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FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

369 points by happyopossum 4y ago

charcircuit 4y ago
What's the point? It's not even possible for me to get what's currently defined as broadband where I live. Changing some definitions isn't going to give me faster internet.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the term "broadband" is connected to things like subsidies (i.e. giving an ISP $x if they can provide y people with broadband) intended to increase internet connectivity in poor or remote areas. Increasing the definition also means that ISPs can no longer cheap out and pocket the subsidies.
  - toast0 4y ago
    I'm sure it's also connected to incentives to bring 'broadband' to 'unserved communities'. Now, CenturyLink can get a new incentive to let my sync rate float up a smidge. Or, maybe they'll decide since it doesn't qualify for broadband that they'll just bow out, it's not like they enjoy being a phone company anyway.
deepsquirrelnet 4y ago
How does this affect smaller competition? Regulatory capture is always what comes to mind when I think about the FCC. Who are the winners and losers?
aimor 4y ago
Is there anything in there about increasing the minimum throttled "unlimited" mobile data speed?
happyopossum 4y ago
100/20 is definitely an improvement, and is probably a reasonable minimum bar to set. I'm sure most of us have much higher speed connections, but I know I rarely take my 1Gb pipe over 10% of that... Heck, 2 TVs streaming 4k during a zoom call would be fine on 100Mb...
- stop50 4y ago
  plus some content providers limit the bandwith for individual connections
- giantg2 4y ago
  I don't think it's reasonable if it means my provider's offering start at 100 Mbps vs my current 25 Mbps, at what I'm sure will be at least double the cost to me.
- bufferoverflow 4y ago
  > 4k during a zoom call would be fine on 100Mb Not sure what bit rate TV is at, but one 4K YouTube stream can take up to 68Mbps, and 8K even more. We're on 400Mbps, and even then I manage to block internet for others when I download a large file at full speed.
  - danachow 4y ago
    > We're on 400Mbps, and even then I manage to block internet for others when I download a large file at full speed. That's more of a router/QoS issue. A large download shouldn't negatively affect quality for other uses, especially VoIP. If the place you're downloading from has a pipe bigger than yours and can saturate your bandwidth you're going to need to implement some kind of rate-limiting/queue management.
    - _fjb4 4y ago
      I've seen a lot of people complaining that their 100M+ connections are "slow" for that reason, and they upgrade to 1G and they complain again. It's not like they're doing much on that 1G line either, just say a Steam game download at full speed followed with a stuttering Zoom call. You'll be surprised how far you can push a 10M DSL connection with good QOS (assuming you don't have multiple users streaming video and such).
gnicholas 4y ago
I'd rather have two providers that offers 25Mbps than one that offers 100Mbps. I don't need 100, or even 50. But Comcast has been jacking up their prices, along with increasing the minimum speed available, for years. They respond to government regulations like these. I'm now paying 2x what I used to (from $25 to $50/mo), and getting 2x the speed. But I don't want to be forced to buy 2x the speed (or even faster, as this proposal would require). I would much rather have the govt provide incentives for there to be more than one provider. I live in the heart of SV (Menlo Park), and Comcast is the only option. 5G is not well-served where I live, and the pricing is also not competitive. We need more competition, not more redefinition of "broadband".
- metadat 4y ago
  You might be eligible for ATT [gigabit] fiber? Could be worth a shot. (Unless you're in far-east Menlo) IME the fiber service is faster more reliable than Comcast, but AT&T support is the absolute worst, super incompetent (across the entire company, not just U-verse internet). It's fine as long as you don't need any support and don't try to deactivate anything, but if your account gets messed up it can literally take a dozen calls and 20+ hours of being on the phone to get seemingly simple issues resolved. </rant> The Comcast ATT duopoly is pretty atrocious. Given the regulatory climate, how can a new player even succesfully enter into the market?
  - DrewADesign 4y ago
    > (Unless you're in far-east Menlo) Unless they're in far-east Menlo or like 99.99999% of the rest of the world. While bay area folks are certainly heavily-represented here, the commenters come from all corners of the globe.
    - harikb 4y ago
      They were simply replying to the parent post, which specifically mentioned Menlo park :)
  - Stratoscope 4y ago
eternityforest 4y ago
The amount of bandwidth you need depends on the number of people. 50Mb or 25Mb is probably fine for 1 person. As long as it can do 4k, and zoom calls, it's fine for most people. 100Mb might not be enough for six people, who might need to download, zoom, game, and stream all at once.
- happyopossum 4y ago
  I think you're somewhat overestimating the amount of bandwidth used by those services. TO watch Netflix in 4k, you only need 15Mbps, zoom uses about half of that for a decent connection and will downgrade nicely.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
    > TO watch Netflix in 4k, you only need 15Mbps So on a 25 Mbps connection that was previously considered broadband, two people in a household can't do that at the same time.
  - gh02t 4y ago
    I agree with you, a lot of these services aren't as high bandwidth as people imagine but I will note that part of the reason is because that's what people routinely have access to. Netflix or whoever could be pushing higher bitrate content or potentially exploring other more bandwidth intensive ideas if people had access.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  what's the obsession with 4k? 1080p abd 1440p are way more common.
  - Strom 4y ago
    It's obsession with technological advancement. There was a time when people were resistant to even 720p, saying that 480p is more than enough and they can't even see the difference.
giantg2 4y ago
No. This is insanity. Faster speed will mean that providers will charge more. I am perfectly fine with 25 Mbps. I was fine with 10 Mbps too until they eliminated that level and I was forced to pay more. Edit: why disagree?
- simplyinfinity 4y ago
  I pay 15$ for 500/300 megabit. It's a monopoly that gouges your prices, not competition or mandated high speeds.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    Yeah, and if they don't fix the monopoly (this rule doesn't), then it will only exacerbate the current conditions (monopoly gouging us).
    - zuminator 4y ago
