Verizon, Cable Lobby Oppose Spec-Bump For Broadband Definition

WheezyJoe writes Responding to the FCC's proposal to raise the definition of broadband from 4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream to 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up, the lobby group known as the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) wrote in an FCC filing Thursday that 25Mbps/3Mbps isn't necessary for ordinary people. The lobby alleges that hypothetical use cases offered for showing the need for 25Mbps/3Mbps "dramatically exaggerate the amount of bandwidth needed by the typical broadband user", referring to parties in favor of the increase like Netflix and Public Knowledge. Verizon, for its part, is also lobbying against a faster broadband definition. Much of its territory is still stuck on DSL which is far less capable of 25Mbps/3Mbps speeds than cable technology.

The FCC presently defines broadband as 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up, a definition that hasn't changed since 2010. By comparison, people in Sweden can pay about $40 a month for 100/100 mbps, choosing between more than a dozen competing providers. The FCC is under mandate to determine whether broadband is being deployed to Americans in a reasonable and timely way, and the commission must take action to accelerate deployment if the answer is negative. Raising the definition's speeds provides more impetus to take actions that promote competition and remove barriers to investment, such as a potential move to preempt state laws that restrict municipal broadband projects.

Comments

life in the U.S.

[MickyTheIdiot]

I am not sure that this group of people has any business telling me what I need or don't need.

In the U.S. at least cable needs real competition in the broadband market. This is where the main oposition to growth is. We shouldn't be listening to them about anything at all.

It's too bad we live in a country almost entirely run by lobbyists...

Re:life in the U.S.

[aliquis]

I want to reply on the linked threat from the original article.

It talks about Sweden but the fact is only some of the municipals have their own fiber networks even though 12-13 years ago a go from Sunet suggested that one would build fiber to everyone just like the electronic grid and that the price would be a reasonable 50 billion SEK.

Sadly ADSL and cable modems started showing up and I guess the government retards and old fucks was to weak and stupid to make it happen.

It was of course a very good and much better idea than anything else.

Instead they built fucking TV antennas for digital TV (and will be upgrading for digital radio) and are still stuck with the old telephone network. AND people have less competition and quality on their Internet connection and not the same amount of options everywhere.

In the linked article someone make the lame excuse that the US have so many people whereas Sweden only have the population of New York and hence it's not comparable.

But it's all about density of the population. To be fair though US have larger cities and hence in-between them maybe more open space.

On the other hand IN something like NY there's no reason you couldn't have what Sweden have in Stockholm for instance.

Also someone compared with California which have got four times the people in about the same amount of space but shouldn't that just mean that there's better possibilities of doing it in California? An even larger city or more densely populated area = less to dig.

In the case of Sweden those 50 billion would be 5 000 SEK / person = $600 but that's NOTHING!

Having a fiber network is a long lasting infrastructure piece and having it built everywhere and others compete for providing bandwidth for consumers likely lead to much better price for them. The nationwide network would lower prices on Internet connection and over time $600 is really cheap.

And as said it could be used for stuff like TV, radio (possibly), telephony and things they may not want to do now because it's not as obvious that everyone got an IP connection (government and municipal service, health-care, declaration of taxes, banking, ..)

Re: life in the U.S.

[spire3661]

"There is no point in downloading data much faster than what your viewing application can use up, per time period."

WRONG. The only reason we dont heavily cache now is because of copyright. Ideally you want to grab as much of the stream all at once as you can, incase you loose connectivity during the next 2 hours. Streaming is a great compromise, but caching is better.

Money

[Registered Coward v2]

The entrenched operators will spend whatever it takes to protect their monopolies; especially since bandwidth will be the real valuable commodity, not cable channels, as more services begin to offer content separate from a cable subscription. If real competition was introduced they will lose a lot of money and want to prevent that at all costs. The fear Google and local authorities who threaten their monopoly; and want to avoid any federal rules or laws that overturn local actions because it's easier (read cheaper) to influence local politicians than national ones.

What a bunch of A-Holes

[pablo_max]

Seriously, these guys are total fart blossoms.
I cannot believe the things they are able to say out loud with a straight face.

25Mbps/3Mbps is barely even usable.
Every time I visit my folks in the US, who have 25Mbps/3Mbps I find it unbearably slow. They pay like 80bucks a month for that ridiculous "broadband" connection. 80Bucks!
Meanwhile, I may 48€ per month for 150/25Mbps. That includes TV and phone too.

Seriously, how the fuck can you guys stand it? Especially when ever tech company is pushing their stupid cloud services. How are going to use a cloud service with your ridiculous dialup speeds?
How are you going to watch HD Netflix? Let alone 4K. Forget about it.

Re:What a bunch of A-Holes

[Jason Levine]

How are you going to watch HD Netflix? Let alone 4K. Forget about it.

We won't and this is by design. Right now, if Americans want video entertainment, we mostly turn to cable TV companies. These companies have monopolies in their areas. Like a group of rival mobs, they've carved up the territory so that they don't compete with each other. They also have bribed... I mean lobbied politicians to pass laws to benefit themselves (the cable TV companies) at the local, state, and national level.

Now, with this level of control, the cable companies have enjoyed an almost unimpeded ability to charge whatever they decide and to offer services however they like. If you didn't like this, you had virtually nobody to go to. You could get TV from a satellite TV provider, but Internet was likely just the cable company or the phone company and the latter was increasingly going the high-priced mobile route.

Enter the Internet and high speed access. Now, consumers started realizing they don't need the high priced cable service. They just need a fast Internet connection. The cable companies are scared (though they won't admit it publicly - can't spook the shareholders) so they are trying to keep speeds slow, institute caps "to manage network traffic", and take other measures (such as messing with connections to Netflix) to minimize how many customers flee to Internet video solutions.

So not being able to watch HD Netflix or 4K? That's a cable company feature, not a bug.

The utterly obnoxious part...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

What I find utterly insufferable about this 'argument'(if it rises to a level where you can call it that) is how badly it misses the point:

Netflix and a few friends say that 25/3 is needed because a household might be streaming multiple things while running a cloud backup and doing some skyping or something. Verizon et al. say that such usage is atypical, and therefore everyone can take the status quo and like it.

In both cases, the most important bit is being ignored: new uses for bandwidth are not going to emerge(or are going to be academic and deep-pocketed-corporate curiosities) unless there is at least some prospect of bandwidth being available. Does 'today's typical use case' need 25/3? Probably not; because it was developed under the constraints of a market where 25/3 is markedly above average, so anyone developing products and services is condemning themselves to a niche if they require very high bandwidth, especially upstream.

If just doing what you did last year, forever, was good enough, 'broadband' would still involve an acoustic coupler. Chicken/egg.