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FCC Officially Approves Change In the Definition of Broadband
halfEvilTech writes As part of its 2015 Broadband Progress Report, the Federal Communications Commission has voted to change the definition of broadband by raising the minimum download speeds needed from 4Mbps to 25Mbps, and the minimum upload speed from 1Mbps to 3Mbps, which effectively triples the number of U.S. households without broadband access. Currently, 6.3 percent of U.S. households don't have access to broadband under the previous 4Mpbs/1Mbps threshold, while another 13.1 percent don't have access to broadband under the new 25Mbps downstream threshold.
What are the practical results of this?
The Swedes and South Koreans laugh at our puny attempts to catch up.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
So, if I get this right, 80% of the US Americans have at least 25MB/s download. This is not really that bad, I have a fiber connection but only subscribe to 20/20 (for 30eur/month) because it's good enough for pretty much anything. From the complaints I hear on Slashot I thought only Google offered more than something like 5MB/s.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
AT&T is soooooo screwed.
maybe this will make the ISPs move their lazy butt a little and actually upgrade the infrastructure.. .... Oh who am I kidding, it won't.
Hurray, I no longer have broadband.
Now when I say my peak rates are less than 25% of broadband speed, maybe I can get some sympathy
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Broadband is a description of the technology, not of bandwidth. The FCC is a technical organization, so why can't they use the correct name?
John
I used to have broadband, you insensitive clods! Government overreach just stripped it from me at the stroke of a pen!
in my area the only official package from AT&T is 3Mb down, 512kb up, I managed years ago to get 6Mb down 768kb up, so, still without broadband!
and AT&T has no plans to improve my area, and despite coax cable running around my neighbor hood, not a single Cable provider in my area... I really want to climb up that pole, hook in or unplug the cable and see if someone comes out... ILL PAY FOR F&*#@%$# SAKE SAVE ME FROM AT&T
well, hasnt changed in 15 years, probably not going to change anytime soon either...
always wins in the end?
"When 80 percent of Americans can access 25-3, that's a standard. We have a problem that 20 percent can't. We have a responsibility to that 20 percent,"
So the FCC gets to change its own standards, then impose its jurisdiction on the new stragglers. Typical regulator. No skin in the game, but always knows what's good for everyone else.
... when the 3c509 is no longer considered broadband.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Where does this put DSL? It's right at that limit. No real available upgrade paths.
This morning I had broadband. Now I don't. Thanks Obama!
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
If you're stuck on DSL because Verizon sucks, and there's no cable in your area, you're still limited to 3 Mbps.
You can't legislate technology.
That's less than 4MB/s after overhead - awful handy for downloading multi-GB ISOs, streaming high-def videos, etc.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Correction - less that *3* megabytes per second. 25Mbps = 3.125MBps, minus overhead.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
And yet browsing the 'net in 1997 from a uni computer was a faster experience than browsing the net from home now, I would work, study and play with a 56k connection, and the 128k leased line my Rich Friend had to their house (!) was more than anyone needed to dream of.
I used to be such a tech geek, but now I see it's an upgrade treadmill with the software side progressively making less effort and the hardware side enabling them to do so. Where are we going? What is the point? Is this about improving society, or a circle jerk of money around people who already have enough anyway? It seems like a dull game for dull minds.
Broadband is a description of the technology, not of bandwidth. The FCC is a technical organization, so why can't they use the correct name?
If you want to split hairs, broadband absolutely does refer to a bandwidth. The frequency band is broad, thus it has more width.
You can try to win the terminology war about data rates vs. frequency ranges, but I think you've pretty much demonstrated that few people understand, much less care, about such distinctions in this context.
About. Damn. Time.
Steam and Battle.net updates, Xbox/Playstation/Wii downloads, etc.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Why is this moderated down? This is the question we should be asking when changing legal definitions of things.
What can you now suddenly do on a 25Mbps connection that you couldn't do on a 4Mbps connection that makes it worth changing the legal definition of "broadband Internet access?"