      If you have a monopoly, they can arbitrarily raise their prices without increasing the speed at all. From the situation you described in another post, it sounds as if they were going to raise your bill no matter what, and pushing you to a higher speed tier was just the rationale they gave. At some point it becomes more expensive for them to maintain old equipment than to replace it, and if the replacement equipment has much higher rated speeds, they're not saving anything by continuing the lower speed plan. To the contrary, a lower bill just means a lower profit margin. Consider: Let's pretend that broadband speed worked like a typical commodity so that the producer cost for 10Mbps was roughly ~10x as 1Mbps. And let's say your bill for 10Mbps was $30 (producer cost $20). Would they offer a 1Mbps plan for $3 (producer cost $2)? No, because they would be cannibalizing their own customers. They don't want $1/month profit per customer, they want $10+/month profit customers. And it real life, they have even less incentive to offer low speeds. If gigabit plans are on the table, there's virtually no difference in the maintenance cost for the lower end consumers using 1Mbps, 10Mbps or 100Mbps. It's really only the top few percent of customers who use enough bandwidth to affect QOS. Hence, almost all of these companies offer just a few pricing tiers, the top tier for high bandwidth whales, the middle tier for almost everybody else, and a bottom tier for the super-budget conscious (and also to make the middle tier users feel like they are paying for a premium service.) As the top tier offering gets ratcheted up by technology, so will other tiers. And so will your bill, if you're suffering under a monopoly.
superkuh 4y ago
The problem, in the USA for most people, is Comcast. Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Upload speed has stagnated. I uploaded as fast in 2003 as I do now in 2022. And as others have said, it's not so much about 1 fast provider as many providers and choice. In my comcast monopoly my plan started at $60/mo in 2011 and without any changes on my end and no change in my upload speed that price has increased to it's current $105/mo. In addition to the price increases they've implemented a new system of total data transfer limits ((up/down)+internal overhead) meaning even if I could have a faster connection it'd mean nothing if I used it in the first week and then got hit with multiple $10 overage "fees". But I don't have a choice. It doesn't matter how good, or bad, Comcast is. They're the only game in town.
- rascul 4y ago
  > Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Until the power company ran fiber earlier this year, the only wired option here was 3Mbps DSL from AT&T. AT&T buried fiber all over the area (including in front of my house) years ago, but it sits there unused.
  - xahrepap 4y ago
    Same where I am. Most of the city has competition because it’s most new developments out here and a few fiber companies were able to get in the ground early. My neighborhood is older so we only have Comcast. But Comcast buried fiber here to “future proof” ages ago, they just haven’t lit it up. And they’re the only company who got their hardware in the ground. So I’m stuck on their cable. As it turns out the service here is good, so I shouldn’t complain. But it’s still frustrating that they are just sitting on fiber and not using it. And also that there’s no competition where I am. If I ever move, then I’ll know better and pick a house with fiber already. :/
    - lechatpito1 4y ago
      And no need to be in the countryside to experience this. I am living in Manhattan, Upper West Side, one of the most affluent neighborhood in the richest city of the country. It is Spectrum cable or nothing. There seem to be fiber around, but it did not make it to my street (lined with small buildings so maybe not interesting enough?). Meanwhile in France where we have spent some time this year, you get fiber in the most rural and isolated areas... Go figure.
pdx6 4y ago
With how slowly these proposals roll out, 100/20 won't be enough. As others said, there is a lack of both competition and pricing to worry about too. In a major tech hub like San Francisco, where I live, it's possible to get 1gb/1gb in some areas for under $90, but which those are isn't consistent nor wide spread. Home cell coverage at 100/20 is spotty at best, and there is only one flat rate vendor (T-Mobile Home, no Verizon Home yet). For those outside of the Bay Area exurbs, I can only imagine the horrors of Comcast/Xfinity or only DSL people must deal with. Looking forward, the FCC is assuming that people are just watching Netflix, Tiktok, and making angry Karen posts on Nextdoor. We're not sure where web3 will lead, and how much bandwidth will that take: Distributed file systems/data privacy? Fast crypto transactions? Metaverse/VR/AR glasses/contacts? And what about latency? 1000/500 should be the FCC goal.
- eertami 4y ago
  > In a major tech hub like San Francisco, where I live, it's possible to get 1gb/1gb in some areas for under $90 As a point of comparison, I live in a small city in Europe (80k population) and we have 10gb/10gb for $60/month. My internal network is only capable of 2.5gbit, but I can upload at that speed indefinitely. I could honestly not imagine going back to ADSL speeds.
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    You have access to residential internet with 10Gbps up and down? I didn't even know that was a thing.
    - Youden 4y ago
      I've got 25/25Gbps here in Switzerland. I pay ~$65/month.
      - pooper 4y ago
        Can you please elaborate on your experience with it? Previously, on HN I remember seeing this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31134534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31134534
zdware 4y ago
FCC needs to care about stability through statistics like packet loss. In my hometown area, the sole DSL provider in my area oversold capacity and it demolished the DSLAM. Ironically, they also took advantage from the Connect America fund to do this. I did connectivity tests to various hosts throughout the days, pings were 500ms+ 40% of the time and packet loss was 1%. I can't be the only one that this happened to.
- hedora 4y ago
  Yup. Same with one of the local WISPs around here. On top of it all, I think they used some external grant funding to upgrade the last mile links, and cut upload by 90%. I haven't run a ping test since then, but last time I checked, it was > 1% and 1 second to the internet. In fairness, they're lobbying for a govt bail out to subsidize their upstream fiber provider.
gunapologist99 4y ago
So, in areas where a provider only offers 20 or 50... will they just stop serving that area until it's financially worthwhile to upgrade that equipment?
- tzs 4y ago
  No. The minimums set by the FCC are just the minimums for the service to count as broadband. There's no requirement that a given internet service actually is broadband internet service. The worst that would happen to the provider is that they might not be eligible for some government programs that promote broadband. The law requires the FCC to regularly check on the availability of broadband in the US and to determine if it is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion. If they determine it is not they are required to take action to accelerate deployment by doing such things as removing barriers to infrastructure investments and promoting competition. To do that they need to define broadband.
nfiedel 4y ago
Am surprised to see the pushback asserting this will cause prices to rise. This speed was practical on comcast's cable system back in 2007 (when we got it) and probably earlier. There is a wealth of evidence that higher bandwidth has minimal to marginal costs for typical residential usage. On to the actual proposal, it raises the minimums from: * Down: 25mbps --> 100mbps * Up: 3mbps --> 20mbps As a head of household of 5, I carefully monitored and managed our internet usage during covid, and upgraded from comcast to AT&T fiber (1g symmetric). I can say with high certainty that the previous minimum (25/3) would be severely inadequate for a family of 5. This bump to 100/20, while not amazing, is a good step in the right direction. It would make 5 people working/learning remotely at least _possible_. TLDR: The tech is cheap and decades old. There should be minimal cost to ISPs. The best arguments in this thread, imho, are that we should strive for even higher.
