already government intervention creating mini-quasi-monopolies.) You are not going to get any more bandwidth except through small incremental increases. The market forces have spoken. Happy now?
2) Now let's not ignore the current government intervention. Those mini-quasi-monopolies exist. Exactly why do they exist? The argument in favor is that government intervention is/was required to entice corporations to make the massive investments required to build the infrastructure to support each local market. No company would take the investment risk without some guarantee on the ROI. However, given the admission that market forces alone do not create the desired result, it is perfectly reasonable to entertain the idea of more government involvement to push the market towards a more consumer favorable result.
3) The 'pure' market forces argument would be that the current gov. regulations should be eliminated. Restrictions on what they can charge, where they can do business, and how many players can be in each market should all be lifted, and there should be no bandwidth mandates. This would be awesome for you if you live in a densely populated area where it makes sense for a company to operate. Not so great for you if you live in a rural area.
In summary, "market forces", is a great argument for large corporations to make. Because if left alone, they will naturally gravitate to maximize profits. It is not such a great argument from a consumers point of view because maximizing corporate profits does not equate to better services. If we were talking about luxury yachts or fur coats that is no big deal. But when we are talking about a core communications services, it might not be such a good idea to just say "lets see what happens".
Umm, why should they have all the fun?
http://gigaom.com/2009/02/01/by-2012-koreans-will-get-a-gigabit-per-second-broadband-connection/
As difficult as it might be to roll it out. There is NO doubt we would find a use for it.
I for one live in a house with a fiber box on my property.. and Lovely ATT only wants to use Copper "mind you I have a conduit from the box to my house!!" as well as giving me less speed than Comcrap and charging more. Seems like the competition is no competition at all.
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
And this would be the precise reason that I and many people like me are disconnecting their landlines in favor of their cell phones. I'd rather run the risk of not having phone service than continue to fund the local telco monopoly.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
3D porn.
So, in other words, what the US ISPs are saying is that South Korea, Japan, France, and over a dozen other countries are (in terms of residential internet connectivity) smarter, more innovative, more creative, better run as businesses, more competitive, and more technologically advanced than US companies are. NINETEENTH. We are NINETEENTH in the world in broadband speeds. Let that sink in for a moment. (Go ahead, I'll wait....) There are already countries that have 100MB home internet connections. Not a lot, but even 10 to 50MB is common in these other countries, and we're limping along at 3.8MB as the average home broadband speed in the US. Many European and Asian countries have CELL PHONE connectivity that is faster than our home internet connections (7MB cell phone connectivity is not uncommon over there). It's not that the equipment or technical know-how does not exist, or even the infrastructure to deploy this higher speed connectivity. The carriers already talk about how many billions they are investing each year into R&D, and how many billions they are investing in infrastructure deployment each year. What they don't talk about, and what many of us fail to understand, is that the money they are spending is purposely aimed at keeping us tied into a system where they slowly and methodically dole out just a little bit more speed every few years, and get the early adopters and people that can really benefit from the faster connection to pay top dollar for it. The FCC isn't saying to do this next year. TEN YEARS from now they're saying that to be LABELED as broadband, the minimum speed should be 100MB. There will still be people on dial-up then, but that should be their CHOICE, not some corporate imposition meant to keep prices artificially higher than they need to be. When there are 100MB connections, they'll still be able to offer people a 1MB DSL connection if they want it, but it will be what people are paying for dial-up now (or cheaper). Just like with hard drives now, you can practically double your capacity for every extra 20 bucks you want to spend, up until you hit about 1TB. So it can be with DSL/cable modem/FTTH. $7.99 for 1MB, $15.99 for 10MB, $20 for 20MB, $29.99 for 50MB, etc. No one is saying they should offer 100MB speeds for fifteen bucks, even 10 years from now. What the FCC is acknowledging (because far be it from US carriers to acknowledge their own shortcomings) is that we are WAY behind, and with the carriers propensity for milking every dollar out of us that they can, that without some sort of prodding, not only will the American public continue to to get milked, but that we will fall farther and farther behind the rest of the world in connectivity, and in turn, our competitiveness in the world. We have all seen what the people of the US have been able to accomplish (from their own homes) in terms of the business they are able to conduct, the ability to stay connected to other people, the creativeness of video, audio and pictures, with just a few MBs to work with. We need to imagine and strive for the ability to do even more; to become leaders once more; to set the example, not to hide behind unsubstantiated statements like those of CEO Mueller ("A 100 meg is just a dream," and "First, we don't think the customer wants that." How can it be just a dream, if other countries are DOING it? You don't think the customer wants it.... Sir, I WANT IT. And it would only take a couple hours for me to introduce you to many, many, many paying customers that 'want it'. For all of the hubris generated by the telecoms and ISPs about their ability to deliver 'what customers want', when compared with the world, either Americans don't want very much any more, or those large faceless corporations aren't being totally forthcoming with the American people. Which one of those do YOU think is the more likely scenario?
