[HN Gopher] FCC abandons efforts to make U.S. broadband fast and...
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FCC abandons efforts to make U.S. broadband fast and affordable
Author : CharlesW
Score : 230 points
Date : 2025-08-05 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techdirt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techdirt.com)
| gnabgib wrote:
| Discussion (272 points, 15 days ago, 207 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44641464
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Maybe in another 20 years my local monopoly will adopt IPv6 a
| technology faster than 6mbps/768k ADSL1.
| alyandon wrote:
| When I bought my home in 2009 (suburbia in major metro area) -
| AT&T was offering a whopping 6mbps DSL connection for wired
| internet. At the end of 2024, they were still only offering 6
| mbps DSL.
|
| This year - they rolled out fiber. So, it only took 16 years -
| maybe you'll get lucky.
| Alupis wrote:
| It's always been available - you just have to pay for the
| install.
|
| Get a quote from your local ISP and you'll realize why it
| took 16 years to bring fiber to your home. I received a near
| $100k quote to come across the street in a former building...
| it gets stupid expensive stupid fast.
| fn-mote wrote:
| A sewer line is on the order of $10k.
|
| Fiber across a street should not be $100k.
|
| Maybe municipal regulations make it harder than it seems.
| I'm curious.
| Alupis wrote:
| Depends where you are and where the line needs to be run.
| Shutting down a busy city road? Gonna be expensive...
|
| At our current building, we just had fiber run from an
| in-ground vault already on premises (but not serving the
| building) into our MPOE - cost about $18k to go less than
| 100 yards... majority of-which didn't require boring.
|
| My original point was, people want fast internet out in
| the boonies but aren't willing to pay for it. Few
| residential customers are going to shell out $600+ a
| month for fast internet... but that's what's required for
| the ISP to recoup their construction costs in anything
| resembling a reasonable time period.
| voakbasda wrote:
| We will pay for it over the course of the years of paying
| for the service. Plus, the economic benefits of enabling
| remote production/consumption of digital services
| probably outweighs the cost by an order of magnitude or
| two.
| Alupis wrote:
| > We will pay for it over the course of the years of
| paying for the service.
|
| Yes, at like $600+ a month over 6 years... you can do the
| math, it's nasty.
|
| > Plus, the economic benefits of enabling remote
| production/consumption of digital services probably
| outweighs the cost by an order of magnitude or two
|
| ISP's aren't a charity service. Even your municipality
| cannot afford to run fiber to the boonies.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Okay, whatever about ADSL2+, why on earth would anyone still be
| doing ADSL1? Are they buying the DSLAMs off eBay? Like, I'm
| legitimately surprised that they can still get the equipment;
| you'd think it'd be cheaper just to go to ADSL2+.
|
| 10 years ago I had ADSL2+ at home (basically due to planning
| issues; traditionally, urban phone stuff had been hidden
| underground, and the telecom was having trouble getting
| planning for VDSL street cabs), and that felt like living in
| the past back then. ADSL1, today, is absurd.
| esaym wrote:
| With satellite internet from starlink (and I think amazon is
| attempting their own version?) I don't see how running internet
| over wires to rural housing could ever be seen as a good
| expenditure of money. That said, I've always felt satellite
| internet to be yucky but I'm used to "satellite internet" adding
| 1000ms to your latency and uploads that actually run over your
| telephone line.
|
| I am curious if good satellite internet will lead to an exodus of
| people from cities and subdivisions. I actually live in my
| current house because the place I wanted to build on didn't have
| any form of internet access.
|
| Also, I'm not really aware of anyone that is truly without
| "internet access" as cell phones have basically filled that area
| in years ago.
| bdcravens wrote:
| > With satellite internet from starlink (and I think amazon is
| attempting their own version?) I don't see how running internet
| over wires to rural housing could ever be seen as a good
| expenditure of money.
|
| Couldn't the same be said of expanding the electrical grid,
| when solar panels and batteries are an option?
| tracker1 wrote:
| Depending on where you are, that's an entirely valid option
| IMO... There are lots of houses with septic tanks without
| centralized sewers.
| LocalH wrote:
| Satellite has a lower cap on latency, until we figure out
| faster-than-lightspeed radio transmission (if that's even
| possible)
| mxuribe wrote:
| Upon reading the latter portion of your comment, a potential
| story for XKCD comic immediately sprang to mind...something
| along the lines of a tech person or team invent faster-than-
| lightspeed technology, but abandon their work on a spacecraft
| warp-style engines to improve satellite internet....because
| its just so much easier to make tons of money doing barely
| the minimum within the ISP monopoly business. lol :-D
| garciasn wrote:
| My rural cabin has access to:
|
| 1. 25/2 DSL for $140/month (12 month contract with $40/mo
| seasonal disconnect)
|
| 2. 5G (60/0.03 which was 100/20 last summer until the nearby
| tower became overloaded).
|
| 3. LTE (see above) which I routinely get ~100/30 but which
| Verizon, at least, will not allow their boxes to use if it can
| _connect_ via 5G, regardless of usability of the connection.
|
| 4. Fiber (100/100) at $89.95 (12m contract with $25/month
| seasonal disconnect). The fiber has higher speeds, but I didn't
| price them out. The costs were originally listed at $34.95
| before they ran the lines, but they have upped them to $89.95
| now that they are run to my lake home.
|
| 5. Starlink (supposedly 150/20 for Residential Lite which is
| available in my area) at $80/month on a month-to-month with
| purchase of a dish (I got mine refurbished for $135). I am
| routinely seeing ~400/40 with 25ms ping even though I shouldn't
| be. That said, the speeds are more variable (low as 120/7).
|
| ---
|
| I would LOVE for there to be reasonably priced and very stable
| Internet for month-to-month, but there just isn't except for
| Starlink--at this point.
| nullc wrote:
| I am doubting the level of rural that has that level of
| connectivity.
|
| Your options there are far better than what I had living adj
| to downtown mountainview not so many years ago.
| garciasn wrote:
| It's in Central MN. It is 11 miles, straight line, from a
| town of 2200 and 15 miles from a town of 4400. The closest
| town is 8 miles as the crow flies of 700 and only has a gas
| station and a couple of bars. There's a bar and volunteer
| fire department 4 miles as the crow flies that has a
| population of 48.
|
| Believe me: this is rural. Until investment from the
| federal government and/or forced lower-bound limits on
| 'broadband' back about 6 years ago, the only option was
| 768/300 DSL.
| addaon wrote:
| I'm in a small town (5000 people) on the Utah/Arizona
| border. The internet options are better, cheaper, and more
| reliable than I had in old town Mountain View, Palo Alto,
| or Sunnyvale. I go with the symmetric 1 gig with static IP,
| but symmetric 8 gig is an option as well. Silicon Valley's
| home internet options just suck.
| lenzm wrote:
| The infrastructure has to be maintained year round, not just
| the summer months when lake houses are full. I don't think
| it's reasonable to expect affordable month-to-month pricing.
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| My cabin (I don't live there full time currently) has
| starlink's $10/month plan where you pay by the gigabyte. LTE
| isn't even an option because the topography kills terrestrial
| radio.
|
| Starlink completely changed rural internet. It's
| revolutionary.
| TinkersW wrote:
| Rural areas don't have anywhere near that many options.
|
| DSL, fiber? Those do not exist if you are actually rural.
| garciasn wrote:
| I explained below how it is defined by me as rural; but,
| yes, it's rural. In fact, my primary home JUST HAD FIBER
| RUN in my neighborhood last month and I get 1 bar of VZW.
| So; if anything, rural is ahead of major metro areas (my
| suburb of Minneapolis/St Paul has just under 90K
| residents). In fact, DSL from CenturyLink or whatever they
| call themselves today is 6mbit.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I don't know how you think $89.95 for 100/100 fiber isn't
| reasonable, unless you're the type of person who believes the
| introductory price at comcast is the real price.
| wpm wrote:
| I pay 2/3rds of that for 10x the speed. 100/100 fiber is
| not that great.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| We pay 2/3rds of that for 15/3 WISP service with variable
| latency and common outages. That's a great price!
| LorenDB wrote:
| I know a guy who lives in rural West Virginia. He has fiber
| to his home, but the top speed is (IIRC) 10 Mbps down.
| rkomorn wrote:
| Is it like... cotton fiber?
| evanjrowley wrote:
| Having spend several years under the thumb of a rural wireless
| internet service provider, the thought of all my neighbors
| sucking up shared Starlink bandwidth to stream Netflix in the
| evenings makes me nauseous. How is it a reasonable expectation
| that Starlink can really support entire rural areas?
| lenerdenator wrote:
| It's not, but we've never cared anyways, so why start now
| with this?
