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Why 6 Republican Senators Think You Don't Need Faster Broadband (cio.com)
itwbennett writes: Broadband in the United States still lags behind similar service in other industrialized countries, so Congress made broadband expansion a national priority, and it offers subsidies, mostly in rural areas, to help providers expand their offerings,' writes Bill Snyder. And that's where an effort by the big ISPs and a group of senators to change the definition of broadband comes in. Of course, the ISPs want the threshold to be as low as possible so it's easier for them to qualify for government subsidies. In a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, dated January 21, 2016, the senators called the current broadband benchmark of 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream 'arbitrary' and said that users don't need that kind of speed anyway. '[W]e are aware of few applications that require download speeds of 25 Mbps.' the senators wrote, missing the simple fact that many users have multiple connected devices.
Isn't it closer to "Why 6 Republican Senators Are Repeating Cable ISP Lobbyists' Talking Points on Why You Don't Need Faster Broadband"?
GOP stuck in the past in the pocket of big business.
to fix it we need to vote Bernie sanders or trump.
...rich old white men don't have a use for it, the rest of us should do without it. Makes perfect sense.
... per second.
by different lobby group than congressmen from Democrat party. New at 11
They cooperated to get the SOPA and PIPA stuff we fought against so hard crammed into the TPP so whichever evil side you support remember, this left wing propaganda article brought to you by Slashdot.org!
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25Mbps doesn't cut it in a household with everyone using the Internet.
Not sure, but if history is any indicator, it will likely include the further restriction of my freedoms for my own good.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
nine things to do about clickbait on /. (hint: #3 is "Don't click it")
forty nine ways to please your cat.
three hundred and forty nine ways to identify werewolves.
So why are they helping companies get corporate welfare?
*checks calendar* oh wait, they must need donations for their upcoming election. Nevermind.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Our business is suffering because of lack of decent Internet connectivity in our area. These fucking corrupt lying pieces of shit need to quit calling themselves "pro-small business" because that's an outright lie. Has been for as long as I could remember, in fact.
I don't respond to AC's.
I'd be happy with my 6/1 DSL service if it wasn't 50ms+ to the first hop. Fix that, then bring back the concept of a CIR and you're golden.
Restrict their work offices to their definition of broadband. Maybe we will see more productivity out of Congress if their staff spend less time rewriting wikipedia articles.
Yeah!
Close down "broadband" to 1 kb downstream and 0.006 kb upstream and mandate that to all Federal Agencies including DoD, DHS, DoS and WH!
Ha ha
but.... I would be happy if my parent's rural location could get a consistent 2 Mb/s up and down connection without paying $100/month for high latency satellite.
...has nothing to do with speed. It has to do with transmitting multiple signals over different frequencies.
"a high-capacity transmission technique using a wide range of frequencies, which enables a large number of messages to be communicated simultaneously."
Call it high speed Internet. Please stop fucking up our language.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
and my family are a heavy user.
No, no you're not. I telework from home. I have to kick off data file downloads the night before so that they're hopefully here by morning.
Data files that are sampled at 1 MHz that need to be analyzed. I max out my 25Mbit connection constantly. Sending data files back is even worse.
If you want your little part of the country to step into this century and have jobs for this century everyone is going to need 1 Gbit to the home. And as soon as I get 1 Gbit to the home I'm probably going to be asking when 10 Gbit is coming.
If you can get by with 20 Mbit you are not a heavy user.
So, six ignorant Representatives think 25Mb is far too fast for people.
Fine. In order to support this argument, I want to mandate that these six individuals get their own broadband service capped at 10Mb for an entire year. Let's see how quickly their opinions change. After a week of trying to explain to their families that 10Mb is "fast enough", it won't even matter how much corporate grease is on their palms.
If anything goes to poor people who have no lobbyist and no campaign contributions it's welfare and is evil.
Capitalism should be pure and not fettered by evil and incompetent gumment interference. Unless there is free money with no strings attached, at which point the more gumment involvement the better.
And if you think it's not free money, just try taking it away. The recipients will start squealing like stuck pigs.
Why is Snark Required?
Think of the push back from contracts for "collect it all" systems that designed for download speeds of less than 25 Mbps on average?
Did the mil and gov project the US would be stuck on existing coax plans, and POTS copper for a long time?
What was MAINWAY, MARINA, FAIRVIEW, STORMBREW or even back to MAIN CORE keep up but only after another contractor upgrade again?
Thin copper and long POTS networks would have needed a lot of regional collection teams.
On one side are the telcos with too much copper POTS to replace and the other are the contractors who designed collection systems for data over copper speeds.
Would going full optical to or near each user or upgrading coax make "collect it all" more easy for direct collection without needing to buy expensive solutions from existing contractors?
Think of all the local security contractors that could be replaced by one new splitter and location.. if the internet is ever allowed to get too fast.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
And reasons you place so much emphasis on a connection speed, face reality someone has to install those lines and you aren't exactly giving away the access to them.
Offer options or face reality, that's exactly what you are asking for.
Blatant, self serving.
All to attempt to get a little more profit for the rich.
Some portion of the people they are supposed to serve would be hurt by this.
> "No, no you're not. I telework from home. I have to kick off data file downloads the night before so that they're hopefully here by morning."
But you have 3mps bandwidth to your eyes, so why wouldn't you leave the data file server side and analyse it with a remote desktop? You see why the bandwidth to your eyes is the limiting factor. Because if it really was the limiting factor you'd simply process the data and just move the results! Which are limited by your ability to see them!
But more to the point, 25Mbps is the definition of broadband for home users, not for work, you Telework. I pull down a lot of stock data feeds, Bittorrent, and wife and kids watch videos, and we don't get it past 12 at peak, even with my data feeds, and so 25Mbps is fine for a home user.
You should keep your files on the cloud...more efficient.
I ask myself, if I could get 5 Mbps for $20, 20 Mbps for $40, 100 Mbps for $80 or 1,000 Mbps for $160, which would I chose?
And the answer (for me) is 20 Mbps for $40.
I'd like more, but I'm not willing to pay for it.
The average Slashdotter is likely to pick a higher tier, but the average American?
I bet most would be satisfied with (5Mbps * number_of_people_in_household), and $20/month would look very attractive to many.
It is far better for me, and the economy, that I continue to slowly download contents over days instead of minutes. My appetite for fresh new content far exceeds the ability of the entrenched traditional content providers to provide it and so thus my taste for new information must be moderated to ensure that some upstart might upset the applecart.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Broadband needs to be a utility and regulated as such. I've got my fingers crossed that Obama can get that done before he leaves office. Many people, like myself, live in places where the Internet options are 1. Shit 2. Shittier. Internet is too important today to be left to "The Invisible Hand". The barriers to entry are simply too high for there to be any kind of competition, so the government really needs to take care of it.
I don't respond to AC's.
https://www.daines.senate.gov/news/press-releases/daines-calls-on-fcc-to-clarify-broadband-definition
Daines Calls on FCC to Clarify Broadband Definition
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senator Steve Daines today led five of his Senate colleagues in urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to clarify their inconsistent and arbitrary definitions of broadband, which could detrimentally impact rural Montanans.
