[HN Gopher] 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband...
___________________________________________________________________
100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard,
senators say
Author : caution
Score : 172 points
Date : 2021-03-04 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| bentcorner wrote:
| Nice to see. I would have hoped to see more of a mention around
| latency. A lot of tools are sensitive to this and a theoretically
| fat pipe is not useful if you have 100ms+ latencies.
| thaeli wrote:
| Also data caps. A fast connection with a 20Gb monthly data cap
| (common for LTE) still isn't usable as household broadband.
| ncallaway wrote:
| The FCC has been skeptical of the latency of Starlink
| offerings, which are well below 100ms.
|
| See https://www.pcmag.com/news/fcc-has-serious-doubts-spacex-
| sta... for an example.
|
| So, it might be that the senators aren't pushing that because
| the FCC has already been on the ball for latency, and pushing
| to keep latencies down around 30-40ms
| donmcronald wrote:
| Based on my anecdotal observations online, developers don't
| even understand the impact of latency, so it's not surprising
| it gets omitted.
| guntars wrote:
| Latency is the real killer. I used HughesNet satellite internet
| while travelling for a while and it has a 650ms round trip.
| Even sites built by talented and well compensated engineers
| would sometimes be completely unusable. For example, YoutubeTV
| used to download the video data in tiny little sub 1MB chunks,
| each from a seemingly separate CDN endpoint. The result was
| that each chunk needed a DNS roundtrip and then another one or
| two for SSL handshaking so it would take at a minimum 1.5 - 2
| seconds to even start downloading the data. Needless to say, it
| was not usable.
|
| Moral of the story - latency and roundtrips are the devil and
| some users have it extra bad, but if you make it work for them,
| it's going to be amazing for everyone else too.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26343394
| IndySun wrote:
| https://surfshark.com/blog/worlds-worst-internet-is-least-af...
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| While we're at it, let's prevent ISPs from disallowing us to run
| a business on our home internet. Why should it matter to them how
| we use our bits? Sell us on a support plan and higher uptime,
| sure, but there's no reason we should be disallowed from private
| enterprise because we're not "paying for a business account".
| TLightful wrote:
| Wow, is that a thing in the US?
|
| Home of capitalism!
|
| Sorry to hear that.
| blunte wrote:
| Yes they should, but what will happen is websites and apps will
| get fatter and sloppier until the end result is slow, laggy
| performance.
|
| It's a bit like doubling your salary and increasing your spending
| by more than double. That seems to be how website and app
| development behaves.
|
| Imagine if bandwidth increased, latency decreased (approaching
| theoritical minimums), and websites/apps were built with a strict
| (but appropriately flexible) network budget.
|
| Perhaps the best catchphrase here is "weakest link".
|
| Even with 500+ mbps up and down, and pihole blocking a lot of
| ads, and noscript blocking some analytics and other trackers, a
| lot of web experiences are underwhelming.
|
| Also, the recent fascinating post about how someone sped up GTA 5
| online illustrates how the weakest link can be so weak that it
| ruins everything.
| pmontra wrote:
| Throttle the developers' connection to the staging and
| production servers down to 25/3 and you'll get very fast sites
| for everybody ;-)
| blunte wrote:
| Fascinating. Within seconds of posting my parent, the negatives
| rolled in. I guess my post was scanned as saying "no, don't
| increase bandwidth".
|
| Far from it.
| blunte wrote:
| There's something going on here that is organized toward some
| goal, but it doesn't make sense. Usually troll farms work for
| financial interests, but my comment wasn't taking any side.
| If the votes came from thinking HN readers, I would have
| expected refutory responses.
|
| (meta) It's reasonable that we don't see who downvoted us,
| but it would be very interesting to see the karma of each
| account that downvoted.
| greedo wrote:
| I didn't vote you down, but your comment didn't really add
| a lot of value. It's like whenever expanding roads come up,
| people say "but this encourages more traffic!" True, but
| not really the point.
| blunte wrote:
| But this is HN, and a lot of us are responsible for the
| state of web browsing! (Plus a lot are junior and have
| not considered these performance topics.) Absolutely
| everyone's connection to the internet should be fast and
| unfiltered, but if the supply side doesn't behave
| responsibly, the gains will be lost.