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > but we've never cared anyways
|
| Rural areas in the US have enjoyed disproportionate
| communications (and infrastructure in general) subsidies
| since the founding of the USPS. More recently, the
| Universal Service Fund has spent around $5-8B per year
| since the 90s, first on phone service then adding
| broadband. And there are more recent broadband efforts for
| broadband in the tens of $Bs.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| How effective have these efforts been at getting
| broadband access in rural communities? And comparatively,
| how effective have they been at giving a revenue source
| for telcos that they haven't had to really deliver on
| promises for?
| wmf wrote:
| It's not an expectation; it already happened. People love it.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >With satellite internet from starlink (and I think amazon is
| attempting their own version?) I don't see how running internet
| over wires to rural housing could ever be seen as a good
| expenditure of money.
|
| There are two perspectives on this. From the user's standpoint,
| when I finally wired up my house and we were no longer using
| wifi, all the streaming video was just flawless, no more
| stuttering. And I was only sharing that air with devices in my
| own house and the two closest neighbors. I wouldn't want to
| have to share it with all of North America.
|
| The other perspective is from the point of view of the ISPs
| themselves (the ones not Starlink). Can they pay off the cost
| of the infrastructure, and then make a profit? And it turns out
| that they can. Just not a quick one. If they can't profit on it
| this quarter, many see no incentive. Someone needs to light a
| fire under their asses.
|
| These are both obvious, and if you "don't see how", maybe you
| need to look.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > With satellite internet from starlink (and I think amazon is
| attempting their own version?) I don't see how running internet
| over wires to rural housing could ever be seen as a good
| expenditure of money. That said, I've always felt satellite
| internet to be yucky but I'm used to "satellite internet"
| adding 1000ms to your latency and uploads that actually run
| over your telephone line.
|
| Depends on what you declare a "good expenditure of money".
|
| The thing about running fiber is that it's not _particularly_
| expensive to do. dig trench, install infrastructure, rebury it.
| Hell, if you have a utility pole, you can omit steps 1 and 3,
| so long as you 're okay with the line being exposed to the
| elements.
|
| Launching satellites is _very_ expensive to do. There are very
| high barriers to entry that prevent meaningful competition from
| occurring for satellite internet providers, which is why
| HughesNet was crap for all of those years. It took NASA funding
| a commercial crew program to get a rocket built that could put
| payload in LEO for "cheap", and there's only two or three
| options that can reasonably be expected to operate that way.
|
| I'd rather have a lot of competition for installing and
| operating fiber infrastructure than having an effective duopoly
| for running performant satellite internet.
|
| I'm under no delusions that will occur in rural areas under the
| present regime in DC.
|
| As for an exodus from cities and suburbs, no. There's no amount
| of internet speed that would make me move to a place where
| there's reduced services and infrastructure in every other
| category, like schools, hospitals (this is a big one), water,
| sewer, transit, etc. and there are millions more like me.
| legitster wrote:
| > The thing about running fiber is that it's not particularly
| expensive to do. dig trench, install infrastructure, rebury
| it. Hell, if you have a utility pole, you can omit steps 1
| and 3, so long as you're okay with the line being exposed to
| the elements.
|
| Uhhhh.... it can cost several hundred dollars just to dig a
| trench across my yard. If the plan involves providing
| broadband to rural farmhouses that might be miles apart, that
| could be tens of thousands of dollars _per customer_.
|
| Obviously on utility poles (where they exist) is going to be
| much cheaper, but you still need an ISP to build and operate
| the thing and set up things like repeater boxes and deal with
| outages.
| toast0 wrote:
| > There's no amount of internet speed that would make me move
| to a place where there's reduced services and infrastructure
| in every other category, like schools, hospitals (this is a
| big one), water, sewer, transit, etc. and there are millions
| more like me.
|
| I moved to "rural lite", and have a well and septic. That
| part isn't so hard to live with; although no water for a
| couple days when our well pump went out wasn't fun.
|
| The hard part IMHO, is that everything takes so long to get
| to. We've got a good small town that's a couple minutes away,
| but if I need to go to a big box store, that's 30-45 minutes,
| each way. I like it here, and I have a 8 acre parcel, which
| is incompatible with suburbia, but it's an adjustment.
| Polizeiposaune wrote:
| Utility poles may exist, but they may be structurally
| inadequate so the fiber installer may have to wait years for
| the pole owner to get around to replacing a string of poles
| before the fiber can be hung.
|
| The poles may have been placed along the back property line
| without an easy way for a new utility to get in there without
| nicely asking each household on the street to let them into
| their back yard.
|
| Spend a little time reading Sonic's "Access" forum. There's a
| very real have-vs-have-not dynamic going on there because
| there are areas where Sonic just can't deploy fiber any time
| soon that are just blocks away from people with service.
| Estimated service dates keep slipping when they run into
| unknown unknowns. There is significant engineering and
| construction work required in each and every neighborhood.
|
| That have-vs-have-not dynamic creates niches for satellite
| internet service -- rather than having to wait until all the
| fiber ducks are in a row, you can just pick up a kit at a
| hardware store or get it delivered, plug it in, point it at
| the sky, and you're done.
| mlindner wrote:
| Yes. This is also why people are talking about doing space
| solar power beaming. The cost of regulation and access has
| gotten so high that it's actually getting close to becoming
| cheaper to launch those solar panels into space instead of
| just installing them on the ground.
| kibwen wrote:
| Satellite internet has its place but it's never going to be
| dominant. Any area with high density is better served by wires,
| and any area with medium density is better served by a
| combination of wires and cellular internet. Satellite only make
| economic sense for the truly remote; the astronomical and
| recurring infrastructure costs are just killer (Starlink
| satellites last for 5 years, buried fiber lasts for 50 at least
| (while providing better latency and throughput)).
| natch wrote:
| Median latency 21ms over the last 15 minutes, Starlink.
| legitster wrote:
| > Also, I'm not really aware of anyone that is truly without
| "internet access" as cell phones have basically filled that
| area in years ago.
|
| I mean, this is basically it. For paying bills, doing school
| work, messaging, getting news, etc the options these days are
| affordable and very convenient. Even video calling and
| streaming videos doesn't really affect my data plan too much.
|
| The only advantage of a hardline to your house is if you are
| going to do _copious_ amounts of high-def streaming or you need
| a very stable connection. More of a luxury /hobby resource.
| tw04 wrote:
| > With satellite internet from starlink (and I think amazon is
| attempting their own version?) I don't see how running internet
| over wires to rural housing could ever be seen as a good
| expenditure of money.
|
| That was the same excuse used when nobody wanted to wire rural
| America for electricity. It was a bad take then and a worse
| take now.
|
| Wiring those homes with single-mode fiber once will provide
| modern broadband for at least the next 50 years, if not longer.
|
| Satellite is not and will never be a replacement for fiber.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Huh? People used satellites as an excuse to not wire rural
| America for electricity?
|
| Starlink might not be as fast as fiber, but it's more than
| good enough.
| jmb99 wrote:
| They were responding to:
|
| > I don't see how running internet over wires to rural
| housing could ever be seen as a good expenditure of money.
|
| In pure ROI, it's the same as running electrical service to
| rural areas. But still very important in general
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Starlink might not be as fast as fiber, but it's more
| than good enough.
|
| Users running up against oversubscription - this is a when
| not if condition. The capacity limits inherent to satellite
| tech are what they are.
|
| ref: https://kagi.com/search?q=starlink+oversubscribed&dr=4
| &r=us&...
|
| Between now and then, users' routine downloads run up
| against caps (eg:steam game packs).
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Search engine are not references, but how do you generate
| sharing links in Kagi?
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| There's a share link (the < symbol with nodes at the
| point and tips) right to the bottom and right of the
| search bar on a results page.