Otherwise this is just the FCC wasting our tax dollars on doing something entirely pointless.
4Mbps is by far good enough for just about anything you'd do online. 25Mbps would allow you to do the same things, only faster. Why bother changing the definition?!
This was retrieved today from FCC website:
Broadband Connection: A wired line or wireless channel that terminates at an end-user location and enables the end user to receive information from and/or send information to the Internet at information transfer rates exceeding 200 kbps in at least one direction.
Why does the FCC continue to define broadband as 200 kbps for the purposes of service provider reporting requirements when it is 100 times lower than their current definition of broadband?
Replace "25Mbps" with "640kb" and maybe you'll see why that was a stupid thing to say.
You can't stream HD video on 4Mbps, you can't get large patches is a reasonable time with 4Mbps, you can't Skype in HD with 1Mbps of upload, it takes forever to seed a cloud backup with 1Mbps (I put a few hundred GB in Crashplan and it took a month, I have more data than that but I had to pick the important data because my upload was so limited), etc.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
THANKS, OBAMA!
This definition change doesnt affect customers really. Although tripling the number of american households without broadband is a convenient means of shaming the administration into pushing for common carrier status, as before this definitional change people like comcast were in fact allowed to call damned near anything they sold broadband and insist it was competitive enough. Administrative definitions of broadband may even hold water in court. For example if my bill continues to state im being charged for broadband at 11 megabit, i can likely sue for false advertising. chances are good though, as other slashdotters have noted, that assholes like time warner and comcast will just amend their 2015 marketing material with a disclaimer that not all speeds are broadband.
The real pisser is in the network. Cable companies have zero incentive to compete even if the common carrier law is passed. Theyve already hung enough cable to render land lines, which could be used like a local DSL hub from fibre to the doorstep, rotted and useless in most buildings. What they can do however is push for local legislation to criminalize using their already well funded and maintained copper for things like Google Fibre.
Good people go to bed earlier.
In Vermont my only option is FairPoint DSL. Since I'm almost 11K line feet from the CO, the most I can get out of my line is 3Mb/down on a good day. That doesn't take into account the multiple times every week I have to reboot the modem to relock the connection.
I don't expect I'll see fiber out my way, since I live in a somewhat unpopulated area. Fiber runs past on it's way to the CO, but I don't expect they are going to up and offer residential connections off of it. A business account would be crazy expensive.
even well-populated areas of the US still have limited, unreliable, and gimmick-heavy choices. I'm one.
you are?
So 25Mb is the new broadband minimum?
Just wondering, did Netflix traffic get counted in that determination, or will Netflix service bypass all of this and soon be deemed a mandatory Right, protected under the 28th Amendment?
many of the countries with 100 Mb and gig to the home almost universally do not have for-profit privatized telcos.
they have nationalized telcos, and if the leader of their administration says "run fiber, not wire," they get the money and power to do that.
the rest back up "requests" to speed it up with subsidized dollars to make it work.
in the US, if you can't make your dividends and trench down fiber, the fiber doesn't happen.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I don't understand why everybody is guessing. This doesn't have anything to do with advertising or any of that. The FCC by law is required to count which rural areas have internet access that is unable for:
High quality voice
Data
Images
Video
Those are the four elements specified by Congress. With this change, the ability to watch Netflix at 1080p with a 5Mbps connection will no longer qualify. So the FCC will now report that 19% of people don't have internet that is usable for the four items listed above.
What Congress and the ISPs will do with that information is unknown. One thing we know is that ISPs won't get "credit" for rolling out internet access on their legacy coax networks. Instead, they'd have to spend several thousand dollars per mile on upgrades before it's recognized as high speed, so in suburban areas new upgrades should support 25Mbps, but in rural areas they'll likely not happen at all. Why would an ISP spend $15,000 to run fiber or new coax to one farmer, then another $12,000 to get to the next farm? They won't, unless someone else is forced to pay for it.