Cheers! - Steve from MyBrotherSteve.com
I think the key to our modern American happiness is to enjoy our Decline and Fall where we can. Enough good bread and the right circus is all we need to ignore both the fiddling and the burning.
Yes, America is a huge landmass. There's no denying that. However, the population is not evenly distributed, and this is where the excuse completely falls apart.
Yes, the rural minority will be difficult to get high-speed internet to, but there's a whole ton of metropolitan areas that have no such excuse for all this foot dragging.
If I can get 50mbps in a semi-dense residential suburb of Toronto, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to get a 50 mbps connection in a suburb of (insert American city).
Then again, I dunno, the chances of it getting done may have been easier if it were a whole bunch of local companies each doing their own portion of the work, rather than massive, national corporations going "Wah! Look at all the work this will take!"
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Really, how many HDTV channels can someone watch at once? A full-rate HDTV channel is 19.4mb/s.
Another rule that will end up making things worse. Why can't they just leave it alone. When will they learn that any time you set a floor on any activity the results are scarcity and scarcity = higher prices.
Have the counties Eminent Domain the infrastructure from the telcos (I don't think anyone could make the argument that the current owners are the best and highest use of the lines) and then lease it out to anyone who wants to be a provider.
When you pay your bill, you pay an "infrastructure cost" line on your bill that is the same no matter which provider you use, and a fee for the package sold by your provider.
End result, people flock to providers that give best uptimes, speed, and lowest price. All the while, the infrastructure is maintained by a government regulated monopoly that has no say in consumer pricing.
I believe this is how it was done in Japan, and the results are rather impressive.
So does this mean that in 2020 I won't be able to get a lower speed (for a lower price), even if I want it and don't need 100 Mbps? I guess the government knows what's best for me.
OK, I'm not an engineer, but from what I understand cable companies generally dedicate one analog channel to provide the 5 mbps or so that we now enjoy. The cable is capable of carrying a couple hundred channels, so lop off the Home Shopping Network and some other cruft channels and dedicate them to data and voila, 100 Meg to your doorstep with minimal infrastructure investment.
If I'm blowing smoke, please educate me.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Yes the Constitution does have a process for dealing with situations outside the founders vision. That process is called AMENDMENTS.
How about instead of throwing "teabagger" insults you instead encourage the Federal Government to work within its legally provided framework?
http://ilovekoreangirls.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/internet-speed-in-south-korea/ Um. Yeah. ?! We here in the U.S.A. are so far behind...everyone.
Whoa there FCC, lets not set the bar too high here. We don't want to even look like we are trying to catch up to the other countries in this race. I think most of are quite happy with the delusion that we are not in last place.
100 Mbps for 100 Million homes in 10 years. That's like giving Tokyo, with half their density, 100 Mbps in 5 years. What are our telcos supposed to do? Crawl to the finish line?
In case people missed my sarcasm, Tokyo has had the ability for years to provide 100 Mbps speeds to consumers at American 10 Mbps prices. I say the US gov just eminent domains the telco's (actually paid for by us) infrastructure and hires the Japanese companies to run things.
I didn't read the bill, but why should/are ISPs responsible for this? Granted I guess you could argue that there are tiers of ISPs, but if I am trying to provide internet to a condo, or something, the cost of dedicated bandwidth is what it costs. And most places, the loop is a significant (about half) of the monthly cost as well. So how am I, down at Tier 2 or 3, going to control the cost and availability of bandwidth?
Also.