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| It's not just the limitations of satellite tech or
| quantity. There's also just the fundamental limit of RF
| in shared airspace. You run into bandwidth limits due to
| interference even without overcrowding low earth orbit
| with a satellite network. When you're running signals
| over a wire/fiber, your signals are confined and
| interference is managed relatively trivially.
| tw04 wrote:
| > Huh? People used satellites as an excuse to not wire
| rural America for electricity?
|
| Obviously that's what I meant. And I didn't mean people
| used the excuse of "we shouldn't be pulling cable to all
| these houses when X is good enough".
|
| There were endless excuses to not electrify rural America
| including "they don't need it". It was eventually solved
| through co-ops.
|
| That's exactly how most rural areas are trying to solve
| fiber, but of course they get to fight the combination of
| folks like you that think "satellite is good enough" (it
| isn't), and legacy ISPs suing them to slow or stop
| deployment.
| apparent wrote:
| > Satellite is not and will never be a replacement for fiber.
|
| Plenty of suburban homes don't have fiber availability and
| are just fine. I'd rather have 3 coax companies competing for
| my business than 1 fiber option. I just really don't care
| that much about speeds above what coax (and Starlink) have to
| offer. Honestly, I'm on the lowest tier offered by my cable
| company, and I'd go lower if it would cut my monthly bill by
| a commensurate amount.
| tw04 wrote:
| > I'd rather have 3 coax companies competing for my
| business than 1 fiber option.
|
| And I'd rather have the city or county pull a single fiber
| back to a pop where an ISP can compete for my business
| because it's absolutely absurd to have multiple companies
| pulling the same cable to a single address and using that
| last mile as a moat.
| r14c wrote:
| Is internet access really the main determining factor for where
| people want to live? I know some people really dislike cities,
| but there are plenty of reasons to live in one if noise and
| crowds aren't dealbreakers.
| rented_mule wrote:
| > cell phones have basically filled that area in years ago
|
| That doesn't work well in mountainous areas, which are often
| rural. There are three towers within a couple of miles of my
| house, but nothing close to line of sight to any of them. ~1/4
| mile away I can get full service, but I have none at all at
| home.
|
| Luckily Comcast / Xfinity rewired our little town a few years
| ago so we don't have to rely on satellite (not great during the
| heavy snowstorms and thunderstorms we get). I'd love to use
| cellular as a backup as we have 3~20 full days of blackouts per
| year (most of us have generators and/or batteries) and Xfinity
| goes down 80-90 minutes after a blackout starts.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| > Also, I'm not really aware of anyone that is truly without
| "internet access" as cell phones have basically filled that
| area in years ago
|
| Unfortunately very much not true. The US is a very large and
| sparsely populated place. As far as cell and broadband service
| goes, much of West Virginia, huge chunks of PA, upstate NY, and
| Maine all have limited or no cell service. In the Midwest the
| communication infrastructure is often delivered by community
| co-ops, not corporations, that also deliver electric power. And
| dont get me started on the vast Western states.
|
| The US has, frankly, an absolutely ludicrous patchwork of
| providers and infrastructure for telephone, power, and
| broadband. It looks reasonably peachy when you drive on the
| Interstate but get off there and youll see how limited it is.
|
| Sat internet would really help people get from zero to 1, but
| that said, its still kinda crappy compared to fiber. Having the
| bird in range for 15 minutes until you have to handover to the
| next bird is not conducive to smooth, glitch free Internet.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > I am curious if good satellite internet will lead to an
| exodus of people from cities and subdivisions
|
| You seem to be imprinting wireline capacity onto satellite.
| This will always be an error. A core facet of satellite is it's
| inherent limited capacity. This has always been the case and no
| tech is on the horizon that will change this.
| mlindner wrote:
| What makes satellite have an inherent limited capacity? Like
| there's no real physics limits on how big you can make a
| satellite. More reception power = more signal in the same
| frequency range.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > I'm not really aware of anyone that is truly without
| "internet access" as cell phones have basically filled that
| area in years ago.
|
| Restated otherwise: You are not aware of the millions of
| Americans whose cell signal is weak to non-existent in places
| they routinely spend time at.
| TinkersW wrote:
| Cell phones general do not work in rural areas unless you are
| very lucky or go climb the highest peak that happens to be in
| direct line of sight of a tower.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > With satellite internet from starlink (and I think amazon is
| attempting their own version?) I don't see how running internet
| over wires to rural housing could ever be seen as a good
| expenditure of money.
|
| A number of replies here explain how deploying wireline is
| absolutely a good expenditure of money.
|
| Once you have read them, will you then understand?
| thesuitonym wrote:
| > Also, I'm not really aware of anyone that is truly without
| "internet access" as cell phones have basically filled that
| area in years ago.
|
| Then you clearly don't know anyone who lives in a rural area,
| because much of the US still doesn't have good cell coverage.
| nektro wrote:
| you could not pay me to use starlink
| josefritzishere wrote:
| That's par for the course with this administration.
| phkahler wrote:
| Can we stop paying those fees for companies to expand broadband
| since it's not needed any more?
| sagarm wrote:
| It's all getting redirected to Starlink
| mlindner wrote:
| I wish. Starlink has gotten almost zero money from the
| government (relative to their revenue). If Starlink got even
| a fraction of the money that fixed broadband companies got
| they could absolute explode he size of the service.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| News from 2 weeks ago, lots of discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44641464
| ashwinaj wrote:
| Contrarian opinion: What exactly is the point of "fast" internet?
|
| _Most_ people use the internet for entertainment, people can
| survive watching Netflix at 1080p /720p, it isn't debilitating.
| If I'm wrong in my assessment, give me use cases where you
| require fast internet in a rural area.
|
| If the question is cost, I don't see how laying fiber and
| equipment for hundreds, if not, thousands of miles is a solution
| to reducing cost (unless it's subsidized by the government).
|
| Spending billions on _mostly_ "entertainment" is a waste.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > Most people use the internet for entertainment, people can
| survive watching Netflix at 1080p/720p, it isn't debilitating.
| If I'm wrong in my assessment, give me use cases where you
| require fast internet in a rural area.
|
| Lots of desire for more automation and data surrounding
| agriculture, for starters.
|
| More generally, people work through internet applications. If
| you want to check your email, type up a document, have Zoom
| calls, etc., you need to do so through the internet. If you
| don't have fast internet, you can count on being less
| productive.
| wyre wrote:
| None of those things you listed require internet faster than
| required to stream Netflix at 1080p.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| That still would be faster than dialup, older generations
| of satellite internet, and some tiers of DSL service can
| provide, and there are still areas where those are the
| options.
| Larrikin wrote:
| People were perfectly fine with 56k when most of the Internet
| was just text. Stalling the internet at that speed could have
| been argued for by saying anyone who wants DSL/Cable at home
| just wants it for Napster.
|
| Fast Internet speeds allow for unthought of innovations. If we
| get up to terabyte speeds, maybe nobody cares about watching
| Netflix if we can now have holodecks that become fully
| immersible experiences that allow for educational training and,
| to your chagrin, entertainment as well. Maybe LLMs are
| basically free because everyone can just have all of human
| content constantly updated.
|
| Letting speeds stall stifles innovation and let's Netflix just
| continually up their prices for the same 720p content you refer
| to.
| ashwinaj wrote:
| > maybe nobody cares about watching Netflix if we can now
| have holodecks that become fully immersible experiences that
| allow for educational training and, to your chagrin,
| entertainment as well
|
| I don't see why billions of dollars should be spent, for say,
| less than a low single digit percentage of the rural
| population who want to stick a machine to their head for
| educational training.
|
| It's infinitely cheaper, a more sane and healthier decision
| to move to the location where they can sit in front of the
| instructor, if they value this education.
| rstat1 wrote:
| So just stop being poor. Got it.
| geonineties wrote:
| If we're going full reductio ad absurdum and taking
| snipes instead of conversation, then maybe the
| appropriate response is: You can be poor all you want,
| but don't expect someone else to subsidize your life.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > You can be poor all you want, but don't expect someone
| else to subsidize your life.
|
| The rich and wealthy have their lifestyles heavily,
| heavily subsidized, so why not the poor as well?
| rstat1 wrote:
| My comment isn't really that absurd in the context of
| this whole thread and its insistence that decent quality
| internet service is something only the wealthy and/or
| those who live in urban areas should have access to.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Working from home when you're a doctor:
|
| https://bbcmag.com/chattanooga-doctor-becomes-worlds-first-1...
| ashwinaj wrote:
| 1. Chattanooga, TN isn't exactly "rural"
|
| 2. How large is each "diagnostic medical image"? I can't
| imagine this being in the order of TB a. An
| existing 5G/LTE or satellite internet is perfectly
| serviceable for even GBs of medical images b.
| Let's assume the images are in the order of TBs, does this
| justify spending billions for one person (or tens) in a
| "rural" area?