The letter is also signed by Roger Wicker (MS), Roy Blunt (MO), Deb Fischer (NE), Ron Johnson (WI) and Cory Gardner (CO).
The senators expressed their concerns that:
The FCC’s arbitrary 25/3 Mbps benchmark speed does not reflect what most Americans consider broadband
The use of this benchmark discourages providers from offering speeds at or above the benchmark
The definition contradicts the broadband definition used in the Open Internet Order
The FCC uses a different benchmark when referring to broadband in rural America
“We are concerned that this arbitrary 25/3 Mbps benchmark fails to accurately capture what most Americans consider broadband, the use of this benchmark discourages broadband providers from offering speeds at or above the benchmark, the definition contradicts the ‘broadband’ definition the Commission used in its Open Internet Order, and that the Commission uses an entirely different benchmark when it comes to rural America,” the senators wrote.
The senators also sought additional clarification of the FCC’s broadband definition in its application to rural consumers: “It is unclear how applying a different definition of broadband to urban and rural areas is consistent with this clear Congressional directive. Nor is it clear how the Commission can justify defining broadband by the 25/3 Mbps benchmark in one context (when assessing the market under section 706), but ignoring this definition when it sought to regulate 'broadband' Internet access providers in its Open Internet Order -- there, essentially including any service above dial-up as ‘broadband’."
Senator Daines’ effort to encourage innovation and gain certainty for rural broadband providers and consumers was applauded by the Montana Telecommunications Association: “The Montana Telecommunications Association (MTA) shares the concerns that Sen. Daines raises in his letter to the FCC. Montana’s rural telecom providers continue to push advanced broadband capabilities to consumers throughout their service areas, including in some instances deploying gigabit services to schools and other anchor institutions in the near future. It is important to recognize that it costs more to deploy broadband infrastructure in rural, remote areas. Given the substantial challenges facing rural telecom providers, regulatory certainty is important in meeting the goals of the federal Telecommunications Act to ensure that all Americans, no matter where they live, have access to reasonably comparable broadband services at reasonably comparable rates. MTA appreciates Sen. Daines raising these points, and looks forward to working with him and the FCC as we deploy broadband infrastructure throughout rural Montana.”
Daines has long worked to improve rural Montanans’ access to broadband and increase transparency and accountability at the FCC. This fall, he introduced the Streamlining and Investing in Broadband Infrastructure Act, which would help increase broadband deployment in rural states.
Daines recently urged the FCC to consider strict enforcement measures and increase transparency for the recently announced Connect America Fund funding, which is intended to expand and support broadband service in rural areas. Daines also introduced the Small Business Broadband Deployment Act of 2015, which would protect Montana small businesses from burdensome FCC regulations.
Read
Amazing what Republicans think we don't need - many of whom are rich, old, straight, white guys - like a living wage, affordable health insurance, control of our own bodies, the right to love who we love and live as who we are... Of course, pretty sure *they* have all that. Just sayin'. [ He said, as a 52-year-old, fairly well off, fairly straight, white widower, with more friends who are LGBT than not. ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Trump? He'll what, do like the Mexico wall and have the major telcos build the last mile in fiber and make them pay for it, because they just will? Trump isn't even a very good business person. If he had invested his 100 million his dad gave him into a basic index fund he'd be worth more than he is nowadays. Except he wouldn't be running for president or have his name plastered on buildings.
I can easily see a call for fast download speeds, but by setting the upload rate to 3mb, you're excluding ADSL with it's upload of 768k which is likely the only way these customers will every be covered. Not to mention that most wireless technologies would struggle to cover any significant numbers of people at 25/3 but the people we serve with wireless are ecstatic to get 6/3 and we can't get assistance to cover additional rural areas.
You seem to be working in last century if you are actually bringing the data back to your home instead of remotely analyzing it in a datacenter.
Your definition of "heavy user" is definitely different from mine. 12 Mbps is just enough to have a single download from steam while not being able to do anything else. I was on 12 Mbps for a long time, so I speak from experience. When I upgraded to 105 Mbps, the difference was night and day.
All the more reason old people should not be leaders of any stripe.
Take your Geritol, watch Matlock, and have a nap. No, I don't know where your cereal bowl is. No, I don't care that you remember when "this was all farmland". And, no, your time "in the war" isn't a bargaining chip.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Intellectual Property infringers cannot get that.
When you grow government and inject it into everything several things are GUARANTEED to happen:
1. Everything becomes political.
2. Politicians discover that they can get money and power by promising to regulate, or not regulate, or adjust regulations.
3. Politicians discover that they can raise money and get votes by pointing at all the regulations favored by other politicians and groups....and with so many things in the mix, they can stay in power with very unpopular positions on one set of issues the government is entangled in by pointing at their favorable positions on another set of issues the government is entangled in.
4. A portion of the business community discovers it can make more money by investing in politicians who regulate and hand-out subsidies than they can make from honest competition in a free and open marketplace.
The corruption is not only bi-partisan but it goes in both directions. Examples:
A. Politician says "elect me and I will do {fill in the blank}." This is the obvious one.
B. Politician says "elect me or the other guy will do {fill in the blank}." This is less obvious to some, but just as powerful.
C. Lobbyist says "do {fill in the blank} and I will back you." Like [A] this is the obvious one.
D. Lobbyist says "don't regulate {fill in the blank}." The one we intuitively expect in a market-based economy.
E. Lobbyist says "I encourage you to regulate {fill in the blank}." The one favored by crony capitalists who already have market share, and least noticed by the general public particularly because messaging experts always position it as a "good corporate citizenship" play.
Yes, the telcos have historically been slightly more involved with the Republicans, but the big media companies and their organizations (MPAA ring any bells?) have historically been more involved with the Democrats. The TRUTH is that these big cash-heavy interests buy as many politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle as they need to get what they want, and the ONLY way to stop this is to get government OUT of everything in should never have gotten into in the first place.
H264 HD streams are only 4mbps not 12mbps.
Is there ANY place in America where converting anything into a monopoly that is tightly-tied to government has made the customers happy?????
The problem of high-speed internet is really two totally separate problems. Problem #1 is in cities, problem #2 is rural.
In the cities, the problem is that government is already over-involved and in most places local governments have cut nasty little deals with cable and telephone providers that lock-in a monopoly and keep-out any competition. Your service sucks and you have no reasonable alternative because politicians got themselves some power by limiting competition - all for your benefit, of course. In the cities, the way to improve things is to open the markets as wide as possible to maximize competition. With so many people packed into such small spaces, even small upstart companies can easily provide innovative new services to enough customers to bootstrap a new brand and scheme.
In rural areas, the problem is more akin to the original electrification issue. There are simply too few people spread too-thinly across a lot of miles/kilometers to make it economical to build and maintain the infrastructure. In this situation, if universal service is desired, then in MAY be desirable to inject just enough government to get industry to build the infrastructure and get service going, but much more than that quickly decomposes into unjustified and unstoppable permanent subsidies and the related political shenanigans.
Power and water companies are regulated utilities and few people love them; over time they charge more and more for less and less while being very unresponsive to the "customers" they feel no need to struggle to keep.