It is possible that lawmakers will decide they want to upgrade rural areas from 5Mbps to "broadband", in which case we'll all pay the $15,000 cost to upgrade farmer Bob from 5Mbps to 25Mbps.
It's not truly "high speed internet" until it can pass this test:
http://messagebase.net/Home/Re...
What?! Now my 6/2Mbps connection isn't broadband. Thanks Obama!
I guess the crux of the matter is with this quote from TFA:
With the US currently ranked 25th in the world in broadband speeds,
With 4Mbps as a limit for "broadband intenet access", you just can't boast about being a leader in internet accessability. And not being able to boast hurts the American psyche.
Because 4k TV is a Basic Human Right. Right?
Dang! In December we finally got broadband access in our area and now they've taken it away. Oh, well. I'll go surf another bitch.
See subject: He doesn't have to read it/legislate - hosts help http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
APK
P.S.=> As the poster you replied to stated? I just use EXISTING NATIVE TECHNOLOGY already present in your OS out there on most ALL platforms to "beat the game" (& get my monies' worth for bandwidth + speed I paid for that ads suck away, AND infect me with malicious code too, which hosts also stop - bonus... & that's just the TIP of the iceberg on the many multiple benefits hosts provide for added speed, reliability, safety, and even anonymity (to an extent only on the latter) online)... apk
Fox News / Tea Party sycophants have a distrust of the government.
That is not Americans in general, that is just what the Murdoch media have told you to believe.
I live in Canada, and my wildly overpriced, wildly underpowered ISP is called TELUS. Its $50 per month, for 2.5 Mbps down and 500 kbps up. Which is gobs more expensive than most of the world, and yet also much slower. And their main business is as a phone company, and their main competition is a cable company (go figure). And the two collude to keep speeds low and prices high. And they inherited the public telephone system which people paid for and they got for free. And now if anyone wants to come in and compete, they charge through the nose for access to lines they never paid for. I don't think competition is that lacking in Europe or Asia. We really need a secondary network. I know when digital TV came in, the cable company offered 'free cable lines with local channels' so people wouldn't have to put up antennas. You just had to listen to their marketing spiel. The offer only provided the same content as over-the-air, and the offer was only for those within range of the signal. So they are fully aware of how much they are hosing people, and so long as no one comes in with something better, they are content to provide as little as possible for as much as possible.
"Moon now means any body of matter with more than 10^24 KG of mass that orbits any other body of matter"
So apparently the earth no longer has a moon, but is one... That's not a far-fetched idea considering we have recently redefined the word Planet to be more descriptive.
The other thing is that defining "broadband" is the same fallacy as "the Inuit have 100+ words for snow". FYI - those words are wetsnow drysnow heavysnow ligthsnow bluesnow whitesnow yellowsnow ....
Broad is already defined; band is already defined; and width is already defined.
In relevant context: band is a contiguous set of wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum; width is the size of the band from wave lengths X through Y; broad is a qualitative description of the width of the band - the difference between X and Y. Thusly, broadband and bandwidth have intrinsic definitions that any reasonably intelligent entity familiar with basic English can deduce.
It's nice that a broad band width can carry more streams of information than a narrow one. It's perfectly acceptable for a government to want its citizens to have faster access to information.
IMO, to redefine a word, and not give a definition to subjects newly excluded from the definition is detrimental to society. In the 90's you basically had dial-up internet or broadband internet. These were not great labels, but they did the trick - broadband provided more bandwidth than the POTS networks could provide. These almost made sense. Would we ever see "dial-up" internet to mean only 33.6kbps or more? What happens to the people still using 28.8
What do we have with this new definition? Anyone who is somehow newly exposed to the word cannot use previous knowledge to understand its meaning. There are still users on dial-up, there are users with broadband capable of > 25Mbps down & 3Mbps up, but what about those users that are not on dial-up and have less 25Mbps down? What kind of internet connection do they have? It's not narrowband.