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| A single high-resolution pathology slide can be 20 GB. A busy
| pathologist can read up to 300 slides per day. That's 6 TB a
| day to download.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| now the regional broadband monopolies can become a global space
| monopoly
| consumer451 wrote:
| I am currently on a farm in a very rural area, in a central EU
| country.
|
| 900mbps symmetric, $25/month fiber. The fiber run was
| subsidized/possibly entirely funded by EU money.
|
| > EU support to rural revitalisation through broadband roll-out
| and smart solutions
|
| https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/eu-support-rur...
| msgodel wrote:
| In the US fiber has started to show up in very rural areas now
| as well. My parents got it last year and I never thought that
| would happen in my hometown.
|
| It's some small company I never heard of before, back when I
| lived there Verizon got a ton of government money to do this
| and just never did, everyone was pissed about that.
| consumer451 wrote:
| It's a huge difference isn't it? When I used to stay here in
| the past, the DSL was awful. It made it very annoying to work
| online. Now, it's as good as back in Seattle.
| msgodel wrote:
| Oh lol there wasn't even DSL, everyone wanted that. The
| options were dialup (over ISDN for a while which was one of
| the best options until that went away), geosynchronous
| satellite, or LTE if you're even near a tower.
|
| That's why I'm so surprised they have fiber all of a
| sudden.
| connicpu wrote:
| Starlink is now kind of a global baseline that ISPs have
| to compete against regardless of location. In rural areas
| it's very reasonable to expect 200-400mbps downloads and
| 20-40mbps uploads for $120/month. A bit pricey but it's a
| level of service that DSL and GEO sats can't even think
| about matching, so companies have to build cable, fiber,
| or 5G towers if they want to have a comparable offering.
| abuani wrote:
| I'm still pissed about Verizon pocketing billions in
| subsidies and not finishing their work. My area was next up
| for fiber installation before Verizon stopped, and so I'm
| stuck with Comcast or DSL. Comcast claims to offer
| symmetrical GiB up/down, but I've yet to get that. Now I
| can't even get in touch with a human for support without
| spending 30 minutes with a bot.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Weird opposite experience. I'm suuuper rural NY (what
| others have described as 'American Siberia') and for some
| reason Verizon quietly started building out their fiber
| network in the past several years again, something even I
| didn't anticipate happening.
|
| I always knew they had Syracuse and Rochester as major FIOS
| markets, but I was blown away to see the trucks all the way
| this far north and on my very road. Last I'd known they'd
| said they had stopped all buildout. Next thing I know, they
| pick back up their pace, then pick up the homework they let
| Frontier finish for them with the Frontier FIOS buildout,
| too.
| quantified wrote:
| In Vermont you can get GB fiber to the house but it will cost
| you $90/month after the intro period. Vendor: Fidium.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Our nearest town, Durham Kansas (population 100) got buried
| fiber optic recently. The company is actually planning/hoping
| to expand to the rural area around town as well, so maybe
| we'll get it as we're only two miles out of town. They do
| offer 1gig symmetric but I think it's $200/month. I'd just
| like the reliability and low latency of fiber vs our current
| WISP.
| thfuran wrote:
| My parents for fiber in a rural area too. It's roughly
| $100/mo for something like 20/20.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Which country? In Germany and Austria you still have DSL cable
| because the telco monopolies are golf buddies with the
| politicians.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I hear complaints about German internet connections all the
| time, and it blows my mind that this could still be the case.
| What an utter self-own.
|
| I am currently in Poland, the very SW corner. Close enough to
| get both German and Czech radio in the car.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> What an utter self-own._
|
| Which self own? Besides the one making your industry
| dependent on energy from your military opponent? Besides
| the one putting all your eggs in selling diesel engines
| when China and the US were betting on computer driven
| battery powered EVs? Besides the one where you open your
| borders to unvetted illegal immigrants leading to a rise in
| crime, terror attacks and right wing extremism all over
| Europe?
|
| Because I lost track.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > Which self own? Besides the one making your industry
| dependent on energy from your military opponent?
|
| Yeah, that too I suppose. How could Schroeder have known?
| :/
| herbst wrote:
| I was taking a train from somewhere in Bavaria to Austria.
| More than half of the ride the train lady was chilling next
| to us because "there is no internet, I cannot check tickets"
| the whole ride you could see houses out of the window. People
| are actually living there. This was like 6 years ago but I am
| still baffled by this.
|
| In Switzerland it's very unlikely you find a mountain or road
| without 4g
| morsch wrote:
| "Germany's 5G coverage was 99% in 2024, slightly exceeding
| the EU average."
|
| https://www.heise.de/en/news/EU-digitization-report-Fiber-
| op...
|
| "Today passengers enjoy at least 200 Mbit/s on 99 per cent
| of the 7 800 kilometres of main lines and even 300 Mbit/s
| or more on 95 per cent. Secondary lines also saw a
| transformation. Coverage of 100 Mbit/s rose from under 83
| per cent to over 96 per cent in just three years."
|
| However:
|
| "Yet coverage is only half the story. Mobile signals must
| penetrate each carriage's interior if passengers are to
| make calls or stream without interruption. Many modern
| trains are fitted with factory-installed windows engineered
| for signal permeability."
|
| And of course many train's _aren 't_ fitted with windows
| like that (and operators are trying to retrofit them with
| microcells or in other ways).
|
| https://www.connectivity.technology/2025/05/seamless-5g-con
| n...
| morsch wrote:
| I could have fiber, but I see no point in upgrading from DSL.
| Why? It works. In fact, I could have upgraded to 250 Mbit DSL
| years and years ago, but 100 Mbit is fine. Why bother
| spending money or time making changes to my home's critical
| infrastructure. I doubt I'm the only one.
|
| And then there's the millions of boomers around whose only
| device is a smartphone and they never exceed the 10 or 20 or
| 30 GB they get on a mobile contract that's less than any DSL
| or fiber contract. Good luck selling them 900 Mbit symmetric
| links.
|
| In fact I'm sure there must be hundreds of thousands who
| still pay for DSL that's essentially unused because their
| phone lost the Wifi credentials and there's no grandkid
| around to notice it. Their house will be upgraded to fiber
| when it gets resold because it ticks a box for the real
| estate agent.
| NekkoDroid wrote:
| > I could have fiber, but I see no point in upgrading from
| DSL. Why? It works. In fact, I could have upgraded to 250
| Mbit DSL years and years ago, but 100 Mbit is fine. Why
| bother spending money or time making changes to my home's
| critical infrastructure. I doubt I'm the only one.
|
| We get 250 Mbit into our house and our house has Ethernet
| cables going through the walls to different floors but the
| cables are all limited 100 Mbit and it is tilting me of the
| face of the planet... :(
|
| Replacing them isn't much of an option, just maybe running
| other cables around the walls, which isn't the nicest
| option when the existing cables are all nicely not visible.
| xattt wrote:
| Same deal in Prince Edward Island. Very rural, near the coast,
| cows across the road, but gigabit fibre from Xplorenet who took
| advantage of government funding.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I live in the second largest city in the US. In the distance I
| can see a switching station that carries a large amount of
| telecom and internet traffic.
|
| Should be easy to get fiber no? Turns out they want a couple
| thousand dollars from me to run fiber up my street. Coax it is!
| genewitch wrote:
| coax was $5,000 a mile, here, 5-6 mile run (i forget), and
| they said "there's no guarantee it does anything except TV" -
| that is, no internet.
|
| fiber loop from cogent or centurylink was $15,000. even
| though they have a loop a half mile up the road. Dark fiber
| is probably cheaper, but i cannot remember the pricing to run
| my own fiber via some legit company. i had DSL (6mbit),
| switched to my own CPE with cellular wireless, then their CPE
| after they stopped selling the SIM plan i was using, then
| starlink after they stopped selling their fixed wireless for
| some newer one that isn't supported anywhere but metro areas.
