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."

Comments

That would be all well and good

[dreamchaser]

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.

Re:That would be all well and good

[kingjoebob]

"Market Forces" you mean let the ISPs charge whatever they want for poor service and very poor speed and uptime? Market forces only work when there is competition, in my area I got once choice. Besides how long does one have to live in this "Market Economy" to realize that big corps will do whatever they can to make a dollar. It is in their best interest to not upgrade their networks and charge out the nose. Change on this magnitude will only come to the masses if the government mandates it, its always been like that it always will.

Re:That would be all well and good

[whisper_jeff]

Let market forces deal with bandwidth.

Yeah, because that really seems to be working out so far. Clearly the competition between the major providers is pushing them to improve and excel.

Re:That would be all well and good

[poetmatt]

can we please drop the average consumer crap? Usage trends for internet are completely unpredictable even on a year to year basis, age group basis, or otherwise. So when people think DSL speeds are good enough, they're trying to define average consumers. It doesn't exist. This is like saying "the average user isn't a gamer" or "the average user just burns bandwidth on youtube" or "the average user just browses the web and sends email".

Also, 10 years from now 100mbps might be not that different from how dsl is now. Really, we already have 50-100mbps connections available in some areas (slowly becoming less spotty), so 10 years from now might be 300mbps or something. Gigabit routers = non issue there. Heck, everyone has at least a 10/100 router at home which can (and is specced to do so) handle 100mbps.

Re:That would be all well and good

[lwsimon]

Odd - Where I live, 500 yards away, they have 8Mbps cable available for $40/mo. The best I can get is 512Kbps DSL for $85/mo. I offered to pay to have the line run up the hill to my home, and got an easement from the landowner to do so, but was stopped when I discovered that it wasn't legal to extend cable coverage outside the prescribed service area.

Get rid of the government "regulation" on this, and I'd have decent internet in a week.

Re:That would be all well and good

[dintlu]

I see this is a sign that the government is realizing the importance of the internet to the future of commerce and national security.

Minimum speed mandates are the first step towards government-maintained infrastructure. By setting a target the telcos will be unable to reach, and buoying consumer expectations to expect this level of service soon, the door is opened for the government to implement solutions for upgrading or providing a portion of the telecommunications infrastructure themselves.

Frankly the telcos have nobody but themselves to blame. They took taxpayer money and instead of spending it on infrastructure upgrades to keep the US competitive with other nations, they sat on their collective asses raking in record profits while the quality of their networks and their customer satisfaction went to shit. If market forces worked, this would be unnecessary.

Re:That would be all well and good

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It's a two way street. Consumers do whatever they can to squeeze corps. Corps squeeze consumers.

Money is power. Not having money anywhere on the scale of corporations, individuals have two real options. They can organize into unions and organizations; and put up with the corruption that results from concentrating power, or they can vote and the government gets involved.

The government does not need to get involved, they need to get out of the way by removing the monopoly cable companies enjoy.

The problem is most of the monopolies cable companies enjoy are the result of local and state government interference and of limited resourced apportioned by the feds. The feds not getting involved is tantamount to handing over control to the corporations who have too much money to not influence local governments. Moreover, local governments have good reason to get involved, since their involvement is the result of the disaster that happened when they did not get involved in the early days of power distribution. dozens of redundant lines making the place hideous and resulting in one line falling and taking down dozens of others, bringing everyone down to the reliability of the worst player. Learn your history lest you repeat it.

Sorry, there just isn't enough physical space or EM spectrum. The government either needs to handle data pipes the way they do roads, as a government utility, or they need to build the conduits for the pipes and charge data providers the cost.

because its too hard

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

We're going to MARS!

[VShael]

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?

The Dept, of Agriculture will soon propose...

[MSTCrow5429]

...that 100 million people by 2020 should have a pretty pony. This will result in 50 people receiving tainted horse steaks by 2035.

The next round of government rule-making...

[Entrope]

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!

If the FCC wants to accelerate it

[MikeRT]

They should federalize all franchising so that local and state governments cannot limit which telecoms and cable companies can operate where.

Why complain

[Hatta]

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.

Re:FCC: Setting High Goals

[Khisanth Magus]

Japan has 1Gbps internet. I had it when I lived there a few years ago. Even at 100Mbps we would be way behind.

This should have been done years ago

[grandpa-geek]

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!!!

This. A thousand times this.

[Shag]

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.