What does it mean to have 100Mbps internet? Is that 100Mbps internet during peak hours when everyone is downloading, or a maximum rate of 100Mbps theoretical, if no one else is on the line? Things like this matter quite a lot. And just to be clear, where I live the cost of a 45Mbps DS3 is right around $1500/mo., and the loop is about the same. So right now, under the strictest definition, a recurring cost of $6000/mo. would be needed to provide this level of connectivity. Not to mention the hardware costs associated with providing this to more than, say ten people at a time.
The Constitution grants the Federal Government the right to pass laws to deal with some things not specifically addressed in the Constitution
So, in reality, what you're saying is that the Constitution provides for no limits whatsoever on Federal power.
I don't think so, Dave.
Which "some things" are you referring to, and which clauses enable them?
Do they still delay maintenance on the mail servers to create a more favorable impression of the company? An image consultant told them that people have a more favorable impression of companies with whom they have a small easily fixed problem than companies they never have problems with - so they used to delay maintenance on the mail servers until they had problems, which created huge call spikes, but which were usually resolved before the spike was processed.
Is their install schedule still pushed out 30 days with a 'we hope to get to your cable outage within the next week or so' kind of scheduling for repairs? And does it seem that the techs still only know how to tell you to reboot and offer you a bundled package?
I worked as a cable modem tech while they were 'improving' their service just before they went bankrupt. They had no metric for solving problems, but scored your raise/bonus impressively for keeping your call time down. By the time they closed my call center, techs coming out of training were literally taught to tell people to reboot their computer and call back - which they would then do 3 or 4 times to the same customer. That was bad enough, but the only other thing they knew how to do was upsell - their 2 week training had more days of sales training than actual tech training.
You do realize that it's largely the same group of a*****es in charge of both services, right?
There is usually a confounding factor that is unnoticed when everything looks exponential.
People can only fap so much. There is a limit to how much HD porn they will download.
My point isn't that I think we won't have Gbps to the home by any particular date.
My point is that making concrete plans/mandates 10 years out based on exponential growth projections is foolish.
The fact that a technology is growing exponentially tells me that it should be capable of fast ramp ups when the time comes.
BTW your analysis isn't entirely clear.
Is that per customer usage or per area?
If per area then the first confounding factor is customer base growth which just can't be exponential for long. Also throws off your other projections.
I assume you mean per customer.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Japan is the size of California and has a lot of short runs of new copper. The US is the size of the entire US and has long runs of pre-WWII hemp-wrapped aluminum foil.
And who's fault is it that the suburbs and ex-urbs are spread over hell's half-acre?
If the US had proper land use policies for land development then the densities would be higher and you could more easily string fibre. We're not talking about some guy in a log cabin having 50 Mbps, we're talking about major metropolitan areas. It's just not economical to run the backhaul because there are too few homes per mile to be serviced, and to recoup the costs you'd have to charge prices that few would be willing to pay.
All this because everyone wants to drive everywhere and have three vehicle garages with giant lots. You can't have everything. The "market" has spoken, and you're now stuck with shitty broadband in many communities.
So, in reality, what you're saying is that the Constitution provides for no limits whatsoever on Federal power.
I'll take Interstate Commerce Clause for $100, Alex.
I'll take Interstate Commerce Clause for $100, Alex.
I'll see your Interstate Commerce Clause and raise you the 9th and 10th Amendments.
We all (should) know that the ICC hasn't been stretched beyond all rationality and sanity. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn for the torturous logic that governs interpretations of the ICC.
... if they really were doing their job they'd mandate *150* Mbps.
Individual homes are far more expensive to wire new connections to than units in apartments. And in most parts of the United States, apartments are the exception, not the rule, and houses tend to be spread out far from city centers as well. It makes non-government mandated universal service a tricky business.
I imagine about 90% of the new homes constructed in the U.S. today have standard twisted pairs from the telephone company. Telco fiber reaches the neighborhood of course, and then it is copper all the way from there. Same deal with cable companies. Fiber to the neighborhood and then coax the rest of the way.
In the US I'm paying $1000+ a month for 7Mb fiber.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
They're silly. A decade is a long time in broadband -- what was the typical connection-speed a decade ago ?
