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"Most common use cases" by volume of traffic maybe, but Internet is increasingly necessary to pay bills, correspond with customer service for practically any co

by imgabe 13y ago

"Most common use cases" by volume of traffic maybe, but Internet is increasingly necessary to pay bills, correspond with customer service for practically any company, communicate with your child's teacher at school, renew your driver's license, and practically any other mundane task. It's not that there aren't offline alternatives for these, but they require maintaining an expensive infrastructure of buildings and people. It's going to be cheaper for everyone in the long run if we can move everybody to doing things over the Internet.

deleted 13y ago
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magila 13y ago
None of those require broadband (2 Mb or greater according to the FCC, IIRC) though. We're talking about fiber connections in the hundred to thousand megabit range here. Nobody is talking about cutting poorer neighborhoods off from the internet completely.
- mschuster91 13y ago
  It's either 56k or crappy DSL (2M) for these 'hoods, which equals a "cut off" these days in which everyone and their mother has a landing page with 2MB+ footprint.
  - smsm42 13y ago
    It would be a good idea for the government at least to set the standard for their essential websites to not have 2MB+ footprint. As for the commercial ones, that would be for them to decide if they want larger audience or not.
- seanc722 13y ago
  Seems pretty short sighted. There is so much being created that is connected to the internet. You say you don't need high bandwidth for these things and I would say that is because they are made with the fact that there are a lot of customers who don't have the higher bandwidth. Give everyone more bandwidth and just think of what we could create!
- pdonis 13y ago
  > None of those require broadband (2 Mb or greater according to the FCC, IIRC) though. Really? Have you tried your bank's website over dialup? Or a typical bill pay site? (DSL typically meets the 2Mb or greater threshold, so it qualifies as broadband by your definition.)
  - EvanAnderson 13y ago
    I had 768/128Kbps DSL until last month (when my wife got fed up with poor streaming video quality and called the telco about upgrading). For using my bank, credit card company, and "social networking" sites it was fine. That's not dial up speed, I realize, but it's not 2Mbps, either. Since the upgrade to 7/1Mbps service I have observed that sites I thought were slow on the old service are still slow. My wife says YouTube and Hulu are better. I am pleased that my VPN to home seems better (which I attribute to the increased upload bandwidth).
smsm42 13y ago
You don't need Google fiber to send email or browse basic text site. Much better idea would be to force government sites that provide bill payments and other essential services (which 100% of them btw can be still paid by old fashioned phone call as far as I know) to have low bandwidth requirements and low compatibility reqs (i.e. no flash, no Java applets, no excessive graphics, etc.). This would also ensure better accessibility, but also would mean you never need 100M channel to just pay your bill.

by imgabe 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

magila 13y ago

None of those require broadband (2 Mb or greater according to the FCC, IIRC) though. We're talking about fiber connections in the hundred to thousand megabit range here. Nobody is talking about cutting poorer neighborhoods off from the internet completely.

mschuster91 13y ago
It's either 56k or crappy DSL (2M) for these 'hoods, which equals a "cut off" these days in which everyone and their mother has a landing page with 2MB+ footprint.
- smsm42 13y ago
  It would be a good idea for the government at least to set the standard for their essential websites to not have 2MB+ footprint. As for the commercial ones, that would be for them to decide if they want larger audience or not.
seanc722 13y ago
Seems pretty short sighted. There is so much being created that is connected to the internet. You say you don't need high bandwidth for these things and I would say that is because they are made with the fact that there are a lot of customers who don't have the higher bandwidth. Give everyone more bandwidth and just think of what we could create!
pdonis 13y ago
> None of those require broadband (2 Mb or greater according to the FCC, IIRC) though. Really? Have you tried your bank's website over dialup? Or a typical bill pay site? (DSL typically meets the 2Mb or greater threshold, so it qualifies as broadband by your definition.)
- EvanAnderson 13y ago
  I had 768/128Kbps DSL until last month (when my wife got fed up with poor streaming video quality and called the telco about upgrading). For using my bank, credit card company, and "social networking" sites it was fine. That's not dial up speed, I realize, but it's not 2Mbps, either. Since the upgrade to 7/1Mbps service I have observed that sites I thought were slow on the old service are still slow. My wife says YouTube and Hulu are better. I am pleased that my VPN to home seems better (which I attribute to the increased upload bandwidth).

smsm42 13y ago

You don't need Google fiber to send email or browse basic text site. Much better idea would be to force government sites that provide bill payments and other essential services (which 100% of them btw can be still paid by old fashioned phone call as far as I know) to have low bandwidth requirements and low compatibility reqs (i.e. no flash, no Java applets, no excessive graphics, etc.). This would also ensure better accessibility, but also would mean you never need 100M channel to just pay your bill.