4 ms·

Is it like 20 years too late or do they do it from time to time just to spend money and pretend they work?

dsr_ 6y ago
The FCC is a victim of regulatory capture and the current Republican theory of government. If you've missed it, here it is: the government should not do anything besides courts and armies and tax policy. The FCC was also hindered by the majority Democratic position that regulation of monopolies is a dangerous precedent and that positive economic incentives will work to encourage policy objectives. It's never 20 years too late to adopt the reasonable position that Internet-connected bandwidth is a prerequisite for participation in the current economic and civic life of first-world economies.
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  Why should the Democrats support non-means tested welfare for people that overwhelmingly vote for the party that only thinks government should do courts and armies? Why not give people what they vote for?
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Government has a critical role in being compassionate to citizens, even those who vote against their own interests. We don't run roads to only those who support the present dominate political party, nor should we do the same for internet connectivity.
    - bradleyjg 6y ago
      If people don’t ever get a chance to experience the consequences of their beliefs and votes they will have no opportunity to learn and grow.
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        While I agree, some people will never learn and grow regardless. "Touching the hot stove" doesn't work at national policy scale imho. It's like asking sea creatures to evolve fast enough to be able to exist at the rate of acidification due to CO2 saturation. It just ain't gonna happen. Poor decisions will catch up faster than folks are going to learn.
      - srswtf123 6y ago
        The consequences of people’s votes don’t matter when political affiliation is handed down within families similarly to religious affiliation. The number of people that say “I vote for X because my family votes for X; we’re X people” is simply astounding. Expecting rational behavior from irrational beginnings doesn’t work well in my experience.
  - rideontime 6y ago
    What are you suggesting, we only run fiber to the homes of registered Democrats?
    - bradleyjg 6y ago
      That Democrats worry about their constituents instead of voting for programs where the benefits go to groups that are overwhelmingly Republican. See for example coal miner pension bailouts.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tw04 6y ago
They aren't pretending anything. I was stuck in DSL hell for the better part of the last decade. There was a shop running fiber all over that told me they wouldn't be servicing our area until there were more Rural Broadband funds made available (to fund the ~2 mile run to our neighborhood). As of last year I'm finally on fiber... RBF works. It's just a matter of ensuring the funds get directed to ISPs that are ACTUALLY laying fiber instead of giving it to companies like Frontier.
- rhacker 6y ago
  What exactly is DSL hell?
  - adamcstephens 6y ago
    Try 1.5Mb download. 3Mb if you’re lucky.
  - tw04 6y ago
    Frontier - sold 7Mbit down that actually operated at about 1.5mbit during business hours and would peak at 5mbit from 2a-4am if I had to download something - that despite the modem actually syncing up at 7mbit. It was entirely their network too, my SNR was good enough to do 25mbit+ if they had offered it. Latency generally in the hundreds of ms because their network was so congested any traffic leaving it was a joke. Netflix was literally the only thing that worked for content (sometimes) and I'd assume that only worked through a combination of excellent bandwidth management on the part of Netflix and a caching server somewhere local on the Frontier network. My dial-up in the 90s was better from a reliability and consistency perspective. I ended up having to install mosh on all of my systems because SSH sessions would timeout so frequently on Frontier's garbage network.
  - daniellarusso 6y ago
    768kbps upload bandwidth, that is closer to 500kbps.

dsr_ 6y ago

The FCC is a victim of regulatory capture and the current Republican theory of government. If you've missed it, here it is: the government should not do anything besides courts and armies and tax policy. The FCC was also hindered by the majority Democratic position that regulation of monopolies is a dangerous precedent and that positive economic incentives will work to encourage policy objectives. It's never 20 years too late to adopt the reasonable position that Internet-connected bandwidth is a prerequisite for participation in the current economic and civic life of first-world economies.

bradleyjg 6y ago
Why should the Democrats support non-means tested welfare for people that overwhelmingly vote for the party that only thinks government should do courts and armies? Why not give people what they vote for?
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Government has a critical role in being compassionate to citizens, even those who vote against their own interests. We don't run roads to only those who support the present dominate political party, nor should we do the same for internet connectivity.
  - bradleyjg 6y ago
    If people don’t ever get a chance to experience the consequences of their beliefs and votes they will have no opportunity to learn and grow.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      While I agree, some people will never learn and grow regardless. "Touching the hot stove" doesn't work at national policy scale imho. It's like asking sea creatures to evolve fast enough to be able to exist at the rate of acidification due to CO2 saturation. It just ain't gonna happen. Poor decisions will catch up faster than folks are going to learn.
    - srswtf123 6y ago
      The consequences of people’s votes don’t matter when political affiliation is handed down within families similarly to religious affiliation. The number of people that say “I vote for X because my family votes for X; we’re X people” is simply astounding. Expecting rational behavior from irrational beginnings doesn’t work well in my experience.
- rideontime 6y ago
  What are you suggesting, we only run fiber to the homes of registered Democrats?
  - bradleyjg 6y ago
    That Democrats worry about their constituents instead of voting for programs where the benefits go to groups that are overwhelmingly Republican. See for example coal miner pension bailouts.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

tw04 6y ago

They aren't pretending anything. I was stuck in DSL hell for the better part of the last decade. There was a shop running fiber all over that told me they wouldn't be servicing our area until there were more Rural Broadband funds made available (to fund the ~2 mile run to our neighborhood). As of last year I'm finally on fiber... RBF works. It's just a matter of ensuring the funds get directed to ISPs that are ACTUALLY laying fiber instead of giving it to companies like Frontier.

rhacker 6y ago
What exactly is DSL hell?
- adamcstephens 6y ago
  Try 1.5Mb download. 3Mb if you’re lucky.
- tw04 6y ago
  Frontier - sold 7Mbit down that actually operated at about 1.5mbit during business hours and would peak at 5mbit from 2a-4am if I had to download something - that despite the modem actually syncing up at 7mbit. It was entirely their network too, my SNR was good enough to do 25mbit+ if they had offered it. Latency generally in the hundreds of ms because their network was so congested any traffic leaving it was a joke. Netflix was literally the only thing that worked for content (sometimes) and I'd assume that only worked through a combination of excellent bandwidth management on the part of Netflix and a caching server somewhere local on the Frontier network. My dial-up in the 90s was better from a reliability and consistency perspective. I ended up having to install mosh on all of my systems because SSH sessions would timeout so frequently on Frontier's garbage network.
- daniellarusso 6y ago
  768kbps upload bandwidth, that is closer to 500kbps.