|
| (edit-added)
|
| And let's pause a moment to consider actual bandwidth
| needs. viop, video calls, and 1080 streaming all need
| less than 10mbps.
|
| Online gaming usually benefits more from low latency than
| from bandwidth.
|
| Honestly, only downloading files (app and OS updates)
| really benefits from bandwidth above 10mbps. And to be
| fair, now that phone, app, and OS updates are 1GB+, there
| is some value in increasing bandwidth.
|
| Most day to day problems come from unreliable networks,
| where latency spikes, or from heavily throttled upload
| speeds which effectively tie up the overall connection.
|
| And finally, the issue is not in forcing providers to
| offer reasonable performance, but instead to undo the
| last 20 years of corporate-government cozying which has
| been allowed to increase dramatically in the US. This has
| resulted in effective monopolies with high prices and low
| performance - and no alternatives.
| Daho0n wrote:
| In my experience most of those slow sites are wordpress.
| IndySun wrote:
| Also of interest
|
| https://www.cable.co.uk/broadband/speed/worldwide-speed-leag...
|
| https://www.cable.co.uk/broadband/pricing/worldwide-comparis...
| bydo wrote:
| According to that map download speeds are nearly twice as fast
| in the US as they are in South Korea? I don't know where their
| data is coming from but that sounds awfully suspect.
| bigpumpkin wrote:
| Hopefully they also address network stability, which can be more
| important for video streaming than the bandwidth speed.
| CKN23-ARIN wrote:
| The letter specifically calls for _symmetrical_ speeds of at
| least 100Mbps. Let 's hope that this is the death of PON-based
| FTTH.
| CodeBeater wrote:
| I'm not trying to be aggressive here (specially since I'm WAY
| out of my lane when it comes to networking), but what's wrong
| with PON?
| canada2us wrote:
| Hopefully this will pass.
|
| For residential, Comcast only advertises download speed, leaving
| upload speed like 1996.
|
| Comcast has a bad reputation but there is only 1 ISP available to
| my address. No competition.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| I find terms such as "broadband" and "high definition" that need
| to be updated every so often to be incredibly useless.
|
| Numbers and units exist for a reason. If one wish to speak of 100
| Mib/s, then one should simply do so. -- that way, I, and everyone
| else, knows exactly what is going on.
| Arrath wrote:
| I ran into this on a government contract that wanted videos of
| certain things submitted in, per specification, "high
| definition digital video" okay 1080/60 it is.
|
| Oh, no that's too big for them to email to their antiquated
| consultants, turns out they want 15MiB max video clips.
|
| Well to do that I had to step down to 720/30. Which they then
| complained wasn't clear enough for their uses. Three rounds of
| RFI later I'm back as square one, they've defined HD as 1080/60
| and they say they'll figure out how to distribute the clips.
| Just annoying as all get out when they could have started with
| clear language (numbers) to begin with.
| reddotX wrote:
| in Romania you can't even get lower than 100Mbs at the largest
| internet providers (even 100Mbs in some cases)
| https://www.digi.ro/servicii/internet
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| I'm I reading that right that a "940/450 Mbps" fiber plan is
| ~$10 a month??
| Medox wrote:
| Yes. And very good coverage too. Even my parents in a small
| village have fiber at those prices, since 5 years now.
|
| We are basically a giant Lan party since the 2000's and
| should get a Netflix special/documentary with this script:
|
| https://np.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/2ct58s/average_inter.
| ..
| kryogen1c wrote:
| Lets try and suss out some of the multiple issues with US
| internet:
|
| -regulating ISPs as a free market is, to be hyperbolic, a
| disaster. there is effectively a monopoly in most parts of the
| country.
|
| -25/3 Mbps is a very reasonable speed for most people. the issue
| is that its provided on a best effort basis that is never
| maintained for long, if at all. netflix says thats enough to
| stream UHD[0]
|
| -FTA: "Those data points likely undercount the number of unserved
| Americans because the FCC lets ISPs count an entire census block
| as served even if it can serve just one home in the block"
| hilarious - what else is there to say.