|
| There's a tree interfering with satellites at my location,
| and it's still 20x faster and better than anything before;
| except my own CPE solution, starlink is only 2x as good as
| that.
| viccis wrote:
| The US doesn't generally _do new things_ anymore. We just
| shuffle money around into peoples ' pockets. So we have plenty
| of societal wealth to do something like this, even given how
| large and rural many areas are, but we just don't. Because no
| one gets reelected because they rolled out bandwidth. They get
| reelected based on however their party is faring in the battle
| of the spectacle going on nationally.
| beauzero wrote:
| Depends on the place. Live in rural Georgia (Carroll County).
| Within the last two years have had Spectrum fiber and Carroll
| EMC fiber run by the house. First is underground and second
| is on pole.
| hvb2 wrote:
| Have you ever wondered why each provider needs their own
| wire?
|
| You could have the wire be owned by a utility and let
| companies compete with services?
| qingcharles wrote:
| I live in an insanely rural no-stop-light town, and they
| just ran 5gbps fiber outside my door. I already have 1gbps
| from another company.
|
| Can't justify the 5gbps, though - it's like $170/mo +
| taxes.
| consumer451 wrote:
| To be fair, there will be plenty of people using EU funded
| fiber over here, to complain about how the EU does nothing
| and is pure evil, and that the country should leave the
| union.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I don't think this is even remotely true.
| philjohn wrote:
| I'm in the UK on a 900Mbps symmetric for PS40 a month.
|
| Turns out regulation can be a good thing - first of all,
| OpenReach (the infrastructure part of BT that was split up post
| privatisation) are regulated in how much they can charge other
| providers for last mile FTTP/C[1]
|
| But then there's also Access to Infrastructure regulation[2],
| which means duct and pole access isn't up to the telco's (and
| after all, existing infra was publicly funded, and new infra is
| often paid for by housing developers). This means I have 2
| providers of FTTP to my property - CityFibre and OpenReach (and
| a third offering DOCSIS cable in Virgin Media).
|
| These combined have led to a thriving market with genuine
| competition. Whilst most ISP's use the two providers with the
| most footprint (OpenReach and CityFibre) they compete on things
| like technical chops (AAISP), Price (the PlusNets of the world)
| and a mix of the two (Zen).
|
| Regulation, when well designed, leads to more competitive
| markets.
|
| [1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/telecoms-
| infra... [2]
| https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2016/700/contents
| rjh29 wrote:
| Japan has no regulation and you can get 10 Gbps for the same
| price or lower. The main reason is it skipped ADSL completely
| and went staight to fiber.
| philjohn wrote:
| Well, there's also cultural reasons. If the government of
| Japan entrusts you to self regulate on the basis of open
| access and no restrictions a Japanese business will
| understand the weight of expectations that have been placed
| on them.
|
| A US telco would pop the champagne and then plan how best
| to screw their customers, safe in the knowledge that they
| have few competitors after they got local governments to
| ban municipal broadband.
| stego-tech wrote:
| You mean the FCC was actually trying before? /sarcasm
|
| In all seriousness, we've poured billions of dollars into
| broadband expansion efforts since the early 2000s. _Every single
| time_ it's been largely hoovered up by Big Telecoms, failed to
| expand broadband /improve speeds/lower prices, and basically just
| gone right to their bottom line as a subsidy.
|
| The solution all along has been funding municipal broadband as
| the baseline for private enterprise to compete against and
| surpass, but lobbyists have all but killed that dead up until the
| past ten years or so. You can't treat broadband as a utility in
| legal language but not in practice, yet the USA seems perfectly
| fine with their status quo leaving them a laughing stock of the
| developed world.
| quantified wrote:
| USA believes it's better than everyone else, it's very inward-
| looking. It's been quite striking.
| bdamm wrote:
| It really is. I keep wondering when some tiny bit of humility
| will show up, but it is increasingly like asking Russians to
| have some humility. Not likely, and sometimes, not possible.
| quantified wrote:
| There is too much religion in the states for the people to
| be humble.
| deepsun wrote:
| Yep. As an american I keep giving WTFs every time media
| discuss potential solutions to problems without even
| considering how other places solved them. It's like other
| countries don't exist, or hide their secrets.
|
| Not just broadband, but same with healthcare, homelessness,
| gerrymandering etc. Just copy-paste little by little.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| As an HN viewer I keep giving WTFs every time HNers discuss
| potential solutions to problems without even considering
| how other places solved them.
|
| It's not just an american media problem. Plenty of people
| here calling for municipal broadband ignoring what worked
| in other countries.
| rsynnott wrote:
| American exceptionalism is odd, in that sometimes it is "we
| are better than everyone else", but sometimes it is "we can't
| have the nice things that all other rich countries have,
| because [nonsense reason]".
|
| A popular one is 'density', and, okay, maybe this is somewhat
| true if you're talking about, say, Wyoming (though I think
| not as true as people often think), but California, for
| instance, has an only slightly lower population density than
| _France_, and at that point "we can't have proper
| transport/telecoms/whatever because density" is just an
| excuse, and not a convincing one.
| vondur wrote:
| There are vast parts of California that are pretty much
| empty. However, the lack of competition in broadband at the
| consumer level does suck.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, same goes for France, tho.
| genewitch wrote:
| california is ~160,000mi^2 and france is ~244,000mi^2
| (423 megameters squared, 632 megameters squared, metric),
| the population density, respectively, is 251/mi^2 and
| 281/mi^2. You're comparing an entire country to a single
| state (2% of the US states, in fact.)
|
| I like to point stuff like this out whenever someone
| compares _an entire EU country_ to some US _state_.
|
| note: i edited the france density, as i did accidentally
| transcribe the wrong value. France is slightly denser per
| sqkm.
| conradev wrote:
| That particular US _state_ has a GDP larger than that
| _entire EU country_.
| genewitch wrote:
| well, 400 billion less (USD, i _think_ ), but like 2/3rds
| the population. California $4.1trillion 39mm pop; france
| $4.5trillion 66mm/68mm pop.
| rkomorn wrote:
| Are you sure about your numbers?
|
| It seems like you're mixing density units.
|
| France has 66M people for 547k km^2, which is 122/km^2 ,
| California has 39M for 403k km^2, which is 97/km^2.
| hvb2 wrote:
| What goes for France?
|
| I have a 5gbit down, 900mbit up connection with 200 tv
| channels a d a landline for 30EUR over fiber. And I'm not
| even in a big city
|
| In the US I had spectrum at 80$ a month for just internet
| at like 20mbit down or something...
| kulahan wrote:
| The reason we can't have whatever nice things you want is
| because California doesn't want to spend the money on that
| nice thing, and it has to maintain a budget, unlike
| nations. Including a $40 Billion project on a budget makes
| many, many other things go away. Even if it's just
| temporarily to help pay for the construction of the
| service, the point stands.
|
| So imagine if France couldn't go into debt - only the EU
| can. France wants a giga-train suddenly, so they ask for
| it. The current leader of the EU isn't a fan of more
| trains, so he turns it down. France goes back to its people
| and says "we can build the giga-train if we do XYZ", and
| people vote based on whether or not they want XYZ or the
| giga-train more.
|
| I think it's possible you just might want things different
| from what others want. That study a while back which showed
| most Americans want cheap public transit so that everyone
| _else_ gets off the road and gives _them_ more space lives
| rent free in my head. Nobody wants these stupid trains.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Sorry can't hear you over my air conditioner.
| glzone1 wrote:
| The billions spent on rural broadband excluded Starlink as not
| technically feasible.
|
| Many other billions have the same issues - I think no one knows
| how to actually hoover this the way the big co's do?
|
| We've had much faster broadband happening because of commercial
| competition from scrappy startups and WISPS and fiber folks
| (think sonic)
|
| I think something like 94% of RDOF/BEAD locations in california
| were defaulted (ie, awarded but customer actually never got
| service)?