I think a better solution is leave the word broadband alone, and use more words to provide more description: e.g. "broadband" = "( ! dial-up ) && ( over phone || cable networks )", "basic braodband" = less than 1Mbps; "broadband-1" = >= 1Mbps && up to "broadband-3" = >= 3Mbps && ... && up to "broadband-100" = >= 100Mbps. In the future we can redefine broadband-100 to include an "up to broadband-X" clause and create a new broadband-X.
At least we had the decency to give Pluto the word dwarfplanet.
P.S. - I really hate that /. comments prevent me from using a single character to say "less than", and two characters to say "less than or equal to".
Hilarious bullshitters here minusmod you when you do a good thing apk and they just go "quack, quack, quack" around here on this forum all day instead of doing the same as you are.
Maybe that was the meaning behind the title, s/he was stating that the following comment was dumb.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Their loss, not mine. Most of them are lucky to be able to code @ all let alone create anything worth putting out publicly.
(In fact, on that note, since I've tossed it around here more than just a few times? I guarantee that 1 of the little trolling "ne'er-do-well" dolts I've told that to that couldn't prove me wrong & back himself up IS the one downmodding me...)
* No, not ALL /. is that way: The guys that actually DO do good things don't *ever* give me guff... one that comes to mind instantly, is Animats (who produces something similar to what I do in hosts, albeit iirc, he offers it as an online service).
APK
P.S.=> There's "That kind" (quacking ducks, lol) & then there's the ones hosts adversely affect too as a possible downmodder of my hosts posts, in malware makers, botnet herders, webmasters (whom I held off for a GOOD 9++ yrs. in releasing this program for, hoping they'd ALL get on the advertisers' backs on malcoded adbanners, & they never did (it's ALL "their God", money, instead of caring for their userbases))... apk
Does this mean the Google Fiber free tier will be upgraded from 5mbps to 25mbps? They were just above the line before, and now well below it. (granted, if I lived in a Google Fiber area, you would bet your ass off I'd have the gigabit connection!)
Seems correct. In this case, the situation is entirely faked. The "definition of broadband" did not change.
The "definition" being discussed is only the electrical connection speed. The actual information delivery speed can be anything a huge, abusive company wants.
What matters is the delivery speed. Supposedly the speed of the connection I am testing is "25 Mbps". SpeedTest.net says the speed is more than "50 Mbps".
The actual information delivery speed measured by numion.com is:
Kilobits/second (Kilobytes/second)
Surfspeed inside United States: 239.24 (29.90)
Surfspeed average (worldwide): 198.64 (24.83)
Surfspeed outside United States: 187.24 (23.40)
A local city leader told me it costs "$400,000" to get elected. Any government that requires leaders to spend huge amounts of money to be elected isn't actually a democracy.
You can't stream HD video on 4Mbps, you can't get large patches is a reasonable time with 4Mbps, you can't Skype in HD with 1Mbps of upload, it takes forever to seed a cloud backup with 1Mbps (I put a few hundred GB in Crashplan and it took a month, I have more data than that but I had to pick the important data because my upload was so limited), etc.
1. Who cares about HD, it's not a government's job to mandate a slightly clearer picture in video streaming.
2. The definition of reasonable is absurdly vague. If something can patch in the background than a few hours is reasonable.
3. See 1.
4. See 2.
The only thing they're regulating is how government money is being handed out to telecom companies. You government is evil people are so odd.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You are getting UP TO your connection speeds. It doesn't mean if you are paying for a 50M/10M connection you will get that 24/7/365. You will be lucky to get that 50% of the time but keep paying the insane fees for that specification. Oh and wait, if the big ISP's decide they want more money and start throttling something like netflix or hulu to squeeze more money out of them, good luck being able to do anything about it.
Anyway, realized I was being too terse again, The electrical code and government regulation are the applicable metaphors as opposed to physics. Cable companies don't build out because they feel they can use the money better elsewhere. Governments can force them to build out, by taking away their monopolies if they don't.