Computers and fast food are the opposite. With wide-open competition, customers have lots of choices at different price points and most people are quite satisfied with what they get for what they pay. People who want more quantity and/or quality choose to pay for it and get it, while those who choose cheap, or unusual, or fast, etc get what they want the the price they decide is acceptable. The competition makes the vendors fight for market share and pushes them to innovate and look for ways to keep the customers happy - with the vendors that fail ending and new vendors with new choices entering the markets.
ALWAYS choose freedom and choices when somebody in a chairman Mao suit shows up offering a government-controlled utopia.
They're right about one thing: 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up *is* an arbitrary designation for calling something "broadband". Let's pick 10Gbps full duplex as our definition of broadband instead, before broadband access gets ruled a basic human right.
If more people get 25 MPBs service, more services will be available at 25 MBPs. Chicken and egg Senators, chicken and egg.
I see this is modded -1.
Mr troll mods you might not like the message, but it doesn't make it any less true.
At 4mbps per stream (Netflix is 3mbps), you could have 6 HD streams running simultaneously and that is plenty (excess) as the definition for broadband for a house.
He is a business user, and for some reason he ships large data digitizations from server to home, where he analyses them. Why wouldn't he remote into the server location, (about 100kbs bandwidth), or simply buy more bandwidth (or 2 streams and download 2 files at once!). He's trying to use a home broadband stream for business use in an extraordinarily inefficient way, and then complaining that the definition of broadband isn't good enough for this!
Thankfully meta-mods will tackle you.
I don't buy the proposition people are deriving much value from >10megabit pipes. Even with a half dozen people sharing one 10 mbit pipe at once lack of queue management and round trip latency is why your experience will suck long before available bandwidth is a limiting factor.
There are counter examples... 3 people streaming different HD titles at the same time while playing xbox games, bit torrent, using a cloud backup service and talking on VOIP at once. However it is still a mistake to allow policy to be driven by outliers. Broadband definition is supposed to be a baseline not some ultra performance 1337mbit service tier.
The majority of customers are likely better served going forward if a higher priority is given to more useful characteristics such as quality, latency, upstream bandwidth and COST rather than allowing downstream bandwidth to dominate the broadband definition landscape.
You're right, the words baseband and broadband actually do have definitions, they MEAN something. 10BASE-T, 100BASE-T are so named because they are10 and 100 meg BASEband transmission over telephone cable. Baseband means there is a signal frequency used, the data rate is the signaling rate.
BROADband means multiple channels are used. A cable modem may use four different (tv) channels at 2.5 Mbps signaling rate each to provide 10Mbps of data rate. A T1 is 24 channels of 64kbps each, so it's broadband, as is a 128kbps isdn connection (using two 64kbps channels).
Basic fiber optic connections use a single laser or led clocked at the data rate, so these fiber are baseband, not broadband.
Save in some ways, spend more in others: Analyze your file in the cloud, and you need to pay for processors in the cloud. If you have real processor use, buying your own hardware beats the cloud, price wise, in about 3 months.
First reasonable comment in the entire discussion. I wonder how the author would have labeled opposition to a proposed regulation of minimal dick size.
We still use Carrier Pigeons for our packets. The speed is okay with a box of 128GB SDHC cards, but the latency is the shits.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
Maybe your company should invest into VDI or citrix? It sounds silly that you download something to your PC to analyze when you company most likely has servers sitting around idle sucking power.
GOP stuck in the past in the pocket of big business.
to fix it we need to vote Bernie sanders or trump.
Anyone who hasn't been under a rock for the past 25 years knows that Donald Trump is the pocket of big business.
Back in 1985, 2400bps was fast enough for anyone -- users typically didn't need the kind of speed 4800bps (or -- gasp -- 9600bps) gave you.
But you know what? As more bandwidth became available, developers were able to write different kinds of applications to take advantage of it.
So sure -- if you're just browsing /., you probably don't need anything higher than 25Mbps. But saying that's all anyone needs discounts the probability that with more bandwidth, new types of applications and usage scenarios can open up.
Fortunately, I sit here in Canada with a 120Mbps home cable connection, and don't have to give much of a crap about idiot Senators in the US.
Yaz
What is at question is the minimum data rate required to qualify for subsidies. Quibbling over the actual word used in the regulation text is being overly pedantic and missing the point, especially when considering that words may have multiple meanings which even so are unambiguous in their different contexts. Nobody was debating the definition of the word "broadband" in the regulatory sense when it was defined to mean "at least 4 mbps download data rate and at least 1 mbps upload data rate".
Why am I not surprised. I'm down to browsing this site twice a week thanks to all the SJW and liberal/democratic BS on this site now. It use to be a useful tool I'd suggest to friends. Now I tell them don't bother they've turned into another mass media shithouse.
or slashdot?
> And as soon as I get 1 Gbit to the home I'm probably going to be asking when 10 Gbit is coming.
Right now, right here. Just $300/month too, which is less than the $350/month they were charging for 1gbps just 5 years ago.
I live in a small town in India and I have a fibre to home 24Mbps connection for around 20 USD a month with 80GB cap. I can go for a faster connection with a larger cap but I have no use for it as of now.. Surprised the US is still lagging behind in terms of broadband..
If they can get any of these guys (if any are up for re-election) to say it on camera...
30 second ad of normal people frustrated by the load screen while their streaming video has frozen, juxtapositioned with Senator X saying that they don't need faster broadband.
Nobody was debating the definition of the word "broadband" in the regulatory sense when it was defined to mean "at least 4 mbps download data rate and at least 1 mbps upload data rate".
Duh, that's because that benchmark was widely attainable both in urban and rural markets. Now with the arbitrary definition change, ISP's offering DSL are outta luck and rural markets are shit outta luck. There's no way many ISP's are going to be able to meet the baseline without a shit load of cash to upgrade their networks. Where do suppose the money for all that is going to come from? And in rural markets which have a hard enough time even with federal subsidies to provide the 4/1 benchmark, you'll have fewer companies willing to enter or even remain in the market because of increased regulations from the FCC and increased costs. You could actually end up with fewer people on the internet that you do now. That's a concern addressed in the letter from the Senators.
You should keep your files on the cloud...more efficient.
The cloud is cheaper!
Trust the cloud!
The cloud is our savior!
All Glory to the cloud!
Praise be to the cloud!
You forgot that the data is compressed in your eye before going through the optic nerve so you're off by about a factor of 4. Look at a 1MP image vs a 10MP image and tell me if you can see the difference. I have a 60Mbps connection and max it all the time, you are not heavy users, also you may need some glasses if you can't distinguish between 700,000 pixels and 8.8million pixels.
And in the 1930s, you'd be the one telling us that we "had" to vote for either Stalin or Hitler, amirite?
And as soon as there's 1gb at home you'll bitch there isn't 2
Don't know why this got modded down. It is pretty much spot on.
Only in extreme cases, which by definition are the edge cases and therefore not typical of any standard that needs to be legislated by govt.
No... you pretty much had the extent of the "concern" of these senators when you said "regulation." The entire motivation of these changes were to try to keep the US competitive with other countries, which in pretty much every arena possible... from net neutrality, to health care, to education.... these ideologically driven senators don't give a fuck about the US citizens or future generations thereof, nor the infrastructure that they need or will need.