|
| It's crazy given the 100+ billion or so spent on USF / RDOF /
| BEAD / etc that they couldn't do $5b - $10b for something like
| starlink which at least in rural areas is able to serve folks
| pretty quickly and push hard on that for a bit. The
| unsubsidized commercial starklink services is already
| outcompeting the insanely subsidized buildouts (that cost
| insane amounts per person). Starlink was awarded the funds but
| then they were revoked.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Also community/municipal owned broadband is illegal in many
| places thanks to lobbying from the big telcos:
| https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...
| josefritzishere wrote:
| This is almost the greater crime. Federal action on this
| should protect municipal wifi. Instead we get... this.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I live in a place with a municipal telco, and let me tell you,
| it is night and day. The service is top notch, and it always
| _just works_ to the point where on the rare occasion that they
| do have a problem, I spend hours trying to figure out what 's
| wrong with my equipment, because it happens so rarely. It costs
| more than the local cable company, because the price you pay is
| actually what it costs to deliver the service, but there are
| never any wild swings in prices, and when service gets cheaper,
| you just get upgraded for no additional cost. I wish all
| companies worked this way.
| jorts wrote:
| Sonic in the Bay Area is similar and provides amazing quality
| and customer service. They also support net neutrality. I
| hate the big telcos.
| tb_technical wrote:
| Municipal broadband is such a great idea - but it's as hard, if
| not harder, to convince a city council to pursue this over
| adding a simple bicycle lane to a small street downtown.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Cities know how to build roads. They don't know shit about
| operating high speed broadband. My taxes keep going up
| because the city keeps taking on more and more
| responsibilities that (a) they don't know how to provide and
| (b) isn't really their responsibility to provide.
| wmf wrote:
| AFAIK most of the RDOF money was awarded to smaller ISPs and
| there are supposed to be penalties for not delivering.
| lbcadden3 wrote:
| Can't penalize a company that disappears.
| imglorp wrote:
| Rural broadband mandates were just welfare for the big
| carriers. There was never intended to be any results or
| accountability. Consumers have been paying into the fund since
| 1997 and for that we got richer carriers and a pocketful of
| bupkiss.
| complianceowl wrote:
| The lobbyists shutting down any attempts at municipal broadband
| development for so many years is such a catastrophe.
|
| 1 Timothy 6:10: "For the love of money is the root of all evil
| []"
| apex3stoker wrote:
| Yes.
|
| When Democratic Party controlled the federal government, they
| tried to. It is generally hard to do because it requires
| funding and passing laws. Another difficulty is that voters
| don't reward Democratic Party for their efforts.
|
| It is very easy for Republican Party to revert the changes.
| Moreover their donors reward the republican politicians for
| their efforts and their voters don't punish them for their
| efforts.
| RRWagner wrote:
| +1 and more to this. Democrats are not good at all at letting
| voters know what they have done for them. In California that
| Republicans love to hate, we have clean air, free beaches,
| more protections from corporate predation, and so much more.
| Republicans are better at complaining and spreading fear,
| which sadly is a lower-energy and more effective method for
| getting votes.
| SR2Z wrote:
| > Another difficulty is that voters don't reward Democratic
| Party for their efforts.
|
| It is worth noting that the Biden admin passed a $42B package
| of broadband rollout funds in 2021, and then connected ZERO
| people over the next few years.
|
| This is because special interest groups saddled it with
| environmental, union, and DEI requirements that were so
| onerous that nobody was able to actually get/use the funds.
|
| Yes, Democrats plan to do the right thing, but frankly they
| should be penalized for boondoggles like this. Until the
| party can sideline its special interest groups to get things
| done, it's not as simple as "Democrats good, GOP bad."
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/the-
| 42-...
| caseysoftware wrote:
| We got an overview of those "efforts" a few months back and
| it was both comical and enraging to hear how much money and
| time was wasted. And this was a law+process crafted by
| Democrats, signed by a Democrat President, and presided over
| by a Democrat Administration.. they had all the pieces in
| place to accomplish their goals.
|
| Ref: https://youtu.be/NcZxaFfxloo?t=990
|
| When you have tons of paperwork and ZERO deployments (not
| exaggerating), there's nothing to revert.. just a lot to be
| disappointed by.
| Yeul wrote:
| Other countries have private enterprises rolling out broadband
| so I think the difference here is good old fashioned
| corruption.
| dsr_ wrote:
| If you're planning on moving, this list might influence where
| you want to go:
|
| https://broadbandnow.com/municipal-providers
| cogman10 wrote:
| The rural telco situation is pretty good. In fact, better in
| many cases than what you get in larger cities.
|
| The issue is there's some perverse incentives at play with the
| grant monies. For brand new neighborhoods you can expect state
| of the art internet being available. However, after it's
| installed, you can expect it to be simply locked in place with
| no upgrades.
|
| A major problem comes down to easements. If there's a utility
| pole nearby then some federal regulations make it super easy
| for a utility to just add their line onto the existing pole.
| There are access guarantees.
|
| However, if no pole exists then you are looking at buried
| lines. That means each time you want to cross someone's
| driveway or property you need to reach out to the existing
| owner to negotiate access. Some people are easy to work with,
| others will just flat out deny access. (The BLM, for example,
| is notoriously hard to work with for placing underground
| utilities. As are a few big churches).
|
| The US, frankly, has the wrong model. Leaving everything up to
| private companies is what creates all these problems. The
| companies have absolutely no way to guarantee a route for
| service and they have little skin in the game to run an update.
|
| At a bare minimum, the better model is to make utilities public
| (at very least the lines themselves.) That gives the government
| a powerful ability, the ability to claim eminent domain to cram
| through any improvement they need. You could still have private
| ISPs, but you can relegate their roles to just running the
| equipment (switches, routers, etc) rather than doing all the
| additional line management work.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| In Japan it was competition that fixed this. The government did
| something (not sure what) but it was not "funding municipal
| broadband".
|
| I'd say one thing to do is outlaw the contracts that let
| governments only approve a single provider.
|
| It was Softbank that brought the competition. In 2001 they
| started offering 1meg connections for $20 a month. The
| competition cost 10x. Softbank had aggressive marketing too,
| putting up booths at neighborhood train stations where they
| could sign you up and hand you a device on your way home.
|
| The competition lowered their prices to match within a couple
| of months. Softbank doubled the speed to 2meg, same price. The
| same pattern. The competition matched price within a few weeks.
| Softbank raised their speed to 8meg. repeat.
|
| AFAICT it all finally settled (25 years later). Currently $40
| for 1gig fiber or $60 for 10gig fiber or $50 for
| https://www.softbank.jp/internet/sbhikari/
|
| And NTT is competitive https://flets.com/
| quickthrowman wrote:
| It's probably important to mention that Japan is half the
| size of Texas, or roughly 5% of the area of the lower 48
| states.
|
| Japan has a population density that is 8 times higher than
| the lower 48 states.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I would expect that we can get some press releases that U.S
| broadband is the fastest and most affordable in the world though.
| db48x wrote:
| No, they didn't. They decided not to raise the definition of
| broadband from 100x20 Mbps up to 1Gps.
|
| And that's simply because 100Mbps is actually a lot of bandwidth.
| We just don't have any killer applications that need more than
| 20Mbps. 4K streaming on Netflix, to pick one salient example,
| only requires 16Mbps. At 100Mbps you can download a 50GB game in
| just 80 minutes. Sure, it would be nice to have 1Gbps and
| download the game in 8 minutes, but the definition is about
| _minimum requirements_, not things that are _nice to have_.
|
| As such the definition we have is actually a good one! If every
| American had broadband according to this definition we will have
| actually made real progress. Nobody would be stuck on DSL any
| more, let alone dialup.
|
| The FCC is still giving grants to anyone who is installing actual
| broadband in unserved areas, which means anyone installing cable
| or fiber in areas that don't have them. It's just not requiring
| that every customer have 1Gbps service in order to qualify.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Another side of the coin is no one will ever serve you content
| at 1gbps. It just won't happen. I get 500mb down on speedtests
| and netflix et al regularly throttle me to like 144p quality
| with constant buffering. I download a game on steam and it
| throttles to nothing for hours after making some initial good
| progress.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I regularly get software to download at that speed.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| I manage to download entire Steam games at 1 gbps just fine.
| There might be something going on with your ISP.
| assword wrote:
| Interesting. Are ISPs known to throttle steam or something.
