4 ms·

3Mbps symmetrical is the bare minimum for an HD Zoom call. That's good enough for one working person. People in cities have gotten the privilege and luxury of r

by kodah 6y ago

3Mbps symmetrical is the bare minimum for an HD Zoom call. That's good enough for one working person. People in cities have gotten the privilege and luxury of routinely getting network upgrades while rural communities are basically left in the dust. I've been stuck out in the country because I got COVID out here and Zoom calls degrade frustratingly fast. One reason is because the only method of delivery that they have is point to point connections, which have a good amount of variability in them despite advancements. When I used to live out here I lived in a different area served by CenturyLink. These lines were incredibly old and in disrepair. So, speed isn't the only problem but slow and unstable is not okay in a day when most things require a consistent connection. So, is it fast enough? I don't think so. I think a policy which stops upgrading cities until a baseline is met in the rest of the country is also appropriate.

thebean11 6y ago
> I think a policy which stops upgrading cities until a baseline is met in the rest of the country is also appropriate. What does one thing have to do with the other? Cities aren't in any way preventing improvements elsewhere.
- inetknght 6y ago
  > Cities aren't in any way preventing improvements elsewhere. Opportunity cost. Why spend your installation technician's time in an unprofitable rural region when you can better-spend their time in a profitable city?
  - hylaride 6y ago
    Well, these rural areas keep electing "free market" republicans, so...
    - kodah 6y ago
      Personally, your argument seems dubious but I'll answer you in earnest. If your argument were true this map would look much different: https://www.fcc.gov/health/maps https://www.fcc.gov/health/maps Local politicians all work just about the same way when it comes to approving an internet provider. Attracting them generally has to do with business incentives, which means if the State and/or Federal government do nothing then you'll get what you have today.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - thebean11 6y ago
    Opportunity cost is only an argument when doing one thing prevents you from doing the other. What's the limited resource here that would prevent a cable company from hiring more technicians and laying more cable? Put another way, how does banning improvements in New York suddenly make improvements in Montana more profitable?
    - inetknght 6y ago
      Sure but what are you going to do with those technicians after they've installed the hardware in a sparse region? It takes a lot of man-hours to do the install, especially for long distances that are rural homes, but not so many man-hours to maintain
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Plus you have the ability to serve more people, at a lower cost. I can get 100 urban users up for 1/4 of the price to get 20 users in a rural sub-division. This isn't just capitalism, it's basic utilitarianism.
- onion2k 6y ago
  Cities aren't in any way preventing improvements elsewhere. Yes they are. No one has unlimited capital for investment, so infrastructure companies will invest where they get the maximum returns. If they're left to their own devices cities would get increasing fast internet, and everywhere else would be left stagnant. That drives more people to live in cities, which in turn makes rural economies fail. Then the people in cities start running out of food. Slight reductio ad absurdum argument on my part there, but it's just to illustrate the point. For a country to operate having significantly worse infrastructure in one place damages the entire economy. Infrastructure investment has to be managed carefully.
  - boringg 6y ago
    I hear your point but I disagree with the binary nature of it. I do think the challenge of rural internet lies in the incredible amount of infrastructure costs with limited recovery. This is the same challenge the electricity markets have (or any public infrastructure). The other challenge in the US that most european countries don't have (for anyone from Europe) is that the US has incredibly large land mass with sparse populations and challenging weather conditions (tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, etc.). This is where something like starlink et. competitors can provide a much better cost per outcome benefit. The challenge is how to bring the cost down for the benefit of rural areas on lower incomes. As it stands right now its pretty expensive for lower-mid income demographic to swallow price wise.
    - saltyshake 6y ago
      Wouldn't the Skylink latency be too high for video chat?
  - thebean11 6y ago
    Internet providers bring in insane amounts of cash and deploy as little of it as possible. If you ban infrastructure improvements in one place I doubt they deploy that money elsewhere. If the other project were profitable they would have done both to begin with.
ksec 6y ago
If a Nation mandate electricity, water pipes and telephone lines ( Not sure if telephone is still the case ) to new housing / flat. Or is that not a case in US? Why isn't High Speed Internet Access the same? Where High Speed Internet is defined as user able to purchase 1Gbps Internet should they choose to. They could get a 100Mbps if they want it cheaper, but 1Gbps must be an option. This ruled out any DSL tech and most old Cable DOCSIS standards. And if Phone jack, Which I assume they are all RJ11 used around the world, why cant we do the same for SFP+?
- kodah 6y ago
  We have tired old arguments in the US about mandate versus incentive. They're two schools of thought and I'm not really sure which is better, when given maximal effort. Consider this map: https://www.fcc.gov/health/maps https://www.fcc.gov/health/maps You can mandate that the internet become a utility, much how water can be a private utility, and tell a company that for every segment they get in a popular area, where they'll make money, they must establish presence in an area where they'll lose money in the name of service. There's also price approval activity and probably some subsidizing that happens there. This certainly might work. The other is for incentives to be drawn and invested in routinely that draw providers to less populated areas. These would have to be monetary, and you might be able to reason their subsidies look much like agricultural subsidies. Another argument is wireline providers are just not sufficient for scale in the more rural areas. 5G won't work because coverage is abysmal. Starlink and other engineering solutions may be appropriate. I don't really care how it's done, but being out here has made me realize exactly how awful this problem is.
- LinuxBender 6y ago
  Not for individuals. No idea what rules there are for developers, but an individual can buy land anywhere and is not required to have any of those things when they build their home. The only things almost universally regulated is sewage. Some states allow composting toilets, but most require a septic tank inspected by the county. Some counties in some states have rules about types of septic systems.
TYPE_FASTER 6y ago
Point to point can also be useful when getting a building connected is expensive. A former employer leased a space in a city, and the space wasn't connected. One of the big providers wanted $10k to connect the building. A local small ISP connected the building using point to point for a fraction of the cost. I think we'll see more point to point adoption until it threatens the market share of entrenched providers.
WalterSear 6y ago
> I think a policy which stops upgrading cities until a baseline is met in the rest of the country is also appropriate. The best I can get in San Francisco is 5Mbps symmetric. Would that be good enough for you? :)

by kodah 6y ago

thebean11 6y ago

> I think a policy which stops upgrading cities until a baseline is met in the rest of the country is also appropriate. What does one thing have to do with the other? Cities aren't in any way preventing improvements elsewhere.