|
| -FTA: "The senators are also frustrated by differing standards
| across agencies. [...] the FCC defines [...] Alternatively, the
| US Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines" why is this the
| federal government's job again? the internet is clearly not an
| enumerated power. is this the interstate commerce clause that
| keeps on giving in action again? i think decentralizing federal
| power would help alleviate a lot of the existential dread vis a
| vi corruption that many americans are feeling.
|
| all in all, this reeks of regulatory capture to me. if we're
| gonna have a serious discussion about internet infrastructure, i
| think the starting point is how we classify ISPs and where in the
| city-state-federal hierarchy the responsibility lies. changing a
| 25 to a 100 is a cool bullet on a resume, but i dont think this
| is the low handing fruit here.
|
| [0]https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306
| kgermino wrote:
| > -regulating ISPs as a free market is, to be hyperbolic, a
| disaster. there is effectively a monopoly in most parts of the
| country.
|
| > all in all, this reeks of regulatory capture to me. if we're
| gonna have a serious discussion about internet infrastructure,
| i think the starting point is how we classify ISPs and where in
| the city-state-federal hierarchy the responsibility lies.
| changing a 26 to a 100 is a cool bullet on a resume, but i dont
| think this is the low handing fruit here.
|
| The distributed regulation is the biggest problem IMO. ISPs are
| generally granted explicit or effective monopolies by local
| governments. Local competition is difficult enough for a
| utility business, but city governments make it effectively
| impossible in many places. Then there's a few big players who
| are able to claim competition and get lenient regulation at the
| federal level.
| rayiner wrote:
| > ISPs are generally granted explicit or effective monopolies
| by local governments
|
| Granting ISPs explicit monopolies has been illegal since the
| 1992 cable act. Show me a franchise agreement that has an
| exclusivity provision. They're public documents.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > -25/3 Mbps is a very reasonable speed for most people. the
| issue is that its provided on a best effort basis that is never
| maintained for long, if at all. netflix says thats enough to
| stream UHD[0]
|
| Even ignoring the "more than one person" issue, 3Mbps makes it
| very difficult to do things like file transfers and backups and
| accessing home data from elsewhere.
|
| 25/10 per person is a much better minimum bar than 25/3
|
| > all in all, this reeks of regulatory capture to me.
|
| Why? How does this favor entrenched players over newcomers?
|
| The companies I see being disadvantaged by this are _incumbent_
| cable companies that need to update equipment to let more
| frequencies be shifted from download to upload. But that 's not
| regulatory capture and should have good effects.
| totalZero wrote:
| > 25/3 Mbps is a very reasonable speed for most people. the
| issue is that its provided on a best effort basis that is never
| maintained for long, if at all. netflix says thats enough to
| stream UHD[0]
|
| Please expand upon your point. Why exactly is 25/3 reasonable
| for most people? I'm not necessarily disagreeing; indeed, this
| would be a god-level speed compared to what's currently
| standard for most of Latin America. However, your point about
| Netflix is irrelevant because not every use case can be
| buffered. Also, many use cases in our new work-from-home
| reality require better up speed than 3Mbps with bad ping and
| high jitter.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > -regulating ISPs as a free market is, to be hyperbolic, a
| disaster. there is effectively a monopoly in most parts of the
| country.
|
| starlink is changing that, as these articles and letters are
| being written.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| I agree that Starlink will be a game changer for many people,
| but I just don't see how they can be expected to replace
| traditional terrestrial ISPs in major population centers.
|
| Beaming internet from space solves a ton of problems for
| anyone out at the ends of rural copper, or using p2p systems,
| or where there simply isn't another alternative.
|
| But using myself as an example, I live in a part of NYC where
| there is fiber internet in the street in front of my building
| - and my landlord has zero obligation to allow the 60-ish
| apartments in the building to access it. We're stuck on
| legacy cable, which has abysmal upload speeds and congestion
| issues.
|
| The dense urban or suburban environments theoretically have
| more options, but thats not always reality... and I'm not
| sure that tens of millions of people replacing their local
| ISP with satellite is desirable, or even technically viable.