Wowfunhappy 4y ago
What resources does a 100 Mbps connection give access to that a 25 Mbps connection does not? You don't need 100 Mbps to access educational content. Khan Academy looks fine in 1080p. And even if it didn't, Netflix says their 4K streams only need 15 Mbps. You don't need 100 Mbps to be a remote knowledge worker. Video calls need a stable connection with low latency—I wish more people used ethernet—but that connection does not need to be particularly fast. An upload speed of a few megabits is sufficient. You also don't need 100 Mbps to apply for jobs, read the news, chat with friends, or participate in the political process. Any noticeable improvements in page load times above 25 Mbps will be marginal at best. It's fun to hate on how bloated modern websites are, but the situation isn't anywhere near that dire. I'd posit that if a non-technical person with a 20+ Mbps connection thinks their internet is too slow, they probably aren't actually getting 20 Mbps, most likely because of spotty wifi. And if they really are getting 20 Mpbs, they're probably reacting to latency rather than bandwidth.
- vitus 4y ago
  What if you have a family with four kids, all of whom need to engage in remote learning on occasion? 20Mbps is also entirely noticeable for bulk downloads, whether it's a Steam download or a Windows update. By going from 20 -> 100 Mbps, you save nearly an hour on a 10GB download (1h6m -> 13m).
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    In the unlikely scenario where all four children are simultaneously using the internet full-throttle, they're still each getting 5 Mbps down, which Netflix says is sufficient for 1080p video. Upload speeds could start to be a problem though, and IMO that's a much more significant issue. > 20Mbps is also entirely noticeable for bulk downloads It is, but downloading Steam games quickly is not a critical need. It can be done in the background.
    - vitus 4y ago
      5 Mbps down is certainly more than adequate for a single 1080p stream that's been compressed ahead of time. When you have to stitch together multiple real-time streams as in a classroom environment, then the actual numbers can vary significantly. If your kids are forced into remote learning, and you're working from home, then we might be talking more like 3-4 Mbps per person if your network is split 5 or 6 ways. And unless you're on a business internet plan, the only guarantee you have when you buy a 20Mbps plan is that your ISP will throttle you to that rate if you exceed it. To be clear: I think most people would be happy if they could get a guarantee of 50 Mbps download speeds. But the fact of the matter is that during peak hours, if you pay for higher download speeds, you get a higher fraction of the available spectrum. Your big-name cable companies can have oversubscription rates of 100x or more. That doesn't translate to only getting 5Mbps out of your 500Mbps connection at peak, but you will see _some_ contention. If you're paying for 20Mbps under the assumption that you'll only need 18Mbps at peak, you'll be frustrated when you end up only getting 15Mbps and all the video calls stutter / cut out intermittently.
hedora 4y ago
Presumably, they'll be measuring by taking the minimum available speed (up or down) over 5 minute windows, on a quarterly basis, and disqualifying anyone with > 1 second latencies for one of those windows, right? Yeah. Didn't think so. Politicians gotta politic, I guess. Edit: At least I'll have decent speeds at 4:38AM now...
- wmf 4y ago
  The FCC's Measuring Broadband America program did pretty much what you're suggesting but it got defunded during the previous administration.
userbinator 4y ago
Aren't they more like "minimum maximum speeds"? If your local service is fast enough then you'll only manage to saturate your connection to nearby servers that aren't heavily loaded. Those with gigabit Internet can probably relate.
tbrownaw 4y ago
That possible "future" goal of 1G/0.5G sounds like it'd be a decent standard for right now. Even if symmetric would be better.
ww520 4y ago
Is this a competitive barrier for Starlink? Or is this a response to the Starlink competition?
- refulgentis 4y ago
  Error here is assuming the consequent and either/or thinking, it actually has nothing at all to do with Starlink
Overtonwindow 4y ago
There needs to be more competition. Universal pole access should be a thing.
prirun 4y ago
IMO, the FCC should: 1. make payments to local governments in exchange for monopoly access, illegal. 2. strike down laws that prohibit local governments from providing internet service. 3. stop forcing these speed minimums that also come with price minimums not everyone wants.
- amalcon 4y ago
  It's unlikely that the FCC has the power to do either 1 or 2.
- Wohlf 4y ago
  The FCC doesn't have the power to do this, and these are likely unconstitutional.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    > these are likely unconstitutional. If these are considered to be the correct way forward, the constitution needs to be amended then. When it was written Internet didn't really exist, so it would make sense there aren't many provisions covering it.
  - prirun 4y ago
    Isn't it the government's job to promote competition and regulate / prevent monopolies and oligopolies?
namecheapTA 4y ago
I got tired of my previous internet provider. I noticed Xfinity wifi was available at my house. I signed up. They asked me to either rent a router or bring my own and do self install. I have done neither. I use the Xfinity wifi. For over a year now. No complaints. Wiring every house in a dense area seems weird when you can just go wireless.
- NavinF 4y ago
  That just means you have very low standards. Wi-Fi is half duplex and the latency spikes are ridiculous.
  - namecheapTA 4y ago
    I do I suppose. I just want my files to download, send, and my websites to load. I don't play games or operate some kind of server from my house, so for me it works as well as the wired internet at my work.
cagey 4y ago
I'm trying to figure out what the likely outcome of this proposal will if enacted be, mapping to my tenuous but sufficient home internet service. Is my current best-choice provider (TMO 5g Home internet) going to boost my speeds from current 10-100/1-10 Mbps dn/up to a solid floor of 100/20Mbs or lose Federal funding? Or, will TMO receive more Federal funding to bring me up to a solid 100/20Mbs floor? Or, will TMO classify my service as something other than "broadband" and continue to provide unchanged QoS? Or, will TMo drop customers such as myself "on the performance margins" of their service (instead of boosting tower capacity)?
ta988 4y ago
I just hope the FCC will make it 100 symmetric. I can already hear the army of Comcast lobbyists calling their friends in the government. Look closely at who opposes that.
kromem 4y ago
Meaningless vs the most important change the FCC could make for home internet: "Common carrier"
spoonjim 4y ago
