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The FCC has no idea how many people don’t have broadband access
- creaghpatr 7y agoMaybe a good question to put on the census?
- mjevans 7y agoIt would be much better if the ISPs in a given census block were required to list the offered packages and prices; that could then be submitted to those polled (along with some fake options to detect those who just don't know). The citizen would be asked to fill out one column of check-boxes "from packages reportedly offered in their area" to see which they've been offered by the ISPs, and another to select the level of service they're currently getting.
- hinkley 7y agoOffered and available are two different things. For instance, the COs are too far apart to drive high speed DSL to the edges of the areas they serve, so DSL 'broadband' is a dalmatian pattern even in an urban area. So you have cable, which is oversubscribed and has ulterior motives. Until your neighborhood has fiber the 'has broadband' question is pretty much on a block by block basis, and in some instances house by house.
- inetknght 7y agoIf a company advertises (offers) a service and then backs out, is that grounds for false advertisement complaints?
- sokoloff 7y agoIf they advertise aDSL with “speeds up to” and an inherent limitation in the system (distance to CO or line quality), I suspect they’re in the clear legally (and morally IMO)
- munk-a 7y agoIf only we had some sort of Federal Working Group - or Commission on Communication... then perhaps that group could ban the practice of advertising "speeds up to" and require that plans be reported with minimum speed guarantees (with some allowance for craziness, like an SLA - 95% of the time monthly the speed will be at least 30Mb)
- sokoloff 7y agoDoes banning the advertising of ADSL (in practice) benefit or harm consumers in total in areas where that's the fastest terrestrial option? I believe it harms them (in that advertising the cost and availability of ADSL is better than remaining silent on the service). ADSL line performance is hyper-localized to the individual service recipient.
- guitarbill 7y agoI think the point is that measuring real, possible ADSL speeds can and should be done. There's no reason the price couldn't be prorated based on the maximum achievable speed at your household. Good luck getting that at the moment though. The other issue is fluctuating speed at peak times. This is far, far worse IMO, because companies have oversold capacity and should be considered false advertising.
- sokoloff 7y ago"Our service is prorated at $100/mo per 1Mbps download. For customer convenience, we also cap the monthly bill at $75/mo. You always pay the lower of the two prices." Done.
- rayiner 7y agoNo? My maid service advertises that they serve houses “throughout the MD/VA/DC area.” But they won’t clean your house unless they can find a nearby team that has space on a workable route.
- mikeash 7y agoNo more than the local grocery store running out of watermelon after advertising them in their weekly flyer.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- creaghpatr 7y agoI almost feel like that would be government-sponsored advertising of private companies, but if it's an awareness issue it might help. Maybe even drive some companies to expand their presence if they get help penetrating unserved markets.
- scohesc 7y agoISPs: Looks like we're not serving high speed broadband to a lot of people! We've got work to do. FCC: Yes you do! Mr. Government, would you mind giving us 40 billion dollars to improve internet infrastructure, this is a massive undertaking and we really REALLY want to help get broadband to under-served regions. Government: Sure, here's the money! Don't spend it all in one place! FCC: ISPs: Sounds like this happened 20 years ago and now they're going to try and do it again with this as an excuse to get more money
- xhrpost 7y agohttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hgSJiYFg_3IJ:https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hgSJiY...
- tzs 7y agoThere have been some questions raised here before as to the accuracy of that book. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7864766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7864766
- rayiner 7y agoThe book isn’t inaccurate, in the sense the data is wrong. It’s that the book draws conclusions from that data on questionable premises, and then people take the headline number and misrepresent what it means. The article linked above actually makes the theory behind the book quite clear: > By the end of 2014, America will have been charged about $400 billion by the local phone incumbents, Verizon, AT&T and CenturyLink, for a fiber optic future that never showed up. The premise is that pre-1992 regulated rates are the proper baseline that reflect the “correct price” of service. The theory then goes that ISPs conned the government into deregulating rates by promising fiber which they never built, which allowed them to raise prices beyond what the regulated rates should have been. In other words: “an iPhone XR should only cost about $250, reflecting a 10% profit margin, so anything Apple gets beyond that is an overcharge.” The premise is ignorant, but there is no reason to believe the underlying data is wrong. However, whether the conclusion is right or not, the underlying theory is, by its own terms, a theory of overcharge. (Prices being roughly 10% higher than they should have been over a 22 year period.) It’s not a documenting of some money transfer from government to providers.
- LinuxBender 7y agoWouldn't it be easier to figure out how many people do have broadband and subtract from the population to get a rough guess? ISP's report subscription numbers. It won't be super accurate but maybe that is sufficient.
- chipperyman573 7y agoWould this handle multi-person households?
- b_tterc_p 7y agoIncorporate avg number of people per house...?