The US is falling behind many other countries in the world not only because other countries are innovating and upping their game, but also because these fucking idiots fossil senators (in general) prefer to be anti-intellectual cretins who don't understand the most basic thing: stupidity doesn't lead to innovation.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I have 45 Mbps from my phone... (UK)
Requiem for the American Dream
Capitalism should be pure and not fettered by evil and incompetent gumment interference.
We've had examples of that model already and they failed. Walk into any jungle and see how long you last. It's pure, unfettered capitalism at it's finest. Death awaits you at any instant.
This is why we have government, regulations, taxes and subsidies etc, because they work out better for most people than the jungle model you seem to love (but refuse to live in)
Is this a race or something? Is such "lagging behind" — whether it is even true or not — automatically bad?
Perhaps one of the stupidest things i've read today..... We're basically talking about how the US compares to other counties in the basic medium that allows us to compete as a world economy, so YES, IT IS AUTOMATICALLY VERY FUCKING BAD. You may like the idea of burying your head up your ass and dreaming of 1950, but suggesting our country should be able to compete with the rest of the world while they move ahead and we're stuck looking at the inside of our colon is just stupider than shit.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
When industries are pushed to do something for the public, they make scary noises like this. They fill the air with FUD and we are to to believe that the internet providers will all be driven out of business.
The auto industry, when asked to install seat belts and basic safety items, said it would be near impossible and ruinously expensive. A few years later, miraculously it all worked fine. Dirt cheap and easy.
The ISPs are no different. They'll have to install better connections eventually. The world demands data.
I have a friend who truly is out in the sticks, and he cannot get usable internet at all. Literally, nothing. He has crappy copper wires, a crappy little local phone company / ISP with legendarily bad service. They'd be better put out of business but instead there's no effective pressure to make them improve.
I couldn't give a hoot if we had either effective monopoly regulation, or truly effective competition, but we have neither. We have ineffective monopolies, crappy service, no power to effect change, high rates and lousy service.
Don't step on the baby.
How about lowering your income to 2000 bucks a month? Most people don't need more than that anyway.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Faster speeds promote a remote workforce, saving money for business, reducing needs for infrastructure (roads) maintenance and upgrades, improve the quality of life of many Americans, and providing increased opportunities for everyone.
That's one way of putting it. Of course, they kind of succeeded last time they wanted a downgrade of definitions and thus services for Americans, so they probably figure this is hat trick. Just pay off some politicians and give them a script and laugh.
If you're curious, let's just say that what we call 3G and 4G in the USA isn't the same as the rest of the world.
Not doing anything for the money they receive makes the subsidies into corporate welfare. Getting paid again for work already done is rent-seeking. The reason why they're getting subsidies is so they can upgrade their infrastructure. Which means they're ready for this improvement in service because they used the last batch of subsidies to do exactly that; right? A concerned politician can give this unwelcome corporate welfare a better name; fraud.
I was not completely clear in making my point. When I said "Capitalism should be pure and not fettered by evil and incompetent gumment interference. ", I was mocking the right wing Republican position. It is their automatic unthinking response and a hallmark of their hypocrisy. I thought that was clear from the context.
Why is Snark Required?
Bizde Türkiye^de Cumhuriyetçilerden çekiyoruz ama yinede Allahmzn sözüne uymalyz. O hiç bir çkar ve menfaat gözetmez imdikiler ooooooo.. http://www.antepevdenevenakliy...
Slashdot makes me feel like a bad person for thinking 3/768k is fast, and 768k/128k is quite fine, if you switch tabs. Websites don't have to be particularly big. Does the entire userbase subscribe to Netflix?
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, I just switched my fibre plan from 50/50 Mbit to 1000/1000 Mbit and I'm paying a lousy € 40 a month for that service. Before we got fibre in my town, we were stuck with either *DSL which was capped and generally had reduced bandwith during peak hours or a service with the television cable providers that had a natural monopoly on the cable network.
The glass fibre networks, however, are 'open' infrastructure, with many different companies offering different services and service levels over the same network. I'm pretty sure that setup has lowered prices and increased quality for me as consumer, with added effect that cable providers have been forced to up their bandwith, lower the cost of their plan and add extra benefits that they can uniquely (TV channels, services, etc..) offer.
My point being, legislature notwithstanding, the market will move eventually. I'm not sure how service providers offer services over fibre networks in the US, but if the infrastructure is 'open' to all providers, you'll see the entire market moving to comply to the new standards set by fibre service providers.
Also, bandwidth is something you measure in Hertz, and it's not quite the same as data rate in bits per second.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
You're not heavy users. I frequently max out my 20Mbps connection by myself. When my kids are old enough to start really using the internet, it's going to start feeling like the 90s again.
And in the 1930s, you'd be the one telling us that we "had" to vote for either Stalin or Hitler, amirite?
No, in the 1930s, we'd be telling you that we need to provide telecommunications and electrification to just about every single address in the entire country.
Amazingly, we did this and when it came time for the entire country to ramp up production, we were able to meet that demand - unlike what might have happened if we listened to the morons now pushing this shit all over again.
They interpreted 25 Mbps as 25mbps!
"users don't need that kind of speed anyway"
I could probably agree with that - 25/5 would be nice, but not exactly _need_. So, all that is left is for the ISPs to provide oh, say, 8/1 _per_ _user_. Five users in my house, 40/5 would be fine thanks.
Oh wait, that's not what you meant, you don't provide service per user but per household/residence ?
Well, mr ISP and ISP-bought-politicians, stop talking about what a "user" needs and start talking about what a household needs then - can't have it both ways.
I think that a baseline speed should be established in order to advertise as broadband speed. I don't think some DSL services qualifies as broadband, but it depends and even some wireless ISP's are actually providing slower speeds (around 1mbps) which is not in my thoughts broadband. Clearly some cellular networks broadly claim unproven speeds and use generalizations instead of actual averages of speeds obtained from in field testing. They all do testing and yet I don't ever see much presented to the public. At least broadband cable providers seem to provide the most accurate claims of broadband speed. But much of the public is in the dark about wireless speeds or even how their local network is related to the internet network speed. Some people still believe buying a faster router or device will give them faster internet. Also many people are over sold broadband speed claiming they need it for good streaming. Actually people would be surprised how little speed they really need for streaming even in HD. My neighbor has DSL at a promised speed around 3mbps and streams HD video's just fine. Probably not 4K but who really needs or can stream 4K right now? But I am sure ISP's for many reasons would like its customers to be kept in the dark about broadband speed.
I agree you have a use-case that needs greater bandwidth. However, for people surfing the web and watching a few movies then 20 Mbit is fine. This must cover most people. I have a 1 Gbit connection at work (which I need) but at home I was on 20 Mbit until November when they bumped me up to 40 Mbit for free. I've never had trouble with 20 Mbit, even though I know how fast a 1 Gbit connection feels.
soylentnews.org
But then again, I don't live in the US. I can get up to 200Mb from my ISP if I want it.
Of course this is a moving scale over time. Right now, for most people, it's about 5Mbps down per person in the household. Netflix takes 3 Mbps. VOIP phone takes 0.16 Mbps. File downloads are usually limited by the server on the other end. I guess that servers will get faster if most folks have faster download speeds. Simple webpage downloads are limited by latency and broadband has little effect. I would really like to hear the case for speeds over 5Mbps/person.