| New provider options are important, but making sure access to
| the existing options is equitable and reasonable (across all
| the various local governments, providers, middlemen, etc) is
| important too.
| vmception wrote:
| The FCC is a captured agency, I'm not sure there is enough
| ambiguity about that to wonder
| zeofig wrote:
| I feel that ISPs are far from a free market. The regulation as
| it is works to ensure a monopoly or duopoly. I'm not saying a
| true free market is a solution, but it would be good if we
| stopped letting them pretend it's a "free market". It's also
| pretty funny how 100Mbps is presented as some laudable goal.
| The technology to give everyone 1Gbps+ is not new and any well-
| designed modern infrastructure will easily allow such speeds.
| 100Mbps as the goal tacitly admits that there is no prospect of
| actually developing well-designed and efficient infrastructure.
| ksec wrote:
| >-25/3 Mbps is a very reasonable speed for most people.
|
| Except most household have more than 1 person. A family of four
| sharing 100Mbps isn't a lot.
|
| I am not sure if 100Mbps upload is a realistic option in US.
| But I would at least expect 50Mbps to be minimum per household.
| DOSCIS 4.0 should be able to handle that.
| abstractbarista wrote:
| What's the upload speed in this example? Symmetric 100Mb
| would be more than fine for 4 people. And just fine with
| 100/25. However, 100/5 will be stressful.
| ksec wrote:
| Personally I think getting 100Mbps defined as broadband
| upload is a little too harsh. Especially when US
| infrastructure are so far behind.
|
| DOCSIS 4.0 was ( finally ) finalised last year. And could
| be pushed for upgrading. But that is just the last mile,
| Cable companies will still have to ensure fibre roll out.
| Look at UK. They had a half decent infrastructure with DSL
| and could have pushed G.Fast, instead they just bite the
| bullet and pushed FTTP to maximum.
| blackaspen wrote:
| DOCSIS 3.1 has support for 1Gbps uploads.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| >-25/3 Mbps is a very reasonable speed for most people. the
| issue is that its provided on a best effort basis that is never
| maintained for long, if at all. netflix says thats enough to
| stream UHD[0]
|
| Yes, for one person.
|
| Having lived with a family fo 4 using ADSL, it was not fun when
| 3 people watched Netflix on their own screens, and having to
| update a game.
|
| Or with the pandemic and WFH, you have maybe 4 people using DSL
| for Teams/Skype/Zoom meetings and trying to work/study at the
| same time.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > Having lived with a family fo 4 using ADSL, it was not fun
| when 3 people watched Netflix on their own screens, and
| having to update a game.
|
| streaming netflix in HD instead of UHD is 5mbps. 5x3=15,
| leaving 10 free to download a game. pretty reasonable. the
| pain was likely that you didnt have a real 25meg pipe, or
| that there was latency or jitter. a true 25Mbps would have
| been enough.
|
| > the pandemic and WFH
|
| I think you could make a strong argument that 3meg up is no
| longer sufficient. we live in an era where duo, facetime, and
| conference call programs and ubiquitous.
|
| i do not, however, think you could make the argument that
| changing the download Mbps target from 25 to 100 is the best
| way to spend billions of dollars in a market that no one
| would accuse of being saturated and highly competitive.
| everlost wrote:
| Strange how "broadband" and "high speed internet" can have a
| different meaning in various parts of the country. For ex: a 10
| mbps dsl line is considered "high speed" in New Hampshire.
| jonwachob91 wrote:
| The article addresses the issues of multiple agencies with
| multiple definitions of broadband, specifically mentioning that
| the Dept of Agriculture has a definition of 10/1.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| 10/1? Whats I am suppose to do with that, wipe my ass?
|
| How am meant to backup my pc? Might as well send my data on
| Sd card by post.
| Panino wrote:
| > The funding is going to a mix of cable, fiber, and fixed
| wireless providers, plus SpaceX's Starlink satellite network.
|
| I think cable providers should be left out. They were already
| gifted many billions of dollars in the past for this same basic
| purpose but they pocketed the money. They can just use the free
| money they've already been given. Instead, the funding should go
| to existing munipical fiber ISPs to expand their coverage. Give
| money to people with a proven track record of doing what you
| want, not people with a proven track record of keeping the money
| for themselves.
