Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The current minimum measure for broadband is behind the times and, even worse, it's harmful, warns the chairwoman of the US telecoms sector regulator, the Federal Communications Commission.
Jessica Rosenworcel, Joe Biden's appointment for chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), wants to raise the US's national standard for minimum broadband speeds and to create a more ambitious long-term speed goal.
The current minimums of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload (25/3) speeds were established in 2015 under then-FCC chairman Tom Wheeler. Prior to this, the minimum was 4/1 Mbps. The minimum was not raised under the Trump Administration's FCC chairman Ajit Pai.
Rosenworcel wants to bump up the national minimum to 100/20 Mbps and has called the current minimum "harmful" for low-income and rural communities.
[...] Rosenworcel also wants the FCC to set a separate national of 1 Gbps/500 Mbps for the future. She's proposing the FCC consider affordability, adoption, availability, and equitable access as part of its determination as to whether broadband is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion.
[...] But there are questions over whether the FCC can currently implement the new minimum speed as debate kicks off again about net neutrality, as the Washington Post reports. Democrats generally support net neutrality while Republicans generally oppose it.
Since Biden's administration begun, the five-seat FCC board has been deadlocked with two Democrats and two Republicans due to delays in nominating the fifth, which progressives hope is Biden's pick, Gigi Sohn, co-founder of telecom advocacy group Public Knowledge.
Do other countries mandate minimum speeds, and if so, how do they compare?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @01:29AM (6 children)
I've been working from home as a software developer since before COVID. I have a connection rated for 50mb/s (and less in reality), and it's plenty fast enough for everything I have to do (remote access into servers, video conference calls, web browsing for information, etc.). My brother has been WFH for a decade and until the last year or two he has a 10mb/s DSL line, and it was good enough.
I understand that people like to stream 4K video, and play games games, but that's hardly necessary. Everything you might need the Internet for will work just fine on a 25mb/s connection. Just because you want something doesn't make it a right, and my tax money shouldn't be subsidizing your video and gaming addiction.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday July 27 2022, @02:30AM (1 child)
My experience: 50mps resulted in some occasionally glitching RDP (hey, stop being irrelevant! Employer's machines, I don't get to choose the OSes). Upgrading to 200mbs solved it.
Note: on my WFH setup, of course everything is VPN-ed by the employer's IT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Wednesday July 27 2022, @04:20AM
I've had RDP issues with 75 mbps down / 30 mbps up when doing some of the double-hop shared sessions needed for some of my work. Granted, if it's just me it's fine, but there are times I need to escort someone across system boundaries.
We cannot let a single-user scenario define what a truly collaborative work from home workforce needs. It needs to support a minimum of two full-time WFH connections and another for multimedia streaming for the kids, simultaneously.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @02:40AM
640k is all anyone would ever need.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @04:09AM (2 children)
I think the killer here isn't so much the down (unless you have multiple people competing) but the up. 3 Mbps is not a lot anymore, and that is before you add in the "up to" allowing companies to sell you even less than that. A single Zoom/Jitsi/Teams can easily take up all of that allocated bandwidth plus a bit extra. Add the activity of multiple users using the connection simultaneously with that call and you are out of luck.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @09:09AM (1 child)
None of that justifies passing a law (and undoubtedly, raising my taxes to pay for it).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2022, @12:54AM
And how exactly does the FCC changing the definition of the term "broadband internet" equal Congress and the President passing a new law and raising your taxes to pay for it?
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Wednesday July 27 2022, @01:48AM
With everything on the internet, these guys find the speeds harmful? Where were they when I was itching for a 1200 baud modem.
Politician - "Every young girl needs to be on Instagram. Every young boy needs to be on Tik Tok!"
'Merica!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Wednesday July 27 2022, @02:36AM (2 children)
Run an adblocker and 3rd-party js blocker and the internet is much faster on any connection.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @04:18AM (1 child)
If only an adblocker worked on those pointless Zoom meetings.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Opportunist on Wednesday July 27 2022, @08:17AM
Turning off video sure helps a lot.
Protip: Turn off audio as well to save some more bandwidth.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday July 27 2022, @08:14AM
We rely on capitalism over here instead of government-mandated rules. We have a bunch of ISPs that compete and try to out-do each other in speed, there's no need for any pesky government interference.
I really think it's time the US tries to dare a little bit of capitalism in its economy. It may really do it some good.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Wednesday July 27 2022, @09:47AM
> Do other countries mandate minimum speeds, and if so, how do they compare?