Besides watching 4K TV there is almost nothing that you need 100Mbps for. I don’t see why this is necessary.
- p1necone 4y ago
  Most households are not a single person living alone.
happytiger 4y ago
1Gbps/100mbps should be the standard. Prices have risen for two decades but speed not so much. America is falling behind, and broadband speeds (and access issues) are at least a contributing factor. We have certainly paid enough to telecoms, and community telecom after community telecom provide similar speeds. The main reason it hasn’t been done is the milking of the copper line infrastructure — and the government handouts — by just a few large isps.
standardUser 4y ago
I pay $40 for a Verizon FIOS connection. It's marketed as 300Mbps but my speed test just now showed 120Mbps. But it also consistently exceeds 100Mbps on the upstream. It's easily the best home internet connection I've had since the university dorms in the late 90's. They also offer 1Gbps for $70, which is tempting but really unnecessary for my needs. I don't understand why I'm getting such an amazing deal! It's a fixed price, not a special. And this is in Manhattan, where most things are noticeable more expensive than in the rest of the country! Previously, I lived in SF and was forced to use Comcast because they were the only option in my old, rent-controlled building. I paid a lot more, both for the service and for modem rental, but received much slower speeds. I hope the FIOS model is finally making it to more of the country. But 3 years ago I couldn't even get it in downtown SF!
- travbrack 4y ago
  Gigabit is so clutch, it's worth it for the satisfaction of being able to download a 30 gig game in less time than it takes to go to the bathroom.
  - google234123 4y ago
    Do game stores even support providing downloads that fast?
    - Havoc 4y ago
      Valve's steam has had custom edge gear in place with most major ISPs for a decade+. So yes that is indeed hella fast. That said I personally mostly see 700Mbps-ish
p1necone 4y ago
There's a lot of comments on this thread pointing out typical bandwidth usage of popular streaming services, games etc and claiming that there's no need for higher bandwidth connections. There's an important point that I think people are missing, which is that the bandwidth usage of internet services is going to be carefully tuned to balance quality and stability at typical internet speeds. When a large portion of consumers have < 100Mbps down of course all services are going to use < 100Mbps of bandwidth - you don't know what kind of stuff you're missing out on because of these slow internet speeds, because nobody is making it available, because it wouldn't work. The most obvious thing that we already know we're missing out on is video streaming quality. You've possibly already noticed that low contrast dark scenes and scenes with snow/rainfall don't look very good on Netflix/YouTube/insert streaming service here - this is because these are the kind of scenes with the most obvious sacrifice of quality from video compression. (It's also possible you haven't noticed this, because streaming services generally avoid producing content that doesn't play well with their video compression).
- Casteil 4y ago
  >There's an important point that I think people are missing, which is that the bandwidth usage of internet services is going to be carefully tuned to balance quality and stability at typical internet speeds. ...or the fact that there can be and often are more than one person in a single household.
  - saghm 4y ago
    This was super noticeable for a few years whenever I went back home to visit my parents. I would struggle to load basically anything on my laptop most evenings due to the 5 mpbs or so being split between 3+ devices (although the weak signal in most rooms due to the poor placement of the router that they were not interested in moving somewhere more central didn't help either). Eventually when the pandemic hit and my father started working from home, they quickly discovered that he would not be able to get his work done if my mother was streaming something at the same time, so they ended up upgrading to a more expensive plan, and the next time I visited, I was pleased to find that my issues had vanished.
cbanek 4y ago
What I really want is an elimination of data caps. But this can be good too.
humaniania 4y ago
There needs to be much more upload speed and much higher data caps. The current structure is stunting the economy for the profits of some not awesome people.
aosmith 4y ago
I haven't read this whole thing yet but there should also be a limit on latency. All the viasat services have stupid high latency. Starlink is so much better, also cheaper.
natch 4y ago
Sounds like the notice of inquiry would be interesting reading. Anyone know whether it is available to the public on the website?
jrochkind1 4y ago
Here in Baltimore, the only option for any kind of broadband is Comcast XFinity, and it costs $85/month for 50 Mbps service. (And there is no plan available for under $65/month). What does it mean to say the "minimum" is 100, are they just gonna charge me a minimum of $150/month or something? The fact that I see other people in this thread saying they're already getting gigabit(+) service for $40(!)-$80/month, while I pay $85 for 50Mbps from the single monopoly provider that does not offer gigabit/fiber.... makes me think the biggest need for regulation is not about minimum speeds, but about price gouging from monopoly providers. I wonder what Comcast charges for the same 50Mbps service I pay $85/month for (with again no plan avail under $65), in markets where they have a competitor. i would love to pay $40/month for my internet, and don't even need any more than 50 Mbps -- comcast increasing the speed of my $85/month plan (or doing so and raising the price!) doesn't actually help me much. Has anyone done a national broadband price map? They intentionally don't make their geographically disparate prices very transparent of course. It would be interesting to see the variation in what comcast charges for the same speeds, and how it correlates to having competitors in a market vs monopoly.
jl6 4y ago
Higher minimum upload speeds will be more impactful than cranking download speed even higher. 100/100 is way, way better than 500/20. Upload speed is what enriches the two-way internet - servers, content uploads, high quality videoconferencing, cloud backups. Prioritising download speed is keeping us in the broadcast era.
- icedchai 4y ago
  For tech nerds like us, definitely. The average consumer doesn't need more upstream. A long as Netflix and Youtube work, it's fine!
  - fomine3 4y ago
    Some average consumers now upload YouTube videos.
    - icedchai 4y ago
      True, though I'd guess a low single digit percentage. Those are the exception, not the rule. ISPs could upsell them on higher end plans. Though I doubt that will happen. A real problem with broadband is lack of choice, both in the plans themselves and the providers.
alfalfasprout 4y ago
Here in the portland area we get Centurylink and I have to say, having been forced to use comcast in the bay area for years it's a breath of fresh air. It's a large company, sure, but 1gbps symmetric is very reasonable (around $50/mo) and they let you directly connect your hardware via IPOE (using a VLAN tag).
smugma 4y ago
Comcast charges me if I use more than 1TB/mo, so higher bandwidth just means I’m more likely to go over.

