The FCC Is Preparing To Weaken the Definition of Broadband (dslreports.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from DSLReports: Under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act, the FCC is required to consistently measure whether broadband is being deployed to all Americans uniformly and "in a reasonable and timely fashion." If the FCC finds that broadband isn't being deployed quickly enough to the public, the agency is required by law to "take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market." Unfortunately whenever the FCC is stocked by revolving door regulators all-too-focused on pleasing the likes of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast -- this dedication to expanding coverage and competition often tends to waver.

What's more, regulators beholden to regional duopolies often take things one-step further -- by trying to manipulate data to suggest that broadband is faster, cheaper, and more evenly deployed than it actually is. We saw this under former FCC boss Michael Powell (now the top lobbyist for the cable industry), and more recently when the industry cried incessantly when the base definition of broadband was bumped to 25 Mbps downstream, 4 Mbps upstream. We're about to see this effort take shape once again as the FCC prepares to vote in February for a new proposal that would dramatically weaken the definition of broadband. How? Under this new proposal, any area able to obtain wireless speeds of at least 10 Mbps down, 1 Mbps would be deemed good enough for American consumers, pre-empting any need to prod industry to speed up or expand broadband coverage.

Comments

Re:Bastardizing terminology

[Jesus_666]

"Boadband" has never been particularly well defined. It can be used to mean "wideband", it can be used to mean "every signal that isn't passband" and it can be used to mean "every signal that occupies multiple non-masking channels". All of those definitions are correct. The meaning of "transmission speeds generally considered fast" has been in general use for well over two decades now, making it about as uncontroversial as the use of "to hack" in a context that doesn't involve an axe.

Broadband has never had anything to do with FDM specifically. Or rather, there have always been definitions of the term that didn't have anything to do with FDM.

First step in a five-step plan?

[PseudoThink]

From this Reddit post:

Repealing Net Neutrality may be the first step in a five-step plan from cable companies to combat their competition and cord-cutters:

1. Step 1: Repeal Net Neutrality, then offer new, unlimited data plans for mobile/home Internet. Convince people to buy into these "forever unlimited" data plans.
2. Step 2: Get all data usage (mobile and home) classified under a single umbrella.
3. Step 3: Quash ISP startups with new regulations making it infeasible for them to access utility poles, junctions, and network infrastructure.
4. Step 4: Implement data caps on all the "forever unlimited" data plans. ("Because we have to--don't let bandwidth abusers take your Internet!")
5. Step 5: Now you are forced to pay $100/month for up to 10-20 GB per month (hint: this translates to about 3 to 7 hours of HD Netflix per month). It will be very expensive to go over that, especially for non-preferred sites (think anything like Kodi, Tor, torrents, etc.).

Thoughts?

Re:First step in a five-step plan?

[cmaurand]

Around here, municipalities are installing their own fiber last miles. It's carrier neutral. Eventually, independent operators will be on those systems, they will interconnect and the big carriers will be sucking wind trying to suck money out of old outdated infrastructure. Break the rules.

The Heart of the Problem

[sycodon]

All this fuss over the FCC, FTC, and Net neutrality is stupid and unproductive.

What's holding back internet speed and greater access is local monopolies. Even if the FCC did, "take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market." It still wouldn't enable a city or small business from starting their own internet provider company and put up lines in neighborhoods.

Simply eliminate all local monopolies on internet access and you will see all manner of companies jumping into the fray.

BTW, these monopolies are created by local governments. So instead of whining about the Feds, call up City Hall and give them a ration of shit.

Re:The Heart of the Problem

[drinkypoo]

Simply eliminate all local monopolies on internet access and you will see all manner of companies jumping into the fray.

Yes. These monopoly agreements must be declared illegal at the federal level, with an actual law which overrides state law. If we can't even manage that, we literally cannot fix this problem.

Re:The Heart of the Problem

[TheRaven64]

You might want to look up the term 'natural monopoly'. Even in places where there is no legally enforced local monopoly, you almost always see a monopoly or, at best, a duopoly. Laying cable to houses is expensive. You typically only see a return on investment after 5-10 years. That's fine for a telecoms or cable monopoly, because they know that in 10 years they'll still be the default choice for you (or, at worst, they have a 50-50 chance of being your first choice, so if they install 100 lines they'll expect at least 50 customers). It's not a great business model for anyone else.

In the UK, the places where we have a duopoly exist because the government prevented our national telco monopoly from offering TV services, which allowed a bunch of regional monopoly cable companies to start up. We only saw two trying to compete in a handful of places, because it's very hard to compete with an incumbent and much cheaper to start a new company somewhere where there isn't competition. These local monopolies gradually merged and now we have precisely one cable company for the entire country.