But that's a different issue from what the official "broadband" definition should be. Government subsidies should only go to companies that are pushing the boundaries. Time Warner should not get money for building more of the same slow service.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
My lord, I would love to have 25/5.
I'm still stuck with 5/1 in the area I'm in and even for my wife and I, it's not enough.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
First, please stop redefining the word broadband. Second, don't fall into the consumer trap of "more megabubbas is more better". At 1 Mbps, the Internet is perfectly usable for a single device (including video). 3 is enough for a normal family. Sure, 25+ is *nice*, but is by no means necessary. Most people simply shouldn't be wasting so much money on such fast connections that they can't even take advantage of. Don't talk your neighbors into the poorhouse by insisting they need such excess capacity.
GOP stuck in the past in the pocket of big business.
to fix it we need to vote Bernie sanders or trump.
Anyone who hasn't been under a rock for the past 25 years knows that Donald Trump is the pocket of big business.
Exactly. Which means he's not *in* the pocket.
If you want to see "in the pocket" look at Hillary. Trump earned his money, rich people give it to Hillary to gain access. Bernie's just nuts, but in a lovable "crazy grandpa" sort of way.
Do you have ESP?
I agree, dumbing down the spec will make "high speed" available to more people, especially people in fly-over country. I know quite a few people in the midwest burbs who have terrible service. They'd love to get 6/.5 but you helpful people say they have to have 25/5 or nothing, so they're getting nothing.
I still remember when the cable companies would charge you per TV in the house and splitters were against the TOS.
The lack of competition is sad. These companies reap so much in terms of subsidies and do very little to invest that money into infrastructure upgrades.
I recently switched from 20/2 (for $80/mo that includes hardware rental fee) to 30/5 @ $65/mo. Just another sleezy tactic they use, automatically hike your prices until you call and complain, then they magically find a better deal. Even 30/5 @ $65/mo is not that good of a deal in most developed countries.
At 20/2, we could not have 2 simultaneous streams going.. my wife watching youtube videos at 480p and I streaming at 1080.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Basic fiber optic connections use a single laser or led clocked at the data rate, so these fiber are baseband, not broadband.
I was under that the effective frequency spectrum of a visible light frequency transmission was the frequency of the laser (c divided by the wavelength) plus or minus the data rate.
My take was share this slash-dotting with the highest ranking opponents who share their committees. I know there is going to be follow-up, and that the publicity those opponents get for crushing these backwoods sellouts down will make for good political hay.
IMO, if a good chunk of readers of the article did the same, we could solidly communicate how unhappy we are with being sold out to ISP.
It is not about "racing" it is about MAXIMIZING THE ABILITY TO CREATE VALUE. The Internet has made Apple $40B/yr, Amazon exist, ... I don't have the capacity to wrap the trillions of dollars of value it has enabled to come into existence. The Maker movement - happened because of communication and shared technical capabilities. No internet yesterday, none of that happens. Effectively no internet tomorrow (aka how ISP's want it) then how many trillion dollars in value do you lose out on tomorrow? A trillion here, a trillion there, sooner or later we are talking real money.
This summary was beautifully designed to attract slashtrolls.
" so Congress made broadband expansion a national priority, and it offers subsidies, mostly in rural areas, to help providers expand their offerings"
As someone who lives in a rural area, I can tell you this is COMPLETE BULLSHIT.
NO ONE I know in any rural area has any decent broadband. I have a choice of about 1 -2 mbps from a radio link, or spotty 4G from a cell booster, and we had to put up a tower and pay for the towers, antennas, boosters, cabling, etc. And I live only 30 miles from the center of a fairly large and high-tech city.
Telecom companies are just lying sacks of shit when they talk about using those subsidies for rural areas. They pocket the money and don't do a damn thing with it.
If world economies compete instead of cooperate, then we are all doomed surely. As constant economic growth cannot be sustained in a finite space, there will have to be one economy to rule them all at some point. Wouldn't a better model be to have the economies of the world working together instead of constantly trying to fuck each other out of a few shillings and a sack of coffee?
Netherlands is twice the size of New Jersey. There is a county in my state the size of NJ with a total population of 15,000....
love is just extroverted narcissism
I know of very few places in the country that require much more than median household income to live, so let's adjust Congressional salaries to be pinned to median income.
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
I think you're confusing bandwidth with baud rate. Bandwidth really is measured in bits per second.
That is, in digital communication, 1 hz = 1 bps. There might be some overhead used for error correction and encoding, but that's not the point.
For the life of me, I can't see why this was modded down as "Flamebait." It's a completely valid argument. The lawmakers are, in fact, against the raising of the standards by an executive body, the FCC, not "changing the definition of broadband." The FCC has changed the definition, and this is a legislative check to an arbitrary executive policy, not a strong hand on the brake by a bunch of myopic clods. That's what the summary seems to imply, that they're Luddites. I think it's very biased.
Now that argument may not be sufficient in the minds of people who evangelize for at least 100Mbps down, or the laughably overpriced for underserviced nature of American broadband vs the rest of the industrialized world, but it doesn't make it any less valid.
IMHO, it's _upload_ speeds that should absolutely be better than 1Mbps. I get 10-12Mbps up, and I still have to spend quite a bit of time uploading content to the web, or attaching PDFs to email. Let's shoot for half the download speed at least, eh? (i.e.: 4Mbps down, then 2Mbps up. 25 down, then 12 up, etc.)
Ah yes. You tell my IT department that one. Nothing is hosted in any 'cloud'.
If you don't think he'd act in his own self interest, which is exactly the same interest as his fellow big businesses, then you're a fool.
BTW, this money he supposedly "earned" really ought to be paid out to reimburse the shafted investors in his countless bankrupted ventures. His current wealth is purely a product of gaming the system. In an earlier era, he'd be rotting in debtor's prison at this stage of his life.
That's funny because I just switched ISPs and the sales rep of my new provider was pretty adamant that 50 Mb/s was not going to be enough for a household of one person. At the same time, ISPs are telling senators that households (which likely have more than one person) don't need any more than 25 Mb/s. It sounds like the ISPs are talking out of both sides of their ass.
Don't forget the 1GB Iomega Jaz. That set the standard for "unreliable." ;)
Which means he's not *in* the pocket.
You just won the moron-of-the-day award. Congratulations.
Seriously...
Problem solved.
Oh, and that ad blocking = terism.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
All systems can be gamed. That's why you need to reform them frequently. By that I mean, change the rules as a matter of course every 20 years or so.
Urban vs rural policy is something this country should definitely look into. Something along the lines of "infrastructure districts," slicing up cities into large megalopolis districts, because it's easier to wire a city, and rural into smaller district regions, because it costs more, and giving each appropriate amounts of money for infrastructure. The difference in size of districts might mean that you can give the *same* amount of money to each district. But honestly we should think outside the box and allocate *different* funds by different standards of say, "Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3 districts." Class 1 would be urban. Class 2 would be (comparative to sparse rural) dense rural. Class 3 could be sparse rural. (Additionally, Class 4 could be "pay for a satellite dish," AKA the "fuck it" districts. We could even give satellite service buyers a tax break on it to incentivize).
