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

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.

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.

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.

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.