It's mostly an economic/political question where broadband gets deployed.
can some one explain this part to me... "effectively triples the number of US households without broadband access. ... 6.3 percent ...13.1 percent "
... a few months ago. Now, all of a sudden, I'm without broadband again.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I guess I thought the FCC was in the pocket of the Cable companies. Nice to see that they voted against them in this instance.
Comcast is the 2014 "Worst Company In America"
Comcast's X1 Platform Might Have "National Known Issue" Stopping It From Actually Working
Comcast abuse
Conveniently enough, Comcast's lowest tier is 25mb/s down 4 mb/s up. They probably even wrote the legislation.
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
How long before the Democrats start running around telling us how horrible it is that do few Americans have access to broadband internet access, and then they will roll out a solution, based on increasing taxes on the rich to fund a massive infrastructure investment that just so happens to include almost exclusively Democrat contributors.
We saw this with the 2008 race to invest in green energy, remember Solyndra?
Ken
6.3 + 13.1 = 19.4%
That means just over 80% of Ameticans DO have access to High-speed broadband internet service.
Reminds me of the 85% of Americans that were pleased with their healthcare coverage, before Democrats convinced us we needed to light our hair on fire and turn the healthcare industry on it's ear to address the 15% without healthcare coverage..
Ken
Shouldn't monthly (or periodic) download caps be included in the official definition of "broadband?" Otherwise I can see a really good way of gaming this definition.
There are plenty of parties out there that don't have their heads as far up their asses as Libertarians do.
Ok so they changed the definition of what "broadband" is. Now the question is what will they do to help all those who have no access to high speed internet? Or those who are stuck with the crappy DSL services that run on copper networks that provided like Verizon let degrade? I don't see how changing this definition will help the situation of the sub par internet servicesin the US. Big deal Verizon can't call their DSL "Broadband" anymore, they will use a new term and nothing will change.
UnknownSoldier, gl4ss, , sootman, TestedDoughnut, TempestRose, lennier1, ScottCooperDotNet,Bill Dog, drinkypoo,
Culture20, Rick17JJ, Ol Olsoc, icebraining, Trax3001BBS, fahrbot-bot, EdIII, bLanark, RocketRabbit, TheRealGrogan, Martin Blank, CAIMLAS. drakaan, Dynedain,Lime Green Bowler, Bob9113, wolrahnaes, raju1kabir, mrbcs, gweihir, , frovingslosh, tepples, kimvette, Geeky, humanrev, maestroX, , phrostie, ElectricTurtle, mattbee, VShael, AndGodSed, jafiwam,
i.r.id10t, NeverVotedBush, falconwolf, BrokenHalo, orclevegam, cyberjock1980, gad_zuki!, furby076, jandrese, , halcyon1234, Anonymous Admin, houghi, drooling-dog, dracocat, betterunixthanunix, someones, sqrt(2), cratermoon, bmo, fast turtle, Kris_J, SydShamino, Technician, pjkeyzer, srmalloy, schwit1, mrbcs, KingAlanI, ksemlerK, Scorch_, Mechanic, NealBScott, Anubis IV, crutchy, damn_registrars, , couchslug, green1, wakeboarder, Gothmolly, lesincompetent, ls671, DigiShaman, P. Don, Yaa 101, qwertyatwork, dehole, , Em Adespoton, CAOgdin, schwit1, MightyYar, RJFerret , idontgno, technosaurus, wickerprints, noh8rz10, sexconker, sandbagger, NewWorldDan, Karmashock, aNonnyMouseCowered, Dracos, keith_nt4, networkzombie, jafiwam, JohnFen, SigmundFloyd, EETech1, duck_rifted, The MAZZTer, Anonymous Brave Guy, plasm4, holophrastic, Baki,
StikyPad, kermidge
APK
P.S.=> See subject, & those /. users disagree with you - they use hosts files (you're outnumbered bigtime) + DEMAND for the program (hosted by MalwareBytes' hpHosts no less) has gone up SO much, they had to move to AMAZON UnDDoS'able servers (for both increase in hosts data demand AND for downloads of APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-1 32/64-bit) - now, when YOU can manage to do the same? MAYBE THEN, I'd listen... apk