|
| I'm on municipal fiber and it's _amazing_.
| technofiend wrote:
| >They were already gifted many billions of dollars in the past
| for this same basic purpose but they pocketed the money. They
| can just use the free money they've already been given.
|
| I mean they _could_ but they wont, and there was no reason to
| with Ajit Pai running the place. I daresay they 'll have to be
| sued into compliance to do it now. Not that I object to that:
| they need to refund the taxpayers' money or do what they
| promised with it.
| markovbot wrote:
| for-profit corporations should not own our communications
| infrastructure.
| sigstoat wrote:
| can they own our food production infrastructure? how about
| our clothing industry? home construction?
|
| those all represent far more fundamental human needs than
| communication.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Those things all have much more redundancy than comms. The
| US has three mobile internet providers (there's also
| MVNO's, but they use the same physical infrastructure as
| the big three), and any given home will usually only have
| access to two or three landline ISP's in terms of infra
| (e.g. cable, DSL, fiber).
|
| In contrast, food can be shipped in to a city from
| innumerable farms, ditto for clothing. Home construction,
| there's lot of different home builders around, it's not a
| natural monopoly like communication.
|
| For food production, I don't really have to trust any
| particular two or three farming companies -- if they fuck
| up, food can be shipped in from elsewhere. Whereas if my
| local ISP's are exploitative or simply incompetent, what's
| my recourse?
| jayd16 wrote:
| No one has monopoly control of the _infrastructure_ in
| those industries. Anyone can buy and farm land, textile
| plants, etc. Its not possible to simply lay more conduit
| and compete.
| function_seven wrote:
| What "infrastructure" means needs to be nailed down before
| this can be discussed.
|
| Internet service is seen as something in the same league as
| roads, power, water, and other utilities. Things that
| require public rights of way, extensive digging,
| cooperations among many jurisdictions or land owners, and
| special rules to make it all possible.
|
| Clothing, food, and construction are all businesses that
| don't require that level of centralized coordination.
| Anyone can open their own bakery, or buy a farm. Anyone can
| set up sewing machines and purchase fabric, or get a
| contractors' license and start nailing sticks of wood
| together. Government still sets standards, of course. But
| these businesses don't have inherent monopolies the same
| way infrastructure businesses do.
| dheera wrote:
| I don't see an inherent problem with for-profit companies
| owning infrastructure, but it needs to not be monopolized and
| it needs to not be owned by a bunch of public market
| shareholders and hedge funds who don't even use the product.
| Utility monopolies and public companies rarely put customers
| first.
| rayiner wrote:
| > They were already gifted many billions of dollars in the past
| for this same basic purpose but they pocketed the money.
|
| Very little government money has been spent on broadband.
| Federal funding for broadband dates back only to the Obama
| administration. And cable companies have largely not received
| this money. You're thinking of something else.
| chromaton wrote:
| To avoid another repeated thread, just read this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556
|
| I just realized that you were posting on that thread as well.
| rayiner wrote:
| Whatever conclusions you reach from the points made in that
| thread, there is an important additional point here. That
| thread is talking about _telephone companies._ OP is
| talking about _cable._
|
| We tend to think of both of them as just "broadband" today,
| but the regulatory structure is totally different. The
| central premise of the notion that telephone companies
| received "billions of dollars from the government" is that
| the government lifted rate regulation on telephone
| companies in the 1990s. Rate regulation told the companies
| what they could charge for local phone service. The
| argument is that phone companies made $200 billion more
| than they would have had had those regulations remained in
| place.
|
| I disagree with that assertion for phone companies, as
| addressed in the thread above. But even on its own merits
| that argument is not applicable to cable companies. Cable
| companies weren't rate regulated (except that in some
| places there is a regulated minimum television service they
| must provide at a government-specified price). There was no
| government action in the 1990s that contemplated subsidies
| to create incentives for cable companies to build fiber.
| greedo wrote:
| I think the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was supposed to
| help improve Internet access through its Universal Service
| provision. Of course all the telecoms pocketed the money and
| didn't do shit.