Yes, there are national and EU definitions of what is "Broadband", it's just that they keep slowly changing over time as far as I can recall. They are very similar to the once mentioned in the article but they are also somewhat fluid due to the previous changes. But the minimum of what is it is currently fairly low and has not really been kept up to date with what possibly the customer is expecting. So companies can still claim to offer broadband but so slow and useless now that nobody would want it. So the low end of the definition would be or is horribly slow to most of us. There is the whole urban/country differences to since companies can't be arsed to pull fiber out into the boonies, or are very slow to do it. But they all provide their current state of the art connections in the big cities. Then it's the whole upstream/downstream bollocks; apparently we only need to download things -- uploading can still be just but a fraction of that value and it is still considered to be broadband.
> The chair of the FCC wants to raise the US minimum broadband speeds and sets ambitious long-term targets
So it's unknown when and if this would happen. The carriers wouldn't instantly upgrade all their infrastructure either. If they can't call it broadband then they'll just call what they have something else and people will like it. How long term?
(Score: 1) by Brymouse on Wednesday July 27 2022, @01:55PM (1 child)
There's nothing in here mandating IPv6 support either. Users have no options 99% of the time. Rural users are even worse off in this regard, but it can effect urban users too.
I had 20/2 cable for 14 years at my house in the most densely populated county in Florida. This was the only service available until Frontier built out PON. At the end I was paying 180/month for 20/2 cable service. Frontier was 99/month for 700/700, but still in 2022, neither supplied IPv6.
My friend in rural GA has 768/128k DSL. There is no other option and will never be another option for them. On the other side of the coin you have people in RTP who have a house on the wrong side of the street and cannot get any service without paying 150k to the cable company. There is no requirement to make data service available in the same manner as POTS/tariffed services.
Nothing is going to change.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday July 27 2022, @04:06PM
StarLink may be a viable option for your friend on DSL. The satellite internet that StarLink brings to the table is insanely faster, with much lower pings than traditional satellite internet. Since, StarLink satellites are 335 miles to 354 miles up. Whereas traditional satellites are much, much higher in orbit. For example: HughesNet (A popular enough satellite internet company that you might have heard of) according to their website: https://www.hughesnet.com/about/how-it-works [hughesnet.com] "A request for a Web page is sent from your computer to a satellite about 22,000 miles out in space." With traditional satellite internet you get pings that are unmanageable for Live Voice/Video/Anything. Whereas anything that can buffer, Netflix, etc. should work fine as long as you have enough bandwidth. Everything will still feel horrifically clunky, due to the high latency (probably around 300-400ms, if you're lucky).
StarLink is actually usable by modern standards as opposed to traditional satellite internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink [wikipedia.org]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @07:28PM (4 children)
"She's proposing the FCC consider affordability, adoption, availability, and equitable access as part of its determination as to whether broadband is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion. "
The key word here being "equitable". This is Neo-Bolshevik Jew-Speak for "stealing tax dollars from Whitey and giving it to non-white slave offspring from slaves The Jew brought over and invaders that The Jew brings into every White nation by the millions now".
yep, checks out: Jessica Rosenworcel/Jessica Roseweasel
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2022, @08:37AM (3 children)
Now that even ACs have to be logged in, could janrinok please identify the shit-stain nazi who posted this? Just a SN username is good enough.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday July 28 2022, @10:32AM
Same name as you.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2022, @07:02PM (1 child)
Oh Vey! The Goy know! Shut it Down!
"Nazi" is a jew-concocted and promoted anti-White racial slur. It means "bumpkin", "hillbilly" or similar. IOW, not a real thing otherwise. Just typical anti-White Jew propaganda that Whitey is so brainwashed with from birth he doesn't even know he's speaking the enemy's language. Just regurgitates it like a good little slave. Remember kids, racial slurs are ok as long as they are directed against Whitey.
Everyone will notice some Shabbos Goy has modded my post "troll" while this brainwashed race traitor (jew?) gets an "insightful" from some retarded bitch and seeks to dox and what? idk. good luck, motherfucker. You'll lose any conflict in spectacular fashion.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2022, @07:24PM
the spam was stepped up by jew agents (some even mimicking my posts with purposely inaccurate information) to convince the soylentnews site admins that Anon posts had to be stopped. The Jew cannot have Whitey find out about everything they have been up to before they are finished destroying the white race through their subversion. This is why all the jews that control big tech work together to censor anyone trying to get the truth out.
https://odysee.com/@wonderingwhatif:b/Adolf_Hitler_The_Greatest_Story_Never_Told_Full_mZpeJkSNjcA3:3 [odysee.com]
https://odysee.com/@ipnewsandreviews:a/-White-Genocide-in-their-own-words:0 [odysee.com]