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Ajit Pai wants to raise rural broadband speeds from 10Mbps to 25Mbps
The Federal Communications Commission is planning to raise the rural broadband standard from 10Mbps to 25Mbps in a move that would require faster Internet speeds in certain government-subsidized networks.
The FCC's Connect America Fund (CAF) distributes more than $1.5 billion a year to AT&T, CenturyLink, and other carriers to bring broadband to sparsely populated areas. Carriers that use CAF money to build networks must provide speeds of at least 10Mbps for downloads and 1Mbps for uploads. The minimum speed requirement was last raised in December 2014.
Today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said he's proposing raising that standard from 10Mbps/1Mbps to 25Mbps/3Mbps. "[W]'re recognizing that rural Americans need and deserve high-quality services by increasing the target speeds for subsidized deployments from 10/1 Mbps to 25/3 Mbps," Pai wrote in a blog post that describes agenda items for the FCC's December 12 meeting.
[...] The new 25Mbps/3Mbps standard will apply to future projects but won't necessarily apply to broadband projects that are already receiving funding. For ongoing projects, the FCC will use incentives to try to raise speeds. More money will be offered to carriers that agree to upgrade speeds to 25Mbps/3Mbps, a senior FCC official said in a conference call with reporters.
[...] When Democrat Tom Wheeler was FCC chair, Pai supported the commission's 2014 decision to raise the speed benchmark from 4Mbps/1Mbps to 10Mbps/1Mbps but said that the FCC should have also provided carriers with more years of funding to account for the upgrade. Pai opposed Wheeler's 2015 decision to raise a nationwide broadband standard to 25Mbps/3Mbps. Pai said at the time that 25/3Mbps was too high and criticized the Wheeler-led majority for using different standards, namely the 25Mbps/3Mbps standard for judging nationwide broadband deployment progress and the lower standard in rural projects subsidized by the government. As chair, Pai in 2017 floated a proposal that would lower broadband standards, but he changed course after a backlash.
In other words, more money will be given to established ISPs in order to improve rural service, but the improvements probably won't be verified.
(Score: 5, Informative) by XivLacuna on Saturday November 24 2018, @07:11PM (7 children)
Here are some uses for higher speed broadband:
Multiple people using the same connection while consuming 4K video.
Faster video game downloads/patches from Valve's Steam, Blizzard's Battle.net, Electronic Art's Origin launcher, etc.
Ability for you to actually enjoy your connection while a sibling or significant other uploads pictures and videos from their latest outdoor outing to their various social media accounts.
Faster cloud backups of your personal files.
A driving force for people and companies to come up with more uses for high speed internet. You have to build a road or bridge before people can use it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by suburbanitemediocrity on Saturday November 24 2018, @07:24PM (5 children)
I live alone, don't play video games and don't use cloud backup. This is most people I know.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24 2018, @08:04PM (4 children)
sucks to be you :o)
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Saturday November 24 2018, @09:49PM (3 children)
Which part?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24 2018, @10:03PM (2 children)
The part where you live alone and suck your own dick for company.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24 2018, @10:40PM (1 child)
Better than beating off in your mom's basement. Do you even help with the cable bill?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24 2018, @11:22PM
He tries to, but his mom doesn't want to take the money from his unwashed hand.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday November 24 2018, @10:00PM
To summarize,
> some uses for higher speed broadband
Blah blah blah video.
Faster video blah blah blah.
Blah blah blah videos blah blah blah.
Faster cloud backups of your personal files, especially your videos.
And mysterious future uses.
These days, what percentage of Internet traffic is video? 80%?
Something else to think about. Speed is critical for live video. If it's not live, then fat pipes is what matters.