Differing fund allocation policy would allow for sensibly fewer districts, too, making it easier to administrate.
Frankly, it's high time the Republicans started having to cater to the cities, and vice-versa for the Democrats and rural constituencies. I'm getting sick and tired of half the country getting screwed on the federal level with each shift in power.
because they got campaign financing and lobbying from entrenched ISPs?
That and the fact that Republicans have gone full pants-on-head retarded recently.
Your sentence is missing a word or two, or has a word or two replaced, so it's not entirely clear what you're saying. I -think- you're saying that you think of laser fiber connections as working like FM radio, where the data signal modulates the carrier. The actual frequency would then be the carrier frequency plus or minus the signal. Is that what you're saying?
What makes lasers special is that all of the light is at the same wavelength, so it doesn't disperse. The wavelength or frequency can't be readily modulated. Instead, the laser is pulsed, either directly by turning power on and off, or through a device that blocks the light similar to an LCD screen, called a electro-absorption modulator.
So it's one single frequency, turned on and off.
I don't think most people are close enough to the CO to get 4Mbps in a lot of rural areas. More like you could expect 768Kbps down/768Kbps up SDSL.
25Mbps seems a distinctly "urban" standard, and absolutely pie-in-the-sky for a rural standard. To me, at least.
You're dealing with building off the rail line and pipeline fiber for rural areas, currently, if I'm not mistaken. Honestly, IMHO, the federal government should be doing a massive public infrastructure project running limited fiber trunk lines across rural America, and leaving the "last mile" (which can be more like 20 miles in rural) to the ISPs. Either that or subsidize satellite. We need a real infrastructure plan to solve that problem (good luck getting that from Congress! We can't even maintain our bridges and highways.)
Your sentence is missing a word or two
True: s/under/under the impression/
I -think- you're saying that you think of laser fiber connections as working like FM radio, where the data signal modulates the carrier.
No, AM radio. The amplitude of the radio or light emission is varied over time.
So it's one single frequency, turned on and off.
That's amplitude-shift keying, the special case of AM where only on and off are valid. Like other forms of AM, ASK's bandwidth is theoretically nonzero. Zero bandwidth would be a laser that is never pulsed.
What this country needs to do is split "minimum internet access speed" (I won't misuse "broadband") into regional strategies. Like a minimum guaranteed rate on a frame relay. (Do those still exist?) I'd say 4 regions as a starter.
Class 1 - urban region, easy to wire up; Class 2 - rural dense (vs rural sparse) more difficult, different challenges; Class 3 - rural sparse, probably yet different challenges; Class 4 - screw you, get a satellite dish, you "exceedingly long peninsula."
Then we need different build-out strategies for each region. Get that? Not one strategy for the entire country like apples are oranges, and monkeys are orangutans. A little common sense regarding the different needs of the different regions, instead of this (R) rural, (D) urban, schizophrenic policy. I think 4Mbps/2Mbps up would be "adequate" for a Class 3 infrastructure region. More minimum speed for the higher classes. This is what would be fair, and I think the senators are trying to roll out subsidies to rural areas in particular, so that's why they want to check the higher standard of the FCC policy.
(PS: I say 4Mbps/2Mbps, because I think up should, for the sake of these minimums, be pegged at half of down. If I have 25 down, I should have 12-13 up, not 3, which ludicrously assumes no one in the country is a content creator.)
SOPA was squeezed into the Omnibus spending bill that was passed by Paul Ryan and the rest of the idiots in Congress. We don't have two parties. We have two opposing mafia families engaged in a battle of trying to steal from the People. Philosophically it boggles my mind why people would vote for a party heralding government oversight, when the same government officials are so demonstratedly bought off by interest groups. Yes! Yes! Let's give the power to use force to people that are bought and paid for by the corporations that they are supposed to regulate. That sounds like a brilliant idea. Anything so that we can abdicate our responsibility to think and be informed because I need more time to play Mine Craft, get my views up on my YouTube channel, holla at my peeps on Instagram and wage a ware of slacktivism on twitter and facebook against all the ills being perpetrated by corporations against the environment as well as the slave wages they pay. I won't bother to look at the fact that my computer was built with said slave wages. I won't do without the products of the corporations against which I rail on social media. I won't consider the logistics involved in how the ingredients in my Chipotle came to be in my burrito. I won't think about anything and I won't be inconvenienced, and damn it, keep your hostile views out of my safe space or I'm going to report you to the internet police!
There are many millions of folks who believe that both Senate and House salaries are far too high for what they do. Especially for some of the utterly
ridiculous ideas and statements they tend to come up with from time to time.
I mean, they don't really NEED $175k per year ( not even going to go into their retirement and other perks ) to pass laws they don't even bother reading
do they ?
We really need a better method of determining who will make decisions for this country. The one with the most money to throw at a campaign or the
winner of the popularity contest really isn't turning out so well these days. The state of our economy is good evidence of this.
Chuckle. Perhaps we should mandate a very specific PH.D degree plan that would be required for all those who wish to lead this country. Prove they actually
have the snap to handle the job and the intellect to understand it in the first place. At least we would be able to select a qualified candidate if we forced the
education requirements upon them.
You obviously don't understand how digital-analog hybrid neutral networks feed into our perception. Next you'll tell us bullets aren't dangerous because their average velocity over the age of the Universe approaches 0.
It's horribly wrong with a few correct facts. The human brain does continuous integration of past and current information and the eyes do a lot of pre-processing. The eyes don't return all information, only the important information and the brain fills in the holes. 3Mb/s of "bandwidth" of raw data from the eyes is only enough for 4fps of binary monocrome color, yet we see in a vibrant array of colors and can perceive as quickly as 300fps. The analogy is horribly broken to absurdity with only basic common sense.
I can only do about 1 mathematical operation per second if I'm lucky. Would you say the brain is only capable of 1 instruction per second?
Restrict all the Senators Homes to 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream. see if their attitude changes.
I work for a small ISP in Nevada. My experience has shown the best indicator of a user's download speed needs is the number of connected devices in the home. Personally, I recommend 3-4 meg per device. If you have a single resident, and they have a computer and a phone, they can typically get away with 6-8 meg service. If they only have one computer, they likely aren't using Netflix. Individuals that are more techy tend to have more connected devices like TV's, Rokus, tablets, etc. The 3-4 meg benchmark is a good figure, as long as the user is honest about what's in the home.
In my house, we have 2 phones, 2 iPods, 4 kindles, Apple TV, Chromecast, laptop, computer, Slingbox, WiiU, and 2 iPads. Based on my devices, I'd be good with roughly 50-60 meg. I couldn't justify paying for any higher speeds even though I'm getting 100/100 for next to nothing because of my employment.
Lol, look how full of shit you are. Your assertions are weak. No, it's not bad that we "lag behind" as long as we meet a threshold of bandwidth.
Probably 95% of Americans can do everything they want/need to do on a 10Mbps pipe, 3% just have more that "want" to do, and the other two percent actually need more.
Now, you can wave your hands and whine that I made those numbers up but they are more consistent with observation that you just using capital letters and claiming everyone needs 50Mbps or it's VERY FUCKING BAD.