UnknownSoldier, gl4ss, sootman, TestedDoughnut, TempestRose, lennier1, ScottCooperDotNet, Bill Dog, drinkypoo, Culture20, Rick17JJ, Ol Olsoc, icebraining, Trax3001BBS, fahrbot-bot, EdIII, bLanark, RocketRabbit, TheRealGrogan, Martin Blank, CAIMLAS. drakaan, Dynedain,Lime Green Bowler, Bob9113, wolrahnaes, raju1kabir, mrbcs, gweihir, frovingslosh, tepples, kimvette, Geeky, humanrev, maestroX, phrostie, ElectricTurtle, mattbee, VShael, AndGodSed, jafiwam, i.r.id10t, NeverVotedBush, falconwolf, BrokenHalo, orclevegam, cyberjock1980, gad_zuki!, furby076, jandrese, halcyon1234, Anonymous Admin, houghi, drooling-dog, dracocat, betterunixthanunix, someones, sqrt(2), cratermoon, bmo, fast turtle, Kris_J, SydShamino, Technician, pjkeyzer, srmalloy, schwit1, mrbcs, KingAlanI, ksemlerK, Scorch_, Mechanic, NealBScott, Anubis IV, crutchy, damn_registrars, couchslug, green1, wakeboarder, Gothmolly, lesincompetent, ls671, DigiShaman, P. Don, Yaa 101, qwertyatwork, dehole, Em Adespoton, CAOgdin, schwit1, MightyYar, RJFerret, idontgno, technosaurus, wickerprints, noh8rz10, sexconker, sandbagger, NewWorldDan, Karmashock, aNonnyMouseCowered, Dracos, keith_nt4, networkzombie, jafiwam, JohnFen, SigmundFloyd, EETech1, duck_rifted, The MAZZTer, Anonymous Brave Guy, plasm4, holophrastic, Baki, StikyPad, kermidge, & myself...
* Same ones I crushed that wannabe raymorris with (after he shot his mouth off about hosts) here http://it.slashdot.org/comment...
APK
P.S.=> See subject, & those /. users disagree with you - they use hosts files (you're outnumbered bigtime) + DEMAND for the program (hosted by MalwareBytes' hpHosts no less) has gone up SO much, they had to move to AMAZON UnDDoS'able servers (for both increase in hosts data demand AND for downloads of APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-1 32/64-bit) - now, when YOU can manage to do the same? MAYBE THEN, I'd listen... apk
Can ghostery/adblock do 17 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:
1.) Protect vs. malicious sites (beyond malicious ads: See 2-10 next)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop communication to C&C servers
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop communication to C&C servers
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop communication to C&C servers
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS servers (adds reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns servers
7.) Protect vs. DNS amplification attacks
8.) Protect vs. trackers
9.) Protect vs. spam
10.) Protect vs. phishing
11.) Protect vs. bandwidth caps
12.) Get you past a dnsbl
13.) Keep you off dns request logs
14.) Speed up websurfing (adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites)
15.) Work on ANY webbound app (stand-alone email programs) multiplatform.
16.) Give you easy text data for the above
17.) Do all that & block ads (better than addons) more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage
* #11 & #14 yield more bandwidth/speed you pay for (rest = more security & reliability).
APK
P.S.=> Ghostery's Advertiser owned - "A fox guards the henhouse"-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
AdBlock's 4++gb & 100% CPU usage flooring inefficiency -> https://blog.mozilla.org/nneth... + ClarityRay defeats it + it 'souled-out' & is crippled by default paid off to not do its job http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/...
BOTH do far less than hosts do & less efficiently - hosts by way of comparison, do MORE w/ less.
Both add complexity/room for breakdown/exploit + from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).
Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried).
For the BEST hosts file?
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-1 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...