369 points by happyopossum 4y ago

What's the point? It's not even possible for me to get what's currently defined as broadband where I live. Changing some definitions isn't going to give me faster internet.

jeroenhd 4y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the term "broadband" is connected to things like subsidies (i.e. giving an ISP $x if they can provide y people with broadband) intended to increase internet connectivity in poor or remote areas. Increasing the definition also means that ISPs can no longer cheap out and pocket the subsidies.
- toast0 4y ago
  I'm sure it's also connected to incentives to bring 'broadband' to 'unserved communities'. Now, CenturyLink can get a new incentive to let my sync rate float up a smidge. Or, maybe they'll decide since it doesn't qualify for broadband that they'll just bow out, it's not like they enjoy being a phone company anyway.

deepsquirrelnet 4y ago

How does this affect smaller competition? Regulatory capture is always what comes to mind when I think about the FCC. Who are the winners and losers?

aimor 4y ago

Is there anything in there about increasing the minimum throttled "unlimited" mobile data speed?

happyopossum 4y ago

100/20 is definitely an improvement, and is probably a reasonable minimum bar to set. I'm sure most of us have much higher speed connections, but I know I rarely take my 1Gb pipe over 10% of that... Heck, 2 TVs streaming 4k during a zoom call would be fine on 100Mb...

stop50 4y ago
plus some content providers limit the bandwith for individual connections
giantg2 4y ago
I don't think it's reasonable if it means my provider's offering start at 100 Mbps vs my current 25 Mbps, at what I'm sure will be at least double the cost to me.
bufferoverflow 4y ago
> 4k during a zoom call would be fine on 100Mb Not sure what bit rate TV is at, but one 4K YouTube stream can take up to 68Mbps, and 8K even more. We're on 400Mbps, and even then I manage to block internet for others when I download a large file at full speed.
- danachow 4y ago
  > We're on 400Mbps, and even then I manage to block internet for others when I download a large file at full speed. That's more of a router/QoS issue. A large download shouldn't negatively affect quality for other uses, especially VoIP. If the place you're downloading from has a pipe bigger than yours and can saturate your bandwidth you're going to need to implement some kind of rate-limiting/queue management.
  - _fjb4 4y ago
    I've seen a lot of people complaining that their 100M+ connections are "slow" for that reason, and they upgrade to 1G and they complain again. It's not like they're doing much on that 1G line either, just say a Steam game download at full speed followed with a stuttering Zoom call. You'll be surprised how far you can push a 10M DSL connection with good QOS (assuming you don't have multiple users streaming video and such).

gnicholas 4y ago

I'd rather have two providers that offers 25Mbps than one that offers 100Mbps. I don't need 100, or even 50. But Comcast has been jacking up their prices, along with increasing the minimum speed available, for years. They respond to government regulations like these. I'm now paying 2x what I used to (from $25 to $50/mo), and getting 2x the speed. But I don't want to be forced to buy 2x the speed (or even faster, as this proposal would require). I would much rather have the govt provide incentives for there to be more than one provider. I live in the heart of SV (Menlo Park), and Comcast is the only option. 5G is not well-served where I live, and the pricing is also not competitive. We need more competition, not more redefinition of "broadband".

metadat 4y ago
You might be eligible for ATT [gigabit] fiber? Could be worth a shot. (Unless you're in far-east Menlo) IME the fiber service is faster more reliable than Comcast, but AT&T support is the absolute worst, super incompetent (across the entire company, not just U-verse internet). It's fine as long as you don't need any support and don't try to deactivate anything, but if your account gets messed up it can literally take a dozen calls and 20+ hours of being on the phone to get seemingly simple issues resolved. </rant> The Comcast ATT duopoly is pretty atrocious. Given the regulatory climate, how can a new player even succesfully enter into the market?
- DrewADesign 4y ago
  > (Unless you're in far-east Menlo) Unless they're in far-east Menlo or like 99.99999% of the rest of the world. While bay area folks are certainly heavily-represented here, the commenters come from all corners of the globe.
  - harikb 4y ago
    They were simply replying to the parent post, which specifically mentioned Menlo park :)
- Stratoscope 4y ago

eternityforest 4y ago

The amount of bandwidth you need depends on the number of people. 50Mb or 25Mb is probably fine for 1 person. As long as it can do 4k, and zoom calls, it's fine for most people. 100Mb might not be enough for six people, who might need to download, zoom, game, and stream all at once.

happyopossum 4y ago
I think you're somewhat overestimating the amount of bandwidth used by those services. TO watch Netflix in 4k, you only need 15Mbps, zoom uses about half of that for a decent connection and will downgrade nicely.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
  > TO watch Netflix in 4k, you only need 15Mbps So on a 25 Mbps connection that was previously considered broadband, two people in a household can't do that at the same time.
- gh02t 4y ago
  I agree with you, a lot of these services aren't as high bandwidth as people imagine but I will note that part of the reason is because that's what people routinely have access to. Netflix or whoever could be pushing higher bitrate content or potentially exploring other more bandwidth intensive ideas if people had access.
adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
what's the obsession with 4k? 1080p abd 1440p are way more common.
- Strom 4y ago
  It's obsession with technological advancement. There was a time when people were resistant to even 720p, saying that 480p is more than enough and they can't even see the difference.

giantg2 4y ago

No. This is insanity. Faster speed will mean that providers will charge more. I am perfectly fine with 25 Mbps. I was fine with 10 Mbps too until they eliminated that level and I was forced to pay more. Edit: why disagree?