Most people use bandwidth for facebook, Youtube, Netflix, Amazon, etc.. None of which require as much bandwidth as you entitled little shits seem to think.
Furthermore, "broadband" usage at home will only continue on the decline as more and more people are using their shitty little iProducts over LTE to access their content.
Don't get me wrong, I like me some bandwidth but a) I'm a dirty nerd, b) I rarely use more than 20Mbps of it, and c) I certainly don't 'need' more than 10Mbps in any life-critical way.
That's not exactly true. It could range anywhere from 2Mbps to 30Mbps. All depends on what level of quality loss you're willing to allow.
That's the first time I've seen anyone say "either Sanders or Trump would fix this". You don't often see those two put on the same level.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Exactly. He's not in their pocket. He is them.
So once he runs the US, he's going to run it like his company.
Or are you implying that he is somehow going to fuck his own company over just so other companies can make a profit?
Doesn't sound logical to me.
What's all the fuss? I think 25mbps down, 3mbps up is a good speed for a 'minimum' or a 'standard'. If you want more, pay for it. Each of us has a 'minimum' or 'standard' sized water pipe going to your house. If you decide to add more sinks, showers, toilets, etc. and need more water pressure, you are not 'entitled' to it. You pay for all the work to upgrade. Each of us has a 'standard' sized electrical entrance coming into your house. If you decide you want to start welding, or adding other power hungry devices, you are not 'entitled' to increase your electrical feed capacity, you must 'pay' for an upgrade. Just my thoughts/opinion. Thanks.
And computers have too much memory also. Who would ever need more than 64k? It gives you a glimpse into what sort of mind people like Tom Wheeler and his Republican buddies have. They've effectively completely sat out the last 20 years of tech progress. They have no access- as personal memories - of the lessons, lore, and legends of computing and the internet and consequently lack the shared base of facts upon which sound judgments can be built. They are totally cut off from the weltanschauung of the modernity and are effectively legislating across time, legislating from the past. They have no idea what the cultural refernce I made above refers to. They have no idea of how it is shorthand for the tech insight: "if you built it, they will come" . If you create it, if you allow it, it will be quickly be put to extraordinary use which no one can now foresee, but which will become the stuff of future economic activity ....and the taxes guys like you live off.
Exactly. He's not in their pocket. He is them.
So once he runs the US, he's going to run it like his company.
Or are you implying that he is somehow going to fuck his own company over just so other companies can make a profit?
Doesn't sound logical to me.
So you'd like to see him run the US as his company. Which would mean that the proceeds of the country's economy become the property himself and his cronies, and everyone else works for wages set to a level competitive with offshore labor.
Man, you people are suckers.
Have been to Japan and seen the home servers that are kicking the pants off of ours.
Well, well, well. These same idjits who know that Micorsoft updates every few days, for Office, etc,
and that upgrading to Win 10 is more than 1 Gig, Adobe requires updates every week/month,
as well as having patches for TV, video cards, antivirus, and such.
The normal update adds up to more than 100 MB / month for me. Used to be 12 hours on a modem.
I do not want 12 hours on cable... just to update.
Oh! Oh! Think of teh Children!
Make full-HD videos for education! Uncompresses! Only available over the web...
Idjits.
I had 768k DSL is rural Vermont in the late 90s. It is ridiculous if there has been no progress since. Of course I know there has been upgrades because the state demands it. So you have government holding companies accountable for the subsidies that we provide. Look how much money was given to Verizon to build out fiber infrastructure over the last 20 years. They sure built a nice network for their wireless division, of course that's not what we paid them to do.
Satellite is not the solution. For a reasonable antenna size, there is only a limited number of satellites in geostationary orbit that can push through a limited bitrate in the dependably transparent bands of the atmosphere
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shut up, mi
Bandwidth is not properly measured in bits per second. Even with single-bit-per-sample encoding, the data rate is 2 bits per Hertz. With fancy encoding schemes, the bitrate/Hz can be much higher: consider 56 kbps on 4 kHz telephone lines.
The concepts are related but they're not the same. Using them interchangeably is confusing and sometimes deceitful.
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You're saying that federal Senators and Representatives need more than text speed in their offices? They should be dealing with issues that can be put into words, not watching cat videos or porn. Internet speed does not affect the valid business of Congress.
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Living in Kasnas City, the biggest thing I've seen improve broadband service in a market is open and unhindered competition. For many years you had two options Cable and DSL (maybe SAT if you don't need low latency). It's still like this in many areas, cable companies generally refuse to expand into areas serviced by other cable companies stifling competition (for that sole purpose). Years ago Everest (now a part of SureWest) started expanding into areas serviced by other cable companies in the Kansas City metro area. Immediately, stagnant and inflated prices started dropping, but only in those areas where Everest was offering services. The same TWC users, in the same TWC billing system, using the same TWC routers and networks, even just a couple of blocks apart, could see differences of $100 or more on their bill. Step one started forcing the price for these services down overall. Enter Google. Even before Google started laying cable, TWC had already started offering 50Mbps service (exceeding their previous 10-25). As Google expands to more neighborhoods, TWC has expanded to 300Mbps, utilizing a large amount of the same infrastructure, just by adopting new standards and replacing key equipment. I don't think the answer is government subsidies, I think we would see more benefit from forced deregulation, even to the local level. Now in the KC Metro Area, there are still deals with local governments with various ISPs/Telcos/Cable Cos to try and lock down a captive market and lock competition out so that they don't have to worry about lowering prices to compete.
Around here there's a 50Mbps option, which is about right for my usage along with my wife and her friend (who's renting with us). I recently dropped down to 30Mbps and that seems OK thus far.
Lower than that probably wouldn't work well, not necessarily because of the lower bitrate but because it drops the monthly download/upload limit to the point where I risk overages.
Of course, around here 50Mbps is also around $95 so the pricing sucks. The one thing I can say about my ISP (Shaw) is that they do tend to have good uptime and/or tech support though, certainly better than any of their competitors I've dealt with among the big ISP's.
Language evolves is the real point. Just like debugging no longer means removing literal bugs from circuitry. Are you going to argue that one, too?
Tell the Republican senators that reduced speeds will mean that users will not see Big Business' ads.
The proper purpose of a business is very different from the proper business of government. The proper purpose of business is to create value and trade value for money, making money without doing harm (Remember, not doing harm is part of "proper".) The proper purpose of government is to protect people's rights (first and foremost life and property). Wasting money does harm to those who have to pay it, so to avoid harming taxpayers, government should not spend what is not absolutely necessary to protect its citizen's rights.
Trump shows an ongoing opposition to private property rights: he supports unlimited eminent domain, as exemplified by his agreement with the Kelo decision. Trump is what most leftists dishonestly claim all Republicans are: a fascist.
Like Obama, Trump's philosophy is not far from solipsism. He rarely even acknowledges arguments that come from outside his mind.
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Is that it? The faster your fooking Netflix movie loads, the better America's position against China? Seriously? Yes, decent Internet bandwidth is important, but only to a point — you aren't going to triple a worker's productivity by upping their "broadband" from 15Mbps to 45Mbps. You would not even double it — see diminishing returns.
Fix your CAPS LOCK button, ASSHOLE.