- hanniabu 7y agoDo we really have no record of how many houses are in the US? I hate how absolutely inefficient government is
- b_tterc_p 7y agoWe have excellent data on this
- hanniabu 7y agoThen I don't see the issue of why we can't calculate like the parent said to figure out how many houses don't have service. If we know how many houses there are and the ISPs know the homes they serve, then you can figure out the difference.
- jrochkind1 7y agoThey are looking for the number of people/households/whatever who don't even have an option for broadband, not just the number who don't subscribe.
- jbob2000 7y agoWhat would we do with that data if we had it? Would we force the ISPs to build out unprofitable infrastructure? Would we direct some funding to the ISPs to do that? Would we incentivize rural folks to move to better served areas? It just seems like more politics to yell at the FCC to gather this data - why do we want it?
- moftz 7y agoNationalize the ISPs and build out fiber to everywhere. You don't need to worry about profitability if you aren't trying to make a profit.
- logfromblammo 7y agoNot necessary. Just void all those laws that prevent competition in broadband ISPs. Strike down state laws abolishing municipality-owned ISPs. Strike down local ordinances granting telecoms local monopolies. Eminent domain the utility poles and buried conduits to transfer them to the county/municipality, though. Too many companies squeeze out competition by saying "you can't hang your wires on our poles". These companies have been sitting on ass, collecting rents, because they are legally protected from competition. The instant a viable competitor shows up, they scramble to clean up their acts. So strip away their protection. Wherever they don't build out, they lose the market, because the residents might do it themselves.
- thwythwy 7y agoYou get that the government is controlled by politics right? The FCC Chair is quite obviously a political appointment based on politics. ISPs get to dig in the public right of way. They have access to what is a natural monopoly of plugging into peoples' homes. Unprofitable infrastructure? How about the fact that these companies take all their cap-ex and throw it into CONTENT then beg the federal government to allow them to throttle their customers so they can charge for the content. Force indeed.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- drewg123 7y agoWhen we moved to central VA a few years ago, there was a house we really, really liked but did not purchase because there was no option at all for broadband. The truly sad thing is that the house was about 1 mile from the i95 corridor, where a ton of fiber sits, going to the northern VA datacenters. We wound up in a more established, less rural area, where we have exactly one choice in internet providers (Comcast).
- hanniabu 7y agoThe good ol' local monopoly
- switch007 7y agoThe First Honest Cable Company | Extremely Decent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilMx7k7mso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilMx7k7mso (profanity)
- cr0sh 7y ago> The truly sad thing is that the house was about 1 mile from the i95 corridor, where a ton of fiber sits, going to the northern VA datacenters. No option for a wifi or optical LOS connection over that mile distance? Or was that not something you wanted to take on (understandable - can be a ton of work and difficult depending on LOS obstacles - maybe even pricey)?
- dboreham 7y agoI've always scratched my head at this. ISPs really don't have this information so beating chest about ISPs needing to supply better and better data is nonsensical. Do you know who has this information? Amazon.
- inetknght 7y ago> ISPs really don't have this information so beating chest about ISPs needing to supply better and better data is nonsensical. Do you really think that ISP's marketing teams don't have this information?
- rayiner 7y agoOften, yes. They know where they have plant. They don’t necessarily know where they don’t have plant. If your house doesn’t already have service, it can be complicated to figure out if it can get service. Maybe you just need to extend an existing node one block over. Or maybe you need to trench half a mile. Until someone actually rings up and orders service to a previously unserved address, they don’t try to figure this all out. I saw this in action when I ordered Comcast Gigabit Pro at my house. They looked at a map and figured there was a place close enough where they could splice fiber. Then they sent out someone to do a ground survey, put together an estimate, and then some bean counters decided whether they would eat the up front cost. The whole process took a month or so (followed by a couple of months to get permits and two full days for a four-person team to actually pull the fiber).
- munk-a 7y agoDon't forget that a common argument that ISPs use to suppress muni broadband is that the muni will cover highly profitable customers while leaving the ISP needing to support only extremely rural customers... even though genuine private competition could do the same thing and the government has already footed the bill for that rural build out.
- tthrow44 7y agoThe FCC should visit the data at https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/ https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/ ;)
- IronWolve 7y agoI've seen lots of apartments only offer some 3rd party cable company and 3rd party dsl, that the owners would get kick packs. (Millenium as an example). One place I was at, they only had cable and no internet. I had to use ISDN then IDSL after I moved in. About a year later enough people complained and they put in comcrap with real cable modems. My folks live in a small town with 1 tower for the town that has verizon, thats the only internet, and its slow. This one time work put in frame relay to employees homes, they asked for my address and didnt ask if I was a owner, I was renting the house. One day a crew showed up and ran copper to my computer room. I had instant access into the servernet for work. (it was decades ago...) I'm really looking forward to Sat internet like spacex, so I can sit in a cabin away from everyone, and still work. Someday soon I hope.