2y ago

FCC chair wants to boost broadband standard to 100Mbps

www.theregister.com FCC chair wants to boost broadband standard to 100Mbps

First refresh of minimums in eight years for the country that invented the internet

FCC chair wants to boost broadband standard to 100Mbps::First refresh of minimums in eight years for the country that invented the internet

91 comments

My God is American internet awful
- If you have 100mbps of non bandwidth capped internet in America, you're doing damn good for yourself.
  
  But what if it costs $95/mo, there are no alternatives and the price has nearly doubled in 10 years from $55?
  I sure don't feel that great.
- It's a lot better than Australian internet. I'm getting 20-50mbps
  
  I had 2Mbps (yes, bits, not bytes) until 2020. Then I moved out. Pretty sure that my parents house still only gets that same speed. And this is in fucking Germany, a pretty densely populated country.
  
  That sucks too...
  
  I can ONLY get 1gbit, where i live. (Denmark)
  
  Wow I had that in 2008. Damn that sucks. You can't even stream 4K HDR video.
- It depends. I grew up in the country and my parents still have to use phone hotspots for internet which works well for streaming but forget about any gaming. I live in a fairly major metropolitan city now and my internet is pretty good, although I've noticed my download speeds get throttled sometimes
- It can be, but I live in a semi-rural neighborhood outside of a town that doesn't even have 100,000 people and I'm still getting 400/400 on fiber (and can get higher speeds if I want to pay for them).
- In rural areas, yes.
  In cities, Gigabit internet is abundant and only mildly expensive. Here in Phoenix I pay $60/mo for 1 Gbps down, 50 Mbps up with no bandwidth cap from Verizon. Not the best but far from "awful".
  
  I live in a major metropolitan city in the us and I pay close to $200 a month for gig down and less than 100up.
- I pay $65 for 1Gb symmetrical and no cap. But I have options for ISPs. My parents in rural Washington have the option of wireless internet at 10Mbps for $70/month or HughesNet satellite for some ungodly amount with worse speed. Starlink is still not available there.

If you’re going to initiate a new rollout of tech, why rollout already out of date stuff? Just mandate fibre to the prem and 1 gigabit minimum from the start. It will take 15 years to complete anyway!
- Government officials in areas where 100 Mbps internet isn’t already available are too busy making sure trans people can’t use the toilet or play high school sports.
  
  They're also waiting for their trans porn to download.
- That's way too hard for this country.
- How will the isps get another government grant to roll out the next bit of outdated tech?
  
  How will the isps get another government grant to ~~roll out the next bit of outdated tech~~ outright refuse to update any infrastructure and perform stock buybacks instead?
  FTFY. Google the Connect America Fund if you want your blood pressure to spike. ISPs are notorious for taking taxpayer money and doing fuck-all with it.
- Sure, but how is that going to make more money for rich people?
- They probably had to fight for that, because the ISPs don't want to.

What about net neutrality? Does anyone remember net neutrality? I'd like that back please. I'd also like the opportunity to publicly flog Ajit Pai as long as we're dreaming.
- I would be content with just stealing his comically oversized Reese's mug.
- Remember when he immediately caught shit for his rebuttal video because he used GOT footage without permission?
- I literally wrote a bot to spam messages promoting Net Neutrality while that was up for vote.
  Sucks it didn't work out, but I surely tried.
  
  That was one of the reasons given for ignoring the comments and killing net neutrality. He would have done it regardless though.

How is that not already the standard?
- where i live my choices are fixed beam wireless internet that caps out at about 75mbps, at&t dsl that caps at 10mbps, satellite or i guess Starlink
  
  But it's a healthy and competitive market right?
- At my house I get 500mbps. My store (40 miles away) gets 15mbps. I pay significantly less at home.
  Not just that but you have to pay extra to avoid a data cap on the 15mbps line.
  
  Datacaps are incredibly annoying, they are just a cash grab.

Symmetric, right? Right?!
- Not only that, 100Mbps is so 2018. Quit pussy-footing around, FCC, make the standard 1Gbps, both ways. And make bandwidth caps illegal. I'm lucky enough to not have one but for years I had to put up with a 1TB limit from those Cox suckers until Verizon came to town.
  
  Do United States really doesn't want to live in the 21st century does it?
  The slowest speed by internet service provider offers is 250mbps.
  
  I wish my verizon service worked that well. I have the 5g home internet. It's supposed to be 300 mbps, but I do good to get 18 mbps download and 1-2 upload.
  
  You know what, I'm just happy some progress is being made if 100 becomes minimum. A lot of rural areas have much less than that. I wish 1gbps was the new minimum though.
- Right???

Didn't we already pay for the infrastructure?
- is this about that Connect America Fund where the ISPs took all the money and did fuck all
- Several times actually.
  
  You'd think that would be criminal

Welcome to the United States, where consumers built the internet infrastructure that monopolies profit from and fight tooth and nail to prevent communities from providing high speed internet to its residents. Capitalism at its most corrupt: privatize profits and socialize capital costs and losses.

Gigabit symmetrical or GTFO.
I pay something like $110/mo for my symmetrical gigabit fiber line (plus static IP). This should be the standard, not 100Mbps.
- I pay €32.5 for gigabit, but honestly it's overkill for most people. I only got it because a competitor of my ISP was doing a promotion which got me from a 50 mbit (60-70 in practise) at around the same price to a gigabit for a year.
  I honestly only used it to its full potential downloading a tv show because a certain streaming provider who pulled the plug on family sharing decided my house isn't my house and I couldn't watch the shows I paid to watch.

why just 100Mbps? why not 250? that’s still pretty simple for them to do. also: net neutrality, dammit!

100Mbps?? NOT ENOUGH
- I have 150Mbps and pay $570 Mexican Pesos which right now is about $35 USD but last year was $28 USD due to the Peso doing significantly better and the USD kinda crashing.
  Still, it's not enough for my client work, piracy and live streaming needs since it's non symmetrical, I only get 30Mbps upload.
  I got receipts 📜:
  
  I'm in the UK right now and pay £60-ish for gigabit internet (and 100mbps upload) which usually is actually around 800-900 Mbps, don't know the exact price because it includes a phone system my parents pay for

$40 for 2Gb/s symmetrical FTW!
- Lucky bastard
  Also, where, and how?

sometimes I really worry for the US

I lived just outside of Tucson, AZ during Covid. When we bought our house, we were assured that xfinity was extending service to our house and beyond shortly. We tried getting the service and they sent out a truck to do a site survey. Xfinity said “lol no”. Our options were CenturyLink dsl with top speed of 3mpbs down and 768k up or a narrow band wireless repeater service from town. None of those were able to even support a 480p stream of tv, let alone the needs of having to switch to 100% remote. We wound up having to use a shitty 4g LTE router that used some sort data plan through AT&T. 150gb data cap and beyond it throttled down to 3g speeds. At the time starlink was accepting people into a beta but not as far south as we lived in the desert.
Luckily we were able to sell that place and relocate to a much better place. We now have municipal broadband with no caps and a static ip. They are building out fiber services to the underserved rural places around town first and then building here and I’m excited to someday have fiber.
- It is bullshit that muni broadband is sued to oblivion while the incumbents are allowed to provide shitty internet while red lining rural and poor areas.
  
  I’m so glad I was able to find a place with municipal internet. It was one of our criteria , but one we were prepared to give up on as we were getting more desperate in our search for a house.