And 100 ain't a lot. They should just get done with it and do fibre, atleast to the curb, if not to the basement. We've got fibre-to-the-basement, and a choice of 3 plans: 100, 200 or 400mbps, symetrical. (i.e. the upload-speeds are equally fast)
And that's -today- not a decade from now.
I sometimes wonder if USA will keep lagging behind in broadband, if it'll be contagious in a sense, in that it'll lead to decreased influence on high-tech generally. Seems fairly likely to me.
Were I live I can only get Dial-up 46.6Kbps connection because I am in a rural area in California. I am at a buddy's house right now with a Cable net connection I am downloading as much podcasts and video media as I can before I have to go back to Dial-up. as a personal note I have been waiting for a Verizon DSL slot to open up were I live for about 4 months now since I moved. I am within range for DSL.
maybe the FCC can ask them to give that $200 billion back,
Shouldn't that be plus interest, plus fines...
First off, just to join the pissing contest, here in Oslo, Norway 100 up and down is $200 a month which given cost of living adjustments is like $120 a month there. Pretty sad that you guys don't get symmetric bandwidth. It's just their way of keeping you from sharing files.
The real problem isn't their ability to deliver to the consumer premises. VDSL2 already does it over copper, in fact, it can hit 250MBit/sec. Of course single-mode fiber can already handle gigabit over a single strand in last mile installations.
The problem IS being able to deliver bandwidth to the servers which need to deliver to the customer. 100MBit/s doesn't sound like much until you start watching 50MBit/sec video streams from online distributors. Or when Apple releases a new iPhone patch and the entire world rushes to their web site. Their web servers can't keep up with that kind of traffic. Machines WILL be faster then and servers WILL be much much more powerful, but places currently sporting 10GBit/sec fiber will need Tb/sec connections to keep up.
What is definitely more important would be the requirement for multicast support. With multicast, it becomes possible for high-bandwidth streams to be distributed over the backbone a lot easier. Multicast is probably the #1 improvement that should be government mandated before forcing ISPs to offer huge bandwidth pipes to the house.
Another thing I'd like to see is that the government requires that neighbors passing through a single switch should be allowed to communicate at port-speed to one another over their networks. So, while you're connection to the internet is 10MBit/sec, it should be possible to communicate with your neighbor at gigabit speeds. Limiting the bandwidth to other ports within the switch is stupid.
More idiotic, moronic, liberal democrat, progressive, socialist, garbage! The cost to the consumer would be rediculous! For the government to pay for that level of access is fiscally irresponsible! To mandate this of the service providers is not reasonable for a capitalist society!
Impeach b.o., impeach all democrats, repeal all legislation passed since the innaguration, remove the czars, remove the progressives, democrats, liberals from our country!
Everything that hadn't been discovered in 1787 isn't automatically fair game for the federal government. It isn't a list of things that are forbidden to government, with the implication that the rest is allowed - it's an enumerated list of the powers allowed it, with the explicit instructions that anything else *isn't*. You don't have an inalienable right to fat bandwidth, I'm sorry. No reasonable interpretation of the Constitution says that you do. And I see a lot of "teabagger" insults directed mostly at knee-jerks on the right by knee-jerks on the left. Looking at a few "tea party" web sites shows that their limited set of issues is almost completely limited to opposing new taxes and opposing growth of government. Disagree with those things if you like, but they're not such ridiculous positions that you can dismiss everyone who agrees with them by name-calling. Or, in your case, by dismissing the position of someone *you* think sounds like them, also by name calling.
Don't encourage him.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Not only have the TelCo's been getting free money. The FCC did not allow the People, remember "The People", to build a Wireless mesh network. This should have started 15 years ago. We lost out on the roof top network that would have solved many problems.
Now what in the world do people want 100Mbs lines for? I could watch what 50, more?, movies at the same time.
My Verizon line is 0.5Mbs. That all they can manage just two miles from the City Switch. I can watch web cams, listenn to Internet radio stations.
Root top radio Internet can link houses from 5 to 7 miles away to be routed to the next station. Ending up at ISP's. not 1 or 2 but 10's and 100's of providers. The bandwidths are in the Gigahertz not Megahertz.
Voice only needs 0.05Mbs. Email and Texting Ha. too many zeros to type.