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/general/universal-service
| rayiner wrote:
| The 1996 telecom act had an unfunded statement of policy to
| that end. But the universal service fund wasn't used for
| broadband until 2013: https://connectednation.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/01/caf_p.... Larger carriers weren't
| covered until 2015. And it has not been a lot of money:
| https://www.telecompetitor.com/ahead-of-rdof-caf-lives-on-
| as...
|
| > AT&T and CenturyLink accepted all funding for all states
| for which they accepted CAF funding. For AT&T, seventh year
| CAF funding totals approximately $427 million for 18
| states. For CenturyLink, the total seventh year funding
| totals approximately $503 million for 33 states.
|
| Over 7 years, AT&T has received half a billion dollars from
| the feds. That's not a lot of money for building fiber. In
| rural high cost areas, where that money is supposed to be
| targeted, that might be like 20,000 homes. AT&T spends over
| $10 billion _per year_ on wireline upgrades and
| maintenance: https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/at-t-
| dedicates-40-40b-... ($16 billion in 2017). Over that 7
| year period you're talking $100+ billion in investment from
| AT&T versus $0.5 billion from the feds. Do you see why that
| money hasn't moved the needle at all?
|
| To my knowledge, Comcast has never received universal
| service fund (now called the connect America fund) money.
|
| We can argue about whether universal service money has been
| used efficiently. But the idea that companies like Comcast
| received billions of dollars from the feds to build fiber
| everywhere is a very Trumpian misrepresentation (taking
| something with a tiny grain of truth and spinning it into a
| tall tale).
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| How much does it cost? Here Spectrum keeps upping the cost
| during the pandemic, now at $75/m for decent bandwidth.
| totalZero wrote:
| If the issue is link speed symmetry, then cable should be out
| of the running entirely. Even my phone offers better upload
| speed than cable in my neighborhood. Same for my parents' place
| across the country. New money should go to fiber, satellite,
| wireless, or nothing at all.
| xsdf wrote:
| 25/3Mbs is like the poverty line of internet speeds nowadays.
| Below that it would be hard to much of anything given how much
| data we send now.
| penagwin wrote:
| 100Mbps up as a standard? One can only dream. Comcast's highest
| residential offer is 1Gbps down (yeah right) and 35 mbps up.
|
| My other option is DSL with Att, a max of like 30Mbps down...
| drewg123 wrote:
| It seems to have become less common for providers to advertise
| upload speeds. I was helping a friend pick a plan from a non-
| comcast cable provider, and she had to call to ask about the
| upload speeds, as the information was not on the web.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| Let's make basic internet(10Mbps down/1Mbps up. just throwing out
| some numbers ) free and anything faster, you can pay for.
| totalZero wrote:
| Imagine how good our network technology policy would be if the
| Senate weren't run by septagenarians and octogenarian.
|
| I fear that data caps for home internet will become standard.
| There is no technological reason for these caps. For wireless,
| they could be defended by arguing that companies only get to use
| so much spectrum because of FCC laws. But the only limit for home
| internet is the ISP's willingness to deploy equipment and install
| cable/fiber runs. That's exactly what customers are paying them
| to do.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| shmerl wrote:
| Data caps should be simply illegal on anti-trust grounds for
| incumbent ISPs most which also own video / TV businesses. You
| don't even need to invent any new laws for that, just make
| competition law actually functional and not toothless.
| dmos62 wrote:
| This statement could be made about a lot of things:
|
| > Imagine how good [most policies] would be if the Senate
| weren't run by septagenarians and octogenarian.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| > Imagine how good our network technology policy would be if
| the Senate weren't run by septagenarians and octogenarian.
|
| The ages of the senators proposing this are 76 (Joe Manchin),
| 76 (Angus King), 65 (Rob Portman), and 56 (Michael Bennet). 3
| of the 4 are older than the median Senator age.
|
| None of the 4 are in the youngest 25%.
|
| Image how good our opinions of the Senate would be if we based
| them in facts.