simplyinfinity 4y ago
I pay 15$ for 500/300 megabit. It's a monopoly that gouges your prices, not competition or mandated high speeds.
- giantg2 4y ago
  Yeah, and if they don't fix the monopoly (this rule doesn't), then it will only exacerbate the current conditions (monopoly gouging us).
  - zuminator 4y ago
    If you have a monopoly, they can arbitrarily raise their prices without increasing the speed at all. From the situation you described in another post, it sounds as if they were going to raise your bill no matter what, and pushing you to a higher speed tier was just the rationale they gave. At some point it becomes more expensive for them to maintain old equipment than to replace it, and if the replacement equipment has much higher rated speeds, they're not saving anything by continuing the lower speed plan. To the contrary, a lower bill just means a lower profit margin. Consider: Let's pretend that broadband speed worked like a typical commodity so that the producer cost for 10Mbps was roughly ~10x as 1Mbps. And let's say your bill for 10Mbps was $30 (producer cost $20). Would they offer a 1Mbps plan for $3 (producer cost $2)? No, because they would be cannibalizing their own customers. They don't want $1/month profit per customer, they want $10+/month profit customers. And it real life, they have even less incentive to offer low speeds. If gigabit plans are on the table, there's virtually no difference in the maintenance cost for the lower end consumers using 1Mbps, 10Mbps or 100Mbps. It's really only the top few percent of customers who use enough bandwidth to affect QOS. Hence, almost all of these companies offer just a few pricing tiers, the top tier for high bandwidth whales, the middle tier for almost everybody else, and a bottom tier for the super-budget conscious (and also to make the middle tier users feel like they are paying for a premium service.) As the top tier offering gets ratcheted up by technology, so will other tiers. And so will your bill, if you're suffering under a monopoly.

superkuh 4y ago

The problem, in the USA for most people, is Comcast. Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Upload speed has stagnated. I uploaded as fast in 2003 as I do now in 2022. And as others have said, it's not so much about 1 fast provider as many providers and choice. In my comcast monopoly my plan started at $60/mo in 2011 and without any changes on my end and no change in my upload speed that price has increased to it's current $105/mo. In addition to the price increases they've implemented a new system of total data transfer limits ((up/down)+internal overhead) meaning even if I could have a faster connection it'd mean nothing if I used it in the first week and then got hit with multiple $10 overage "fees". But I don't have a choice. It doesn't matter how good, or bad, Comcast is. They're the only game in town.

rascul 4y ago
> Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Until the power company ran fiber earlier this year, the only wired option here was 3Mbps DSL from AT&T. AT&T buried fiber all over the area (including in front of my house) years ago, but it sits there unused.
- xahrepap 4y ago
  Same where I am. Most of the city has competition because it’s most new developments out here and a few fiber companies were able to get in the ground early. My neighborhood is older so we only have Comcast. But Comcast buried fiber here to “future proof” ages ago, they just haven’t lit it up. And they’re the only company who got their hardware in the ground. So I’m stuck on their cable. As it turns out the service here is good, so I shouldn’t complain. But it’s still frustrating that they are just sitting on fiber and not using it. And also that there’s no competition where I am. If I ever move, then I’ll know better and pick a house with fiber already. :/
  - lechatpito1 4y ago
    And no need to be in the countryside to experience this. I am living in Manhattan, Upper West Side, one of the most affluent neighborhood in the richest city of the country. It is Spectrum cable or nothing. There seem to be fiber around, but it did not make it to my street (lined with small buildings so maybe not interesting enough?). Meanwhile in France where we have spent some time this year, you get fiber in the most rural and isolated areas... Go figure.

pdx6 4y ago

With how slowly these proposals roll out, 100/20 won't be enough. As others said, there is a lack of both competition and pricing to worry about too. In a major tech hub like San Francisco, where I live, it's possible to get 1gb/1gb in some areas for under $90, but which those are isn't consistent nor wide spread. Home cell coverage at 100/20 is spotty at best, and there is only one flat rate vendor (T-Mobile Home, no Verizon Home yet). For those outside of the Bay Area exurbs, I can only imagine the horrors of Comcast/Xfinity or only DSL people must deal with. Looking forward, the FCC is assuming that people are just watching Netflix, Tiktok, and making angry Karen posts on Nextdoor. We're not sure where web3 will lead, and how much bandwidth will that take: Distributed file systems/data privacy? Fast crypto transactions? Metaverse/VR/AR glasses/contacts? And what about latency? 1000/500 should be the FCC goal.

eertami 4y ago
> In a major tech hub like San Francisco, where I live, it's possible to get 1gb/1gb in some areas for under $90 As a point of comparison, I live in a small city in Europe (80k population) and we have 10gb/10gb for $60/month. My internal network is only capable of 2.5gbit, but I can upload at that speed indefinitely. I could honestly not imagine going back to ADSL speeds.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  You have access to residential internet with 10Gbps up and down? I didn't even know that was a thing.
  - Youden 4y ago
    I've got 25/25Gbps here in Switzerland. I pay ~$65/month.
    - pooper 4y ago
      Can you please elaborate on your experience with it? Previously, on HN I remember seeing this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31134534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31134534

zdware 4y ago

FCC needs to care about stability through statistics like packet loss. In my hometown area, the sole DSL provider in my area oversold capacity and it demolished the DSLAM. Ironically, they also took advantage from the Connect America fund to do this. I did connectivity tests to various hosts throughout the days, pings were 500ms+ 40% of the time and packet loss was 1%. I can't be the only one that this happened to.

hedora 4y ago
Yup. Same with one of the local WISPs around here. On top of it all, I think they used some external grant funding to upgrade the last mile links, and cut upload by 90%. I haven't run a ping test since then, but last time I checked, it was > 1% and 1 second to the internet. In fairness, they're lobbying for a govt bail out to subsidize their upstream fiber provider.

gunapologist99 4y ago

So, in areas where a provider only offers 20 or 50... will they just stop serving that area until it's financially worthwhile to upgrade that equipment?

tzs 4y ago
No. The minimums set by the FCC are just the minimums for the service to count as broadband. There's no requirement that a given internet service actually is broadband internet service. The worst that would happen to the provider is that they might not be eligible for some government programs that promote broadband. The law requires the FCC to regularly check on the availability of broadband in the US and to determine if it is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion. If they determine it is not they are required to take action to accelerate deployment by doing such things as removing barriers to infrastructure investments and promoting competition. To do that they need to define broadband.

nfiedel 4y ago

Am surprised to see the pushback asserting this will cause prices to rise. This speed was practical on comcast's cable system back in 2007 (when we got it) and probably earlier. There is a wealth of evidence that higher bandwidth has minimal to marginal costs for typical residential usage. On to the actual proposal, it raises the minimums from: * Down: 25mbps --> 100mbps * Up: 3mbps --> 20mbps As a head of household of 5, I carefully monitored and managed our internet usage during covid, and upgraded from comcast to AT&T fiber (1g symmetric). I can say with high certainty that the previous minimum (25/3) would be severely inadequate for a family of 5. This bump to 100/20, while not amazing, is a good step in the right direction. It would make 5 people working/learning remotely at least _possible_. TLDR: The tech is cheap and decades old. There should be minimal cost to ISPs. The best arguments in this thread, imho, are that we should strive for even higher.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago

What resources does a 100 Mbps connection give access to that a 25 Mbps connection does not? You don't need 100 Mbps to access educational content. Khan Academy looks fine in 1080p. And even if it didn't, Netflix says their 4K streams only need 15 Mbps. You don't need 100 Mbps to be a remote knowledge worker. Video calls need a stable connection with low latency—I wish more people used ethernet—but that connection does not need to be particularly fast. An upload speed of a few megabits is sufficient. You also don't need 100 Mbps to apply for jobs, read the news, chat with friends, or participate in the political process. Any noticeable improvements in page load times above 25 Mbps will be marginal at best. It's fun to hate on how bloated modern websites are, but the situation isn't anywhere near that dire. I'd posit that if a non-technical person with a 20+ Mbps connection thinks their internet is too slow, they probably aren't actually getting 20 Mbps, most likely because of spotty wifi. And if they really are getting 20 Mpbs, they're probably reacting to latency rather than bandwidth.

vitus 4y ago
What if you have a family with four kids, all of whom need to engage in remote learning on occasion? 20Mbps is also entirely noticeable for bulk downloads, whether it's a Steam download or a Windows update. By going from 20 -> 100 Mbps, you save nearly an hour on a 10GB download (1h6m -> 13m).
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  In the unlikely scenario where all four children are simultaneously using the internet full-throttle, they're still each getting 5 Mbps down, which Netflix says is sufficient for 1080p video. Upload speeds could start to be a problem though, and IMO that's a much more significant issue. > 20Mbps is also entirely noticeable for bulk downloads It is, but downloading Steam games quickly is not a critical need. It can be done in the background.
  - vitus 4y ago
    5 Mbps down is certainly more than adequate for a single 1080p stream that's been compressed ahead of time. When you have to stitch together multiple real-time streams as in a classroom environment, then the actual numbers can vary significantly. If your kids are forced into remote learning, and you're working from home, then we might be talking more like 3-4 Mbps per person if your network is split 5 or 6 ways. And unless you're on a business internet plan, the only guarantee you have when you buy a 20Mbps plan is that your ISP will throttle you to that rate if you exceed it. To be clear: I think most people would be happy if they could get a guarantee of 50 Mbps download speeds. But the fact of the matter is that during peak hours, if you pay for higher download speeds, you get a higher fraction of the available spectrum. Your big-name cable companies can have oversubscription rates of 100x or more. That doesn't translate to only getting 5Mbps out of your 500Mbps connection at peak, but you will see _some_ contention. If you're paying for 20Mbps under the assumption that you'll only need 18Mbps at peak, you'll be frustrated when you end up only getting 15Mbps and all the video calls stutter / cut out intermittently.

hedora 4y ago

Presumably, they'll be measuring by taking the minimum available speed (up or down) over 5 minute windows, on a quarterly basis, and disqualifying anyone with > 1 second latencies for one of those windows, right? Yeah. Didn't think so. Politicians gotta politic, I guess. Edit: At least I'll have decent speeds at 4:38AM now...

wmf 4y ago
The FCC's Measuring Broadband America program did pretty much what you're suggesting but it got defunded during the previous administration.

userbinator 4y ago

Aren't they more like "minimum maximum speeds"? If your local service is fast enough then you'll only manage to saturate your connection to nearby servers that aren't heavily loaded. Those with gigabit Internet can probably relate.

tbrownaw 4y ago

That possible "future" goal of 1G/0.5G sounds like it'd be a decent standard for right now. Even if symmetric would be better.

ww520 4y ago

Is this a competitive barrier for Starlink? Or is this a response to the Starlink competition?

refulgentis 4y ago
Error here is assuming the consequent and either/or thinking, it actually has nothing at all to do with Starlink

Overtonwindow 4y ago

There needs to be more competition. Universal pole access should be a thing.

prirun 4y ago

IMO, the FCC should: 1. make payments to local governments in exchange for monopoly access, illegal. 2. strike down laws that prohibit local governments from providing internet service. 3. stop forcing these speed minimums that also come with price minimums not everyone wants.

amalcon 4y ago
It's unlikely that the FCC has the power to do either 1 or 2.
Wohlf 4y ago
The FCC doesn't have the power to do this, and these are likely unconstitutional.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > these are likely unconstitutional. If these are considered to be the correct way forward, the constitution needs to be amended then. When it was written Internet didn't really exist, so it would make sense there aren't many provisions covering it.
- prirun 4y ago
  Isn't it the government's job to promote competition and regulate / prevent monopolies and oligopolies?

namecheapTA 4y ago

I got tired of my previous internet provider. I noticed Xfinity wifi was available at my house. I signed up. They asked me to either rent a router or bring my own and do self install. I have done neither. I use the Xfinity wifi. For over a year now. No complaints. Wiring every house in a dense area seems weird when you can just go wireless.

NavinF 4y ago
That just means you have very low standards. Wi-Fi is half duplex and the latency spikes are ridiculous.
- namecheapTA 4y ago
  I do I suppose. I just want my files to download, send, and my websites to load. I don't play games or operate some kind of server from my house, so for me it works as well as the wired internet at my work.

cagey 4y ago

I'm trying to figure out what the likely outcome of this proposal will if enacted be, mapping to my tenuous but sufficient home internet service. Is my current best-choice provider (TMO 5g Home internet) going to boost my speeds from current 10-100/1-10 Mbps dn/up to a solid floor of 100/20Mbs or lose Federal funding? Or, will TMO receive more Federal funding to bring me up to a solid 100/20Mbs floor? Or, will TMO classify my service as something other than "broadband" and continue to provide unchanged QoS? Or, will TMo drop customers such as myself "on the performance margins" of their service (instead of boosting tower capacity)?

ta988 4y ago

I just hope the FCC will make it 100 symmetric. I can already hear the army of Comcast lobbyists calling their friends in the government. Look closely at who opposes that.