| I've noticed that steam almost never downloads at the same
| speed of get doing a speed test. I've noticed it many times
| through out my life, though admittedly I've been stuck
| either way the same ISP across many states.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Some ISP throttle sustained download, which explains
| having high test speeds and initially fast downloads that
| slow down with time. So it might not be Steam per se that
| they're throttling, though it's not impossible.
| vel0city wrote:
| Steam also extracts while it's downloading and will slow
| download speeds if there is a healthy buffer of things to
| extract. If you're downloading a game with thousands of
| small files to an HDD or even just a cheap SSD chances
| are you'll be throttled by your own computer's throughput
| rather than your Internet connection.
| ace22b wrote:
| Steam downloads are often heavily cpu bound at higher
| speeds. I usually max out my 7800x3d at <1.5Gig.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Get a better ISP. People will absolutely serve you content at
| >1Gbps; what this sounds like is your ISP gaming the speed
| tests.
|
| (What does fast.com show you? This at least used to be
| somewhat harder for them to game.)
| db48x wrote:
| It's quite rare for the average website to actually hit
| 1Gbps, that's certainly true. Nobody makes webpages big
| enough to hit that speed, or even for that top speed to
| matter.
|
| But I can download games from Steam at approximately full
| speed, for example. I subscribe to Ziply Fiber, and they
| certainly don't throttle their users or oversubscribe their
| bandwidth. That said, there are other factors at play as
| well: can you even maintain 1Gbps to your _hard drive_? Can
| your computer decompress the downloaded data as fast as it
| comes in? Steam will slow down the download to match the
| speed at which it can decompress the data and write it to
| your disk.
| jerf wrote:
| Fiber just came through my area. They offer up to 3Gbps for
| less than I was paying for Comcast ~500Mbps asymmetric and
| for more money I can get 5Gbps... but I just signed up for
| the 500Mbps symmetric and pocket the difference monthly,
| because what the hell am I going to do with even 1Gbps? My
| Wifi can't 5Gbps, and all but two network devices in my
| house use Wifi to get to the internet. My NVMes can
| nominally do it, but it takes everything firing on all
| cylinders to actually achieve that. I've still got some
| spinning rust that is pretty full up at even the 500Mbps. I
| do run backups to AWS, but that runs in the nighttime
| anyhow and could still finish a complete non-incremental
| backup in 4-5 hours at full speed, and I have incrementals
| anyhow. Sure, the game per month I download from Steam
| would be ready in 4 minutes instead of 8, but, seriously,
| how much am I willing to pay for those four minutes? It's
| not like I'm staring at the progress bar at that point
| anyhow.
|
| 500Mbps is already enough for me to tailscale my house
| network up and have every single member of my family
| accessing the house Jellyfin server remotely
| simultaneously, which is not a realistic amount of load.
|
| 100Mbps down is still plenty for most people. 20Mbps up is
| definitely making some things annoying but most people will
| still be fine. It's a fine definition of _minimum_ service
| for "broadband".
| genewitch wrote:
| even spinning rust should be able to handle ~700 MBit. an
| SSD is generally on the order of 3 gigabits - even cheap
| ones can manage 300megabytes per second, which is on the
| order of 3Gb/s.
| db48x wrote:
| Sure, but remember that the disk bandwidth is the
| _uncompressed_ data. By definition it'll be at least 2x
| larger than the compressed data you downloaded, if not
| more. Steam downloads are commonly disk or cpu limited on
| 1Gbps connections.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _We just don't have any killer applications that need more
| than 20Mbps._
|
| Sure we do, but large ISPs demand their cut.
|
| Backups. File transfers. Large games. Live 4K video chat.
| Language models. CAD models. Cloud-based spyware, like
| smarthome/car/phone/whatever telemetry, or security cameras.
|
| > _4K streaming on Netflix, to pick one salient example, only
| requires 16Mbps._
|
| So only the living room gets 4K, but family members can't all
| watch their own 4K streams in their own rooms? Bobby talks
| during the show, Sally giggles at everything, and Timmy wants
| everything to be dark while mom & dad want the whole room
| bright and quiet. Thanks, ISP, for forcing the family together!
| db48x wrote:
| Remember, we are talking about minimums here, the least
| common denominator. At 100x20Mbps you are not handicapped
| like you are if you are stuck on dialup.
|
| Live 4K video chat needs less than 20x20Mbps, but remember
| also that most people don't have 4K televisions or 4K
| cameras. Even gamers mostly don't have 4K monitors! The most
| recent Steam hardware survey
| <https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-
| Softw...> shows that just 5% of gamers have a 4K or better
| display. 55% have 1920x1080. I don't have similar statistics
| for televisions or webcams.
|
| The other uses you list require even less bandwidth. Nothing
| about a language model requires bandwidth. You either
| interact with it remotely, at a few kilobits per second, or
| you run it locally using no bandwidth at all. Large games
| might take an hour to download instead of minutes. Waiting
| for an hour is not going to handicap you. Most people
| shouldn't even pay extra for that. Backups need some
| bandwidth, but only in proportion to the amount of data you
| have generated. Most people don't create hundreds of
| gigabytes of new files that need to be backed up remotely;
| the largest files most people create are photographs and
| videos of family events, vacations, etc. These files can be
| backed up with no difficulty at 20Mbps.
|
| > So only the living room gets 4K, but family members can't
| all watch their own 4K streams in their own rooms?
|
| Pay attention and don't be an idiot! The FCC definition of
| broadband is 100Mbps down and 20Mbps up. Netflix tops out at
| 16Mbps down, so those 100Mbps can supply 100/16=6 whole 4K
| television streams easily. If your family of six people is
| sitting in six different rooms watching six different
| television shows then your family has a problem. That problem
| is not a lack of bandwidth.
| nektro wrote:
| > No, they didn't. They decided not to raise the definition of
| broadband from 100x20 Mbps up to 1Gps.
|
| it should be _at least_ 100x100
| cpncrunch wrote:
| 20Mbps upload is fine for pretty much everything, other than
| uploading large files.
| ikiris wrote:
| 640k should be enough for anyone after all
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Not for video conferencing.
| jajuuka wrote:
| Sure, in a single person household with only a smart tv and
| laptop. Which is not the average person.
| db48x wrote:
| I disagree. I would argue that most people just don't
| produce enough data to have a huge need for faster
| uploads. You would have to produce more than 200
| gigabytes of data per day before your backups would take
| longer than a day to finish: $ units
| 20Mbps*24hrs gigabytes * 216
|
| If you're an entertainer then you might record more than
| 200GB of raw video per day, but most people aren't. You
| wouldn't even need a faster connection to _become_ an
| entertainer, even if you soon wanted one. You could
| stream 4K video of your antics all day and it would be
| less than 200GB.
|
| And remember that the definition is about the _minimum_
| bandwidth necessary to participate in society, not what
| you need to be at the peak of your entertainment career.
| People who do need higher speeds can and will pay extra
| for them; the FCC definition is not about limiting what
| products are available. It doesn't even require anyone to
| have 100x20Mbps service. The FCC is just trying to get us
| to a point where we can say that 100% of Americans have
| _access_ to that level of service, even if they have
| _subscribed_ to a lower level of service to save money.
| Since 45 million Americans don't even have access to
| 100x20Mbps service we're still pretty far away from that.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Average household is a family, who arent streaming 4k
| video or uploading huge backups like i do, and 20Mbps
| would be fine for me. They typically watch netflix and
| youtube and doomscroll.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| > _Sure, in a single person household with only a smart
| tv and laptop. Which is not the average person._
|
| What is the average person/household? How many devices?
| What use cases (and therefore bandwidth) meet their
| needs?
| db48x wrote:
| I agree that it would be really nice if it were symmetric.
| But remember, the definition is for a service that isn't
| handicapping people, not for what would be nice to have.
| Maybe in 10 years we can make it symmetric.
| thfuran wrote:
| >4K streaming on Netflix, to pick one salient example, only
| requires 16Mbps.
|
| Because they compress all their streams to hell to save a few
| cents and to fit through people's shitty internet connections.
| db48x wrote:
| Actually it's mostly because we've spent the last few decades
| turning math into compression. Starting with MP3s in 1991
| there's a whole history of amazing improvements to audio and
| video codecs. We've made extremely rapid progress even though
| the process has frequently been weighed down by ridiculous
| software patents.