| lagerstedt wrote:
| Flatrate models usually means that a large majority of users
| actually covers the costs for a the minority high consumers. It
| is true that the marginal cost for more transmitted data is
| almost zero, but the overhead costs of running (and expanding)
| networks are certainly not. Cost has to be covered and you
| could very well argue that it makes sense that the large
| consumers pay more.
| lazerpants wrote:
| I checked Comcast's 10k report and their margin for the
| segment including broadband is over 40%, which is crazy but
| about what you would expect from a de facto monopoly. I don't
| think forcing them to invest in capex to benefit customers is
| asking so much when they are making those kinds of margins.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Besides maybe above the 98th percentile, data peering costs
| are very low that the physical infrastructure dominates the
| cost of service for residential users.
|
| Since residential connects are over subscribed anyway, it is
| trivial to make users throttle during peak demand based on
| their current/historical usage.
|
| If you use Cloudflare's costs and peering:transit ration from
| 2014 (which is almost certainly cheaper now); 1Mbps/month
| costs $8. [1]
|
| 1 Mbps/month is ~329GBytes. A 1TB data cap would be just ~3.1
| Mbps/month costing $24.8.
|
| I'd estimate that a last mile ISP could probably get an
| effective rate of half or less since connecting to end
| users/consumers is an advantage. And in a lot of cases, the
| same ISP offering residential service is also selling transit
| to other networks so in a way the data is already paid for by
| the time it reaches your local ISP.
|
| [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-relative-cost-of-
| bandwidth-a...
| viraptor wrote:
| There is one reason for some caps, which is that you'll always
| get oversubscription in the cities, and the caps could reflect
| that to prevent 100% utilisation. They don't have to be so
| small that people actually think about them. Basically set it
| at 1TB for residential for the lowest plan and forget about it.
| nikanj wrote:
| 1TB goes by shockingly fast with 4k video streaming (5-10
| gigs per hour) and game updates that weight in at tens of
| gigs each.
| viraptor wrote:
| That's why I mentioned lowest plan. Sure, bump it up for
| higher levels. But if you want 100h of 4k content a
| month... just pay for the higher quality to subsidize
| network development which can handle it?
|
| This is totally out of the minimum requirement area.
| mfkp wrote:
| I don't think you realize how fast 1tb of data goes when you
| have a family of 5 all doing zoom calls and remote learning
| all day, then streaming video (youtube, live tv, netflix) at
| night.
| rayiner wrote:
| Are millennials any different? Outside tech, I don't know
| anybody who cares about broadband as an aside, except when
| pushing a different political angle such as inequality.
| buffet_overflow wrote:
| I genuinely wonder about the effects of later generations
| growing up in these conditions. It feels ripe for learned
| helplessness. "Well it's just always been bad" is a common,
| if ineffective response.
| greedo wrote:
| My kids sure now what a high speed Internet connection is,
| and they're as far from "tech" as you could imagine. Ask any
| gamer too...
| spamizbad wrote:
| I dunno there's a handful of millennial politicians in congress
| and they're hit-or-miss.
|
| I would focus less on the age of the Senators and more on the
| fact that your median voter is 50 years old. And your median
| primary voter is 58 years old. They also consume significantly
| more television (and less Internet) than people under 40
| (Millennials and Gen-Z).
| totalZero wrote:
| There's only one senator under 40 and he's pretty supportive
| of an open internet.
|
| AOC seems like she understands the massive reach and power of
| the internet...she chided Dems for under-spending on online
| ads and went after Zuckerberg for not deleting false content.
| She's not even a technologist and she "gets" technology more
| than many who have much more experience. Don't get me wrong,
| I'm not particularly in awe of her or anyone else in
| Congress...just clarifying that it does indeed seem that the
| young ones understand technology's impact on society far
| better than the old ones.
| terrywang wrote:
| Paying A$90 (~70 USD) for broadband based on HFC to freestanding
| house, 100Mbps (downstream) / 40Mbps (upstream), hit by outages
| from time to time as ISPs are simply NBN resellers, which in turn
| is a wrapper on top of Telstra's infrastructure. Will be keen to
| see how Starlink rollout goes down-under.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-04 23:00 UTC)