The biggest improvement to competition for our ISPs came from two things. The first was splitting the telco monopoly into wholesale and retail arms, with a requirement that the wholesale arm offers other ISPs access to their products at the same rate that they offer them to their retail arm (this at least gives us the illusion of competition, though you really have lots of companies offering basically the same thing for basically the same price, with the price set by a third party).

The other thing was the legal enforcement of local loop unbundling, where third parties were allowed to install their own equipment to terminate the last mile connections at exchanges. This has allowed some companies to offer a competing service, run over the same last mile as the incumbent telco, but with their own back-haul and so on. It's fairly limited though, because it requires quite a large investment at the exchange and is only worth doing if you have a lot of customers wanting to switch in an area. It's completely unavailable in the rural areas with the worst service.

If you think you can make money as an ISP laying your own network, then you're very welcome to come to the UK and try it. The government won't get in your way, and may even pay you to connect up people in certain areas. You might find it difficult to get investors though, because aside from a few small companies in very dense areas (there's one FTTP company in the middle of London with a few thousand customers, which currently offers the fastest speeds of any UK ISP), everyone else who has tried has failed.

Re:The Heart of the Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"You might want to look up the term 'natural monopoly'."

Finally something intelligent said about this. I get tired of reading comments by libertarians that don't understand anything about economics, especially macro economics. You can't get real competition in markets that are inherently natural monopolies. Regulation, or outright government takeover are the only alternatives.

The real problem for the US is that universal high speed broadband is starting to be a competitive advantage for other countries that are pushing high speed internet to all of its citizens. We have allowed corporate propaganda to obscure the fact that the US is falling behind in something that we created.

Let us take an example from history. Does anyone know anything about the Rural Electrification Act? It was a push by the US government to get good electricity to every person in the country. Before the act if you lived out side of a major city in a rural area you almost certainly didn't have electricity.

Getting electricity to everyone in the country actually greatly helped the US Economy in the long run, but no company would have done this on its own because it just wasn't profitable in the short run.

Does anyone see a parallel with broadband access? The Rural US has terrible access to broadband, and it is killing small towns. If we started a Rural Fibre Act, we would see revitalization in small towns because businesses could start to look to locate in these areas.

Re:The Heart of the Problem

[PPH]

If we started a Rural Fibre Act,

Then the incumbent ISPs would shit themselves and have Congress outlaw it. Never mind that they have no intention of ever serving these customers. The REA sort of snuck up on investor owned utilities. It opened the door for alternative organizational structures such as public utilities. They won't let this happen to them again.

Re:this will not be a popular opinion

[blahbooboo]

But honestly 10 megabits is perfectly fine. I live in rural Mississippi and have a 10 mbps cable connection that loads everything perfectly fine from emails and websites all the way up to 720p netflix steaming. The 25down/4up definition is only 2 years old, and going to 10down/1up as a modification will still be much better than the pre-2015 definition of only 4down/1up.

So much wrong and stupid with this statement I dont know where to begin..

1. Some of us might like 1080p or 4k video streams
2. Try streaming more than 1 video at a time, your 10 mbps will top out fast. And dont get me started on how horrible a slow upload of 1 mbps is to use.
3. So we should not try to excel, we should do the absolute bare minimum. Making america great again eh?

Re: this will not be a popular opinion

[peragrin]

So you don't have kids or family staying? At Thanksgiving at my sister's house there are 6 kids and 10 adults. One TV and dozens of laptops and tablets. Being able to stream 2-4 streams at a time is normal.

My house only has 50mbs but I can watch things stutter when we have a large party

Re:this will not be a popular opinion

[TheRaven64]

I visited my mother (in rural France) over Christmas, where she gets about 10/1. I'd agree that 10Mb/s down is pretty reasonable as an absolute minimum, but 1Mb/s up is quite painful.

In 2002, I was in a shared house where we decided to pay extra to get the 1Mb/s service from the cable company (their default was 512Kb/s). I stayed on their top tier until it got to 10Mb/s. At that point, I stayed on the 10Mb/s service until it was the cheapest that they offered, then it became 20Mb/s and then 30Mb/s. My most recent move was to a house without cable service, but with FTTH. I'm on their slowest service, which is 54Mb/s down, 9.5Mb/s up. I don't notice much difference between 10 and 54Mb/s downstream, but the difference between 1 and 9.5Mb/s upstream is enormous.