I can't parse the above "insightful" part, but, if you really are worried about America's competitiveness, you should be focusing on things like ease of doing business here.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If Congress didn't want advanced communication capability to mean services capable of bi-directional high-quality video conferencing, then they shouldn't have put that definition in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. FCC is following the definition Congress set forth, and you have to draw an arbitrary line somewhere. FCC came up with a number because Congress was too chicken to do so.
imbeciles (yeah you!)... now crooked politicians decide what gets subsidized
The money comes from the ISPs' bank accounts because WE ALREADY FUCKING GAVE THEM ALL THE SUBSIDIES THEY COULD POSSIBLY NEED!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
There should be a lower limit for wireless than wired. One is shared spectrum and the other is dedicated (to the CO).
It's much cheaper to do broadband to an apartment using wires than wireless.
Remote users who need wireless need subsidies a lot more than places that can be wired.
In the physical world, there are plenty of things that involve frequencies in the analog sense, and there you find bandwidth in its original meaning. These things include digital transmissions when you consider their physical representation, so it's important to people that design "broadband" modems, for example. They also include completely analog systems such as human hearing. I understand that laypeople often take scientific terms and use them in some vague, narrow and "wrong" sense, but that's far from having the actual scientific language evolve.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
5Mbps for $20, that's for sure. That's more than enough for Netflix.
It depends on how many people in your household watch at once and how big the screens are (such as 480p on a Wii or phone vs. 1080p on a PC or eighth-generation console).
The analogy is horribly broken to absurdity with only basic common sense.
Only if you can't read.
The GP was referring to doing the load at the Data Centre, and merely transmitting the display to your house (ie Remote Desktop/Citrix or similar). 3Mbps is the bandwidth of Hi-def raw video, but most of these technologies can do it for far less with compression (25-50kbps from memory).
So for any argument saying I need X bandwidth to move all my shit to my house and back, the solution is don't move it. keep it in the datacantre and only move the display information.
I have 5 people in my house. We don't watch TV anymore so we are on Netflix, or YouTube or some video streaming. Not to mention my kids to homework all on line and that may require uploading huge data files for projects, or downloading huge data files for projects. Many times I work from home and that adds to the need for the bandwidth. Then there is on-line gaming, I do a lot of that and my kids are into it too. Everyone is on line for hours doing something and at 75mb we just make it. We have 2 servers, 5 phones, 3 desktops, 3 laptops, 3 TVs, 2 Xbox's and some tablets all around the house all on line. In this age of all on line all the time how can 25mb be enough?? We up people.
A T1 is 24 channels of 64kbps each, so it's broadband,
A T1 has a single fixed bit-rate of 1.544 MHz which is mupltiplexed to 24 8-bit frames, 8,000 frames/sec, so it is baseband by your definition. It is not a mix of frequencies.
J
Anyone have a measure of the bandwidth required by Occulus apps? Streaming video for games and porn should take a healthy jump when the next major release of these devices occurs.
I have 3 MB/s down and something like 0.5 MB/s up (I refuse to use bit notation like an idiot playing into a marketing ploy) and this is plenty for every worthwhile application.
Other than downloading large software packages (advanced 3D modeling, heavier DAWs, Unity/Unreal) what productive use is there for broadband?
This is just a legion of whiny babies complaining about their Netflix being slow or their bloated AAA video games taking 2 hours to download. Faster internet breeds shitty web developers among other things.
Baseband:
A type of data transmission in which digital or analog data is sent over a single unmultiplexed channel, such as an Ethernet LAN.
After it is de-multiplexed, it can be sent over a baseband medium (or a broadband medium). The T1 itself is defined as 24 channels, and is therefore broadband.
I live in Rural Georgia and have 100Mbit service, I lived in rural nebraska and had 70Mbit service .... how much faster do you want it to be?
The new UHD ("4K") streams that some sites are now offering require 15-25Mbps. Reliably, not just once in a while. For one stream.
They do not need more than 64K either...
Here in the US one can get disowned and/or lose most of one's friends for even suggesting that someone like Trump isn't God's gift to mankind. (White male men, of course)
Hold on a sec how about Hillary wanting silicon valley to put in backdoors, the DEMOCRATS Matt Titone and Jim Cooper in NY and CA, respectively, introducing bill mandating backdoors in smartphones. Remember key escrow/clipper chip/skipjack was CLINTON's baby. There are PLENTY of idiots in BOTH parties,.
You have the spin on this completely backward. The reason the FCC keeps increasing the standard, and the reason it's currently at 25Mbps is that it justifies the FCC taking greater regulation of the Internet, justifies increased taxes, and funnels more money to the same telco's the FCC has always subsidized. You know - the same AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, and Centurylink that have promised fast broadband in exchange for all the money they have been given multiple times? The same phone companies that still have not built broadband and have no intention of doing so until it's paid for with taxpayer money?
Then why does anyone sell more?
Well, we probably *could* get away with slower broadbamd *IF* websites weren't loading their sites with tracking code and worthless cruft.
I would guess that 95% of households never utilize more than 20Mbs, ever. Most of the time, the only way your going to use (notice I said use, not 'need') more than 20Mbps is if you are streaming more than 5 Netflix streams at a time or downloading illegal software/movies. Saying that Americans 'need' over 25Mps is ridiculous. If Americans needed, or even cared for faster speeds, companies would deliver. They would pay more for faster speeds.
Too bad most of you will never know the glorious feeling of 250/250mbps fiber for $55 in a municipal arrangement. The fiber connection is $25 through the municipality and my choice of provider is $35 on top of the fiber. The ping so low. The pipe so fat. mmmm... Fuck these cockold politicians. Don't they know their kiddie porn and chicken'n'waffle recipes are that much more glorious on a REAL internet connection. Maybe they don't use the internet at home or at work. Just an aide to do it for them. Fuck Comcast.
yeah, if only the Us were more favorable to business...
like Denmark, voted Most Favorable Country to do business in.
Democratic socialist denmark, with its free schooling, higher wages, budget surplus, better healthcare....
http://i.imgur.com/7TeCb5c.jpg
go the fuck away mi, you ignorant piece of shit
Filter your Law Makers with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...
Casteism
And they wonder why Slashdot is ready to go out of business. Like Digg, Slashdot got taken over by liberal activists posting blatantly false propaganda like this, using Slashdot as nothing more than a tolerant soapox to spread liberal misinformation.
If Slashdot had just put their foot down and prevented these activists from taking over, they would not be in such a dire financial situation.
Wherever liberals are allowed to infect, they leave carnage in their wake. How's that MSNBC and Current TV doin' for ya?
I have FioS 100/100 and the world is pretty damn rosy from where I sit. BWHAHAHHAHA!
If they want to see why people need 25 Mbps and faster speeds they are more than welcome to try my 1.5 mbps Centurylink connection. I don't live in a rural community. In fact I live within 2 couple of miles to a major college but Centurylink and others don't find it necessary to upgrade the lines in our area even though there is high demand in our area and the ISP's have been fighting what they call socialized internet service where cities are building their own fiber networks since Centurylink and Comcast are unwilling to do anything. Unfortunately our city bought these companies claim that a metro cable network is socialism and we are stuck with 1.5 Mbps. Our only hope is if someday Google fiber comes to our neighborhood.