|
| But that said, there's nothing stopping video streaming
| services from offering higher bitrates if they think it's
| worth it. After all, the FCC standard for broadband is
| 100Mbps, not 16Mbps. That's a lot of headroom if you want
| better quality.
| taeric wrote:
| It really is mind blowing to see how much smaller a file
| with newer compression can be. Had to convert some videos
| to a codec that would work on my kids chromebook recently.
| What was a 300 meg video ballooned up to 2 gigs. One of the
| videos was 130 megs that jumped up to 3.2 gigs. Time lapse
| video, so I'm sure it had some of the sweet spots for
| compression. Still, was dramatic how much a modern codec
| can get that down.
| genewitch wrote:
| the USDA, which gives broadband grants, considers an area
| "served by broadband" if there is a 2 megabit provider in the
| jerrymandered area. This includes cellular, even if using a
| fixed or hotspot link would be cost prohibitive.
|
| Look at the coverage maps for rural areas with trees, and
| you'll see an interesting pattern. They used multi-pathing to
| their jerrymandering benefit. checkerboard pattern means the
| USDA says "no grant for you!"
|
| i have _no idea_ when or if the definition changed to 20mbit.
| there are people here still served by 6mbit - on a good day.
| db48x wrote:
| That used to be the case, but it isn't any more. Check out
| the new broadband map: <https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home>;
| it goes by exact addresses rather than census districts or
| whatever it used to be.
|
| The definition was changed to 100x20 Mbps last year:
| https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401205A1.pdf. 10
| years before that it was set to 25x3Mbps.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _No, they didn't. They decided not to raise the definition of
| broadband from 100x20 Mbps up to 1Gps._
|
| No, the 100/20Mbps definition was only adopted last year and is
| being kept for now (though you'll never guess who voted against
| adopting it and wanted to keep 25/3Mbps!).
|
| The 1000/500Mbps definition that Carr's FCC is trying to
| eliminate was a _long term goal_ , something that the US should
| strive for eventually, and therefore federal funding should
| preferentially go to solutions that can or could eventually
| provide those speeds.
|
| Carr's proposed rules[1] go well beyond just the definition of
| high speed broadband, though:
|
| - He wants a stricter reading of the statute that requires a
| report on the deployment of broadband, reading "whether
| advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all
| Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion" as strictly
| referring to anyone making "incremental progress" on
| deployment, so the reports will shift from reporting coverage
| where broadband has actually been deployed to calling areas
| covered if anywhere in an area is working on deploying
| broadband there
|
| - He also doesn't think "reasonable" access to broadband should
| include a consideration of the price of using that broadband,
| so wants to stop collecting pricing information. So long as
| someone is making incremental progress in an area that would
| make 100/20Mbps internet available to you at _some_ price, you
| will now count as covered
|
| - Other proposed changes around mobile speeds and school
| broadband I haven't been following.
|
| Incidentally, even the 100/20Mbps definition seems at least
| potentially in danger, as the proposal is requesting comment on
| whether that's actually the definition they should be using in
| the future.
|
| [1] https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-413059A1.pdf
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > At 100Mbps you can download a 50GB game in just 80 minutes.
|
| 100 Mbps is 100x as slow as my internet connection. I would
| really rather download a giant game in less than a minute, or
| even a few minutes, than _more than an hour_.
| db48x wrote:
| Of course you want it to be faster rather than slower. But
| waiting an hour to play your new game is not a handicap. Not
| compared to dialup, where that same download would take more
| than 80 days, if it finishes successfully at all:
| $ units 50GB/56kbps days * 82.671958
| Andrex wrote:
| That's fine as long as they unshackle the rules around municipal
| internet. Get out of our way and we'll build a way better system.
|
| Instead it's rules for thee and not for shitty massive telecoms.
| Hypocrisy is too light a word.
| wnevets wrote:
| With everything that has been happening maybe that is a good
| thing. We don't need even more people becoming radicalized,
| becoming flat earthers or pushing raw milk in public schools.
| BlarfMcFlarf wrote:
| Talk radio reaches well past broadband. These problems aren't
| new, they are just social problems from decades ago finally
| surfacing.
| wnevets wrote:
| These problems may not be new but they have reached levels
| this country hasn't seen in decades and there is no sign of
| slowing down. The availability of cheap AI on the internet
| isn't going improve anything anytime soon.
| ethagknight wrote:
| It seems like an increased executive mandate on the telcos is an
| odd thing to cheer for, and im not convinced a mandate from FCC
| is really necessary any more. The fiber installation (networking,
| boring, marketing) industry has dramatically expanded, and I
| would expect telcos to continue installation of fiber to new
| markets since it's so much cheaper to manage than copper. with
| the ubiquity of 5g cell networks, the amount of fiber extended in
| the last decade, and the vast improvements of sat-net... is there
| a need for every property in the US to receive a fiber
| connection?
|
| FCC isnt giving on up broadband, its cancelling its mandate for
| expansion, and likely going to delete the cash payouts to telcos
| as well? The FCC never delivered on AFFORDABLE... telcos have
| raked it in on that front.
|
| In other words, seems like a non-event?
| vondur wrote:
| Well, they weren't exactly doing a bang up job with it.
| tb_technical wrote:
| The FCC wasn't trying before.
|
| We need to put down a law to force network infrastructure
| companies to compete, like European nations, if we truly want
| change.
| user94wjwuid wrote:
| Sooner manned trip to mars than break up the telco monopolies
| lbcadden3 wrote:
| It hasn't been working anyway.
|
| It was just more corporate welfare.
| jdhawk wrote:
| I have family in very rural east texas. They have 1Gps
| bidirectional at the hands of EasTex Co-Op spending federal
| dollars to actually lay fiber across their service area.
|
| Lots of them took the money and ran, some jammed it into real
| infrastructure.
| paul7986 wrote:
| There's finally competition in the US home broadband market...
|
| *Fixed Wireless players*
|
| T-Mobile, Verizon and ATT (tho later two isn't widely available)
|
| *Low Orbit Satellite Internet*
|
| Starlink
|
| *Home Wired Connections*
|
| Comcast, Charter, etc
|
| I've been bouncing my cell phone service and home broadband
| around every year per the all the good promotions. Recently on a
| $40 a month Comcast home broadband (300Mbps) with one free line
| of unlimited data cell/data service promo. Previously was paying
| $100 to T-Mobile for Unlimited cell/data service and their fixed
| wireless service.
|
| We are much better nowadays for affordability then a few years
| ago!
| mlindner wrote:
| I though this article would be interesting but it appears to
| mostly be a unhinged rant by the author to vent about Trump's
| politics. It was not particularly good educational reading.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| > Even under an ideal situation where Trump authoritarianism is
| conquered and some sort of sensible alternative takes office,
| restoring oversight of companies like Comcast and AT&T -- both
| bone-grafted to our domestic surveillance networks -- is never
| going to be a priority in a Congress that's now too corrupt to
| function, under a broken court system that treats corporate power
| as an unimpeachable deity.
|
| Well, that's not the ideal situation. The ideal situation is a
| wholesale countervailing takeover of power that destroys the
| broken congress and courts, replaces them with a genuinely
| responsive government, conducts a large-scale seizure of the
| assets of the entities and individuals who have profited from
| this debacle, throws many of them in jail for decades if not
| life, and then begins to use those assets to rebuild things on a
| more equitable footing. Now that's less _likely_ than the
| scenario described in the quote, but the scenario described in
| the quote is far from "ideal".
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| This is hilarious. Just 3 weeks ago I signed up for 10 Gbps
| symmetrical fibre to the home with XGS-PON, and it costs me
| US$23/month (naturally, this is not in the US).
|
| The only US argument I hear with respect to fibre broadband
| internet, high-speed rail, good healthcare, and more is 'we're
| too big!'. At some point it starts being genuinely funny.
| EasyMark wrote:
| If you want to get inside the mind of "Why do this?" for the
| current administration all you really need to do is ask yourself
| 2 questions.
|
| _" Does the right consider this woke?"_
|
| and
|
| _" If I was a libertarian billionaire looking out for no one but
| myself, whatever the price to the public good, what would I
| decide?"_
|
| and you will be able to predict with 80% accuracy what they are
| going to do and their stance on any given situation.
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