kromem 4y ago

Meaningless vs the most important change the FCC could make for home internet: "Common carrier"

spoonjim 4y ago

Besides watching 4K TV there is almost nothing that you need 100Mbps for. I don’t see why this is necessary.

p1necone 4y ago
Most households are not a single person living alone.

happytiger 4y ago

1Gbps/100mbps should be the standard. Prices have risen for two decades but speed not so much. America is falling behind, and broadband speeds (and access issues) are at least a contributing factor. We have certainly paid enough to telecoms, and community telecom after community telecom provide similar speeds. The main reason it hasn’t been done is the milking of the copper line infrastructure — and the government handouts — by just a few large isps.

standardUser 4y ago

I pay $40 for a Verizon FIOS connection. It's marketed as 300Mbps but my speed test just now showed 120Mbps. But it also consistently exceeds 100Mbps on the upstream. It's easily the best home internet connection I've had since the university dorms in the late 90's. They also offer 1Gbps for $70, which is tempting but really unnecessary for my needs. I don't understand why I'm getting such an amazing deal! It's a fixed price, not a special. And this is in Manhattan, where most things are noticeable more expensive than in the rest of the country! Previously, I lived in SF and was forced to use Comcast because they were the only option in my old, rent-controlled building. I paid a lot more, both for the service and for modem rental, but received much slower speeds. I hope the FIOS model is finally making it to more of the country. But 3 years ago I couldn't even get it in downtown SF!

travbrack 4y ago
Gigabit is so clutch, it's worth it for the satisfaction of being able to download a 30 gig game in less time than it takes to go to the bathroom.
- google234123 4y ago
  Do game stores even support providing downloads that fast?
  - Havoc 4y ago
    Valve's steam has had custom edge gear in place with most major ISPs for a decade+. So yes that is indeed hella fast. That said I personally mostly see 700Mbps-ish

p1necone 4y ago

There's a lot of comments on this thread pointing out typical bandwidth usage of popular streaming services, games etc and claiming that there's no need for higher bandwidth connections. There's an important point that I think people are missing, which is that the bandwidth usage of internet services is going to be carefully tuned to balance quality and stability at typical internet speeds. When a large portion of consumers have < 100Mbps down of course all services are going to use < 100Mbps of bandwidth - you don't know what kind of stuff you're missing out on because of these slow internet speeds, because nobody is making it available, because it wouldn't work. The most obvious thing that we already know we're missing out on is video streaming quality. You've possibly already noticed that low contrast dark scenes and scenes with snow/rainfall don't look very good on Netflix/YouTube/insert streaming service here - this is because these are the kind of scenes with the most obvious sacrifice of quality from video compression. (It's also possible you haven't noticed this, because streaming services generally avoid producing content that doesn't play well with their video compression).

Casteil 4y ago
>There's an important point that I think people are missing, which is that the bandwidth usage of internet services is going to be carefully tuned to balance quality and stability at typical internet speeds. ...or the fact that there can be and often are more than one person in a single household.
- saghm 4y ago
  This was super noticeable for a few years whenever I went back home to visit my parents. I would struggle to load basically anything on my laptop most evenings due to the 5 mpbs or so being split between 3+ devices (although the weak signal in most rooms due to the poor placement of the router that they were not interested in moving somewhere more central didn't help either). Eventually when the pandemic hit and my father started working from home, they quickly discovered that he would not be able to get his work done if my mother was streaming something at the same time, so they ended up upgrading to a more expensive plan, and the next time I visited, I was pleased to find that my issues had vanished.

cbanek 4y ago

What I really want is an elimination of data caps. But this can be good too.

humaniania 4y ago

There needs to be much more upload speed and much higher data caps. The current structure is stunting the economy for the profits of some not awesome people.

aosmith 4y ago

I haven't read this whole thing yet but there should also be a limit on latency. All the viasat services have stupid high latency. Starlink is so much better, also cheaper.

natch 4y ago

Sounds like the notice of inquiry would be interesting reading. Anyone know whether it is available to the public on the website?

jrochkind1 4y ago

Here in Baltimore, the only option for any kind of broadband is Comcast XFinity, and it costs $85/month for 50 Mbps service. (And there is no plan available for under $65/month). What does it mean to say the "minimum" is 100, are they just gonna charge me a minimum of $150/month or something? The fact that I see other people in this thread saying they're already getting gigabit(+) service for $40(!)-$80/month, while I pay $85 for 50Mbps from the single monopoly provider that does not offer gigabit/fiber.... makes me think the biggest need for regulation is not about minimum speeds, but about price gouging from monopoly providers. I wonder what Comcast charges for the same 50Mbps service I pay $85/month for (with again no plan avail under $65), in markets where they have a competitor. i would love to pay $40/month for my internet, and don't even need any more than 50 Mbps -- comcast increasing the speed of my $85/month plan (or doing so and raising the price!) doesn't actually help me much. Has anyone done a national broadband price map? They intentionally don't make their geographically disparate prices very transparent of course. It would be interesting to see the variation in what comcast charges for the same speeds, and how it correlates to having competitors in a market vs monopoly.

jl6 4y ago

Higher minimum upload speeds will be more impactful than cranking download speed even higher. 100/100 is way, way better than 500/20. Upload speed is what enriches the two-way internet - servers, content uploads, high quality videoconferencing, cloud backups. Prioritising download speed is keeping us in the broadcast era.

icedchai 4y ago
For tech nerds like us, definitely. The average consumer doesn't need more upstream. A long as Netflix and Youtube work, it's fine!
- fomine3 4y ago
  Some average consumers now upload YouTube videos.
  - icedchai 4y ago
    True, though I'd guess a low single digit percentage. Those are the exception, not the rule. ISPs could upsell them on higher end plans. Though I doubt that will happen. A real problem with broadband is lack of choice, both in the plans themselves and the providers.

alfalfasprout 4y ago

Here in the portland area we get Centurylink and I have to say, having been forced to use comcast in the bay area for years it's a breath of fresh air. It's a large company, sure, but 1gbps symmetric is very reasonable (around $50/mo) and they let you directly connect your hardware via IPOE (using a VLAN tag).

smugma 4y ago

Comcast charges me if I use more than 1TB/mo, so higher bandwidth just means I’m more likely to go over.