inetknght 6y ago
> Cities aren't in any way preventing improvements elsewhere. Opportunity cost. Why spend your installation technician's time in an unprofitable rural region when you can better-spend their time in a profitable city?
- hylaride 6y ago
  Well, these rural areas keep electing "free market" republicans, so...
  - kodah 6y ago
    Personally, your argument seems dubious but I'll answer you in earnest. If your argument were true this map would look much different: https://www.fcc.gov/health/maps https://www.fcc.gov/health/maps Local politicians all work just about the same way when it comes to approving an internet provider. Attracting them generally has to do with business incentives, which means if the State and/or Federal government do nothing then you'll get what you have today.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- thebean11 6y ago
  Opportunity cost is only an argument when doing one thing prevents you from doing the other. What's the limited resource here that would prevent a cable company from hiring more technicians and laying more cable? Put another way, how does banning improvements in New York suddenly make improvements in Montana more profitable?
  - inetknght 6y ago
    Sure but what are you going to do with those technicians after they've installed the hardware in a sparse region? It takes a lot of man-hours to do the install, especially for long distances that are rural homes, but not so many man-hours to maintain
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  Plus you have the ability to serve more people, at a lower cost. I can get 100 urban users up for 1/4 of the price to get 20 users in a rural sub-division. This isn't just capitalism, it's basic utilitarianism.
onion2k 6y ago
Cities aren't in any way preventing improvements elsewhere. Yes they are. No one has unlimited capital for investment, so infrastructure companies will invest where they get the maximum returns. If they're left to their own devices cities would get increasing fast internet, and everywhere else would be left stagnant. That drives more people to live in cities, which in turn makes rural economies fail. Then the people in cities start running out of food. Slight reductio ad absurdum argument on my part there, but it's just to illustrate the point. For a country to operate having significantly worse infrastructure in one place damages the entire economy. Infrastructure investment has to be managed carefully.
- boringg 6y ago
  I hear your point but I disagree with the binary nature of it. I do think the challenge of rural internet lies in the incredible amount of infrastructure costs with limited recovery. This is the same challenge the electricity markets have (or any public infrastructure). The other challenge in the US that most european countries don't have (for anyone from Europe) is that the US has incredibly large land mass with sparse populations and challenging weather conditions (tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, etc.). This is where something like starlink et. competitors can provide a much better cost per outcome benefit. The challenge is how to bring the cost down for the benefit of rural areas on lower incomes. As it stands right now its pretty expensive for lower-mid income demographic to swallow price wise.
  - saltyshake 6y ago
    Wouldn't the Skylink latency be too high for video chat?
- thebean11 6y ago
  Internet providers bring in insane amounts of cash and deploy as little of it as possible. If you ban infrastructure improvements in one place I doubt they deploy that money elsewhere. If the other project were profitable they would have done both to begin with.

ksec 6y ago

If a Nation mandate electricity, water pipes and telephone lines ( Not sure if telephone is still the case ) to new housing / flat. Or is that not a case in US? Why isn't High Speed Internet Access the same? Where High Speed Internet is defined as user able to purchase 1Gbps Internet should they choose to. They could get a 100Mbps if they want it cheaper, but 1Gbps must be an option. This ruled out any DSL tech and most old Cable DOCSIS standards. And if Phone jack, Which I assume they are all RJ11 used around the world, why cant we do the same for SFP+?

kodah 6y ago
We have tired old arguments in the US about mandate versus incentive. They're two schools of thought and I'm not really sure which is better, when given maximal effort. Consider this map: https://www.fcc.gov/health/maps https://www.fcc.gov/health/maps You can mandate that the internet become a utility, much how water can be a private utility, and tell a company that for every segment they get in a popular area, where they'll make money, they must establish presence in an area where they'll lose money in the name of service. There's also price approval activity and probably some subsidizing that happens there. This certainly might work. The other is for incentives to be drawn and invested in routinely that draw providers to less populated areas. These would have to be monetary, and you might be able to reason their subsidies look much like agricultural subsidies. Another argument is wireline providers are just not sufficient for scale in the more rural areas. 5G won't work because coverage is abysmal. Starlink and other engineering solutions may be appropriate. I don't really care how it's done, but being out here has made me realize exactly how awful this problem is.
LinuxBender 6y ago
Not for individuals. No idea what rules there are for developers, but an individual can buy land anywhere and is not required to have any of those things when they build their home. The only things almost universally regulated is sewage. Some states allow composting toilets, but most require a septic tank inspected by the county. Some counties in some states have rules about types of septic systems.

TYPE_FASTER 6y ago

Point to point can also be useful when getting a building connected is expensive. A former employer leased a space in a city, and the space wasn't connected. One of the big providers wanted $10k to connect the building. A local small ISP connected the building using point to point for a fraction of the cost. I think we'll see more point to point adoption until it threatens the market share of entrenched providers.

WalterSear 6y ago

> I think a policy which stops upgrading cities until a baseline is met in the rest of the country is also appropriate. The best I can get in San Francisco is 5Mbps symmetric. Would that be good enough for you? :)