Re:this will not be a popular opinion

[dbrueck]

I'm neither for nor against this redefinition of terms, but there's two different issues here: (1) what speeds do you need to get access to all the bells and whistles, and (2) what speeds are so slow that the government needs to step in and prod things along. Those two speeds don't necessarily need to be the same.

If you can get 10Mbps down, you can do your homework, access job sites, and all of the other reasons cited as justification for the government being involved in the first place. You can also watch a heck of a lot of cat videos, waste time on Facebook, etc. I get 100Mbps down where I live, and I'm super grateful for it, but part of that is cuz I still remember the 300 baud modem days. :)

Anyway, I don't know if the redefining of terms is being done out of bad motives or not, but there is some potential upside to it. For example, TFA talked about how a good chunk of the US doesn't have even 10Mbps yet, so lowering the "good enough" bar to 10Mbps could help keep the focus on those parts of the country that are the most underserved.

Re:this will not be a popular opinion

[thegreatbob]

Adequate for you, but 'broadband' definitions should only ever escalate. Unless the notion that we're being run by a bunch of regressive bastards is true...

10MBps is just fine

[MobyDisk]

I'm sure I'll be flamed here for this, but I always thought the 25Mbps definition was too high as a "minimum definition." An HD NetFlix stream is 5Mbps. 10Mbps allows two simultaneous HD streams, or one HD stream plus plenty of headroom for other normal activities. I would rather that the FCC define it to be 10Mbps, but actually check that this bandwidth is available consistently during peak usage. The reason to make it as high as 25Mbps is because the telcos rarely actually deliver their promised speeds.

Re:10MBps is just fine

[Jaegs]

"10Mbps allows two simultaneous HD streams, or one HD stream plus plenty of headroom for other normal activities"

And how often do you think you'll actually get 10Mbps, especially as the FCC continues to weaken itself for the benefit of ISPs?

Re:10MBps is just fine

[Voyager529]

"10Mbps allows two simultaneous HD streams, or one HD stream plus plenty of headroom for other normal activities"

And how often do you think you'll actually get 10Mbps, especially as the FCC continues to weaken itself for the benefit of ISPs?

I think that was the point the GP was making. Between "up to 25mbits/sec down" that never, ever is, and "10Mbits/sec down, a minimum of 98% uptime, with no more than 10% oversubscription", and have it enforced, the latter would be preferable.

Re:10MBps is just fine

[MobyDisk]

I'm not sure it makes sense to use old habits as a reference point.

You got right down to the crux of the problem. What are we trying to define, and how should we define it? We are trying to define "minimum" here for the purpose of providing taxpayer subsidies to telcos.

We don't want to tie the definition of basic minimum-level "broadband" to the amount of bandwidth required for a premium entertainment system. The household that bought a 4K monitor can afford to get more than the basic service. This is about defining what the minimum level is, so that the FCC can determine broadband penetration in poor and rural areas. The problem is that there are places in America where they still use dial-up or 1Mbps DSL. If we define "broadband" to be 25Mbps then that means everybody who has 20Mbps service will get upgraded to 25Mbps, on the taxpayer's dime. That isn't the goal here. What we need is to define it in such a way that people who have almost no usable internet can be brought into the modern age.

Re:The FCC is actively working against us

[slashrio]

Yes, you only need to read that one line that says:

...former FCC boss Michael Powell (now the top lobbyist for the cable industry)...

to know whom these people actually are working for.

And if you read everything you find it is false.

[will_die]

the author of option piece that other sites are pointing to was forced to admit that what he stated was a a guess and there was no facts behind it.
This is almost as bad as all those people claiming that with Title 2 now gone they have been having issues with ISP blocking sites and throttling access. When in fact Title 2 rules are still in effect.

I already have no competition

[sjbe]

The problem is that the federal law would be even allowing LESS competition because reasons.

How could it allow less? I have precisely one reasonable ISP option to my house right now. (Comcast in my case) The only "competitor" is Frontier Communications which offers substantially slower DSL service or my other option is to go entirely wireless which would be problematic for various reasons.

What needs to happen is that a law needs to be passed that companies can deliver content or they can deliver the pipe but not both. And the pipe providers need to be regulated to a similar degree as the electric companies to ensure fair and non-discriminatory access at rational prices even to rural areas.

Re: this will not be a popular opinion

[apoc.famine]

I'm sure that they brought food and drink to the party, right? It's not unreasonable to ask them to bring their own broadband then either. It's not like there's some physical limitation preventing them from bringing their home connection with them!