The BEST in the antiviruses (MalwareBytes) http://www.av-test.org/en/news... recommend & host it http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...
... apk
The change in definition means that the percentages of households that have more than one option for broadband has plummeted. Before this, asshat providers like Comcast could claim that there was ample competition and choice for consumers but now it will be undeniable that they have effective monopolies for true broadband in many markets. Props to FCC for making the move. Undoubtedly, it will be appealed as a delaying tactic, even though the FCC is fully within their purview to make the decision.
Many of us use dd-WRT enabled firewall/routers that let you see you real ACTUAL BANDWIDTH in real time. We know that 100% of cable companies throttle bandwidth to less than the old definition of broadband (768 Kbps). The reality is much, much worse. In 4 cities with 3 different cable providers, my dd-WRT enabled firewall/router showed that the ONLY time I got the cable company's marketing promise of broadband, was during the Speed Test. The millisecond that speed test ends, cable throttles bandwidth to less than 250Kbps downstream and less than 101Kbps upstream.
The FCC use to define broadband as bandwidth greater than 768Kbps. You can not find that on their website any longer...think about it!
Once when I was watching one movie and downloading another (using my harddrive like a VCR Recorder to watch and erase) the cable co's bandwidth pipe did open to a little over 300Kbps, with spikes to 1Mbs. Of course I was paying for either 16MB or 20Mb down, so throttled to less than 300Kbps is pathetic.
The FCC needs a minimum bandwidth to be considered broadband or high speed. Even the old definition of 768Kbps, if written such that any bandwidth below 768Kbps up or downstream would no longer qualify, would be a huge plus. My unproven theory is that throttling above 300Kbps will NOT cause most High Definition Video to pause your computer while it loads. So a minimum of just 786Kbps would be great compared to today's reality.
Bandwidth SHALL NEVER fall below 768Kbps during any millisecond of activity or it SHALL NOT BE defined as BROADBAND.
Without a minimum definition to be considered broadband, nothing they say or do here will matter. As they will just make some other false 'up to' promise that they will ignore and not honor, just as they have since the 1970s....(if their lobbyist had not gutted the Telecommunications Act of 1976, we would probably already be there...).
FTTH ~ Fiber To The Home. Home owns the pipe, not the city, not the county, not any company. Companies compete at a city/community owned switching (telco) station for a customer's business.
The real solution is Fiber To The Home, FTTH. Nothing less, not FTTP, not FTTN, not FTT-anything-else, ONLY FTTH. As with 100% FTTH there is no longer a business incentive to perpetuate the scarcity myth, the great lie, in order to raise prices. With FTTH a home owner does not share their pipe with anyone else. The companies compete for the homeowner's business at the switching station, the companies competing DO NOT OWN THE PIPE!
FTTH means having the same bandwidth upstream as downstream, NO throttling!
There are less than 39 true FTTH cities. If a community has FTTH, the downstream bandwidth will be the same as the upstream. No 50MB/5Mb, but 50Mb/50Mb, 100Mb/100Mb, 30Mb/30Mb, 25Mb/25Mb, 10Mb/10Mb or 1Mb/1Mb. And that bandwidth will NOT be throttled. There is simply no business reason to throttle, ever.
DSL is not only cheaper per month, its faster than cable because of this throttling of bandwidth. If you have a non ATT DSL service, get it. It will be better than Cable and cheaper per month!
As others have pointed out, the oligopoly will fight any FTTH effort in a community, always, however if the community is willing to fight back, 100% of the time they win via the court and get approval for the FTTH rollout. Now some of you live in states where the oligopoly has already passed laws to prevent competition, specifically FTTH competition. My suggestion to you, if you live in one of these 14 states, is to move. The people around you that elected these fools that only listen to the oligopoly will never learn.
FTTH means good high paying jobs that are in that community because of the Fiber, they will not be offshored or relocated. Good High Paying permanent jobs.
An added blessing is that those
My 5Mbps connection is giving me a solid 0.2Mbps per the nearest SpeedTest servers....
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.