
Americans don’t need fast home Internet service, FCC suggests - JacksonGariety
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/08/maybe-americans-dont-need-fast-home-internet-service-fcc-suggests/?comments=1
======
matt_wulfeck
I was recently fortunate enough to upgrade to 1Gb symmetrical fiber. I can say
that it is absolutely fantastic. You really can do things you never did
before:

1\. I can host time-machine backups for my entire family on my home server,
allow them to have off-site backups.

2\. I can provide openVPN service for my entire family when they're outside of
the home. I can also browse full-time on my own openVPN client at full-speed.

3\. I can seed legitimate torrents for far, far longer than I normally would.
For example, new Ubuntu releases.

4\. I "donate" some of my bandwidth to other people and projects, allowing
them to host files from my home.

5\. I can test and host my own websites/services from my house. If it gets a
little traction it won't destroy my entire internet.

These are all things that simply were not possible when I was with Comcast,
with only 10 Mb/s upload and bandwidth caps. If we completely deregulate
internet I'm afraid they will be impossible for most everyone.

~~~
jaggederest
I think the largest difference for me is in QoS, not in bandwidth. I generally
use 802.11ac so I'm capped at 450mbps of the ~1000 available.

The service is always on, it's always stable, there's no weird routing or
congestion latency at peak hours, it's just... functional.

That's what's miraculous about it to me - basically never needing to reset the
router or reconfigure things. Internet as reliable as electricity. I literally
don't even think about it.

Also the total cost difference is $45 a month for a far more satisfying
experience.

~~~
4ad
> I generally use 802.11ac so I'm capped at 450mbps of the ~1000 available.

How come? I generally get between 800-1200Mbps on 802.11ac, real, measured
speed with iPerf3.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
What wifi router do you use? Also, do you use custom firmware?

~~~
4ad
I use Mikrotik access points:
[https://routerboard.com](https://routerboard.com)

I use several models, check out the dual concurrent triple chain ones like:
[https://mikrotik.com/product/RB962UiGS-5HacT2HnT](https://mikrotik.com/product/RB962UiGS-5HacT2HnT)

I wrote a little bit about my set-up here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14743866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14743866)

> Also, do you use custom firmware?

No, just standard Mikrotik firmware.

~~~
jaggederest
Thanks for the reference, I picked one up to play with :) I used to hack on a
grotty old cisco router for my home network but it's been ~15 years since that
was relevant.

------
noonespecial
We didn't _need_ anything faster than dial-up for the web of 1999.

It's all the things yet unimagined that ubiquitous high speed internet would
enable that's the real tragedy here.

The complete failure of imagination of today's "leaders" is very
disheartening.

~~~
apozem
This is an excellent point. The FCC's shameful cowing to ISPs has a huge
opportunity cost to consumers.

Greater connectivity creates new business opportunities. Uber would be
impossible without smartphones and reliable data. Netflix would be a DVD
company without high-speed home internet.

When the FCC tells us we "don't need" better internet, it forecloses whole new
categories of businesses.

~~~
rayiner
Re: Uber, the US has more wireless broadband subscriptions per capita,
according to the OECD, than anyone but Japan and Finland (basically tied with
Sweden). Re: Netflix, we just broke into the top 10 on Akamai's ranking of
average connection speed. On both metrics, we blow away the other big Western
democracies (the U.K., France, and Germany).

~~~
_asummers
I question the utility of average here. If I have a single gigabit user, I can
dwarf a whole lot of 2-3 megabit connections. Good that we're ahead, but
medians would be helpful here to give a better picture. Hopefully Akamai dealt
with this somehow in their methodology.

~~~
mjevans
I agree with you that a /median/ average is more illustrative of the progress
than a /mode/ average.

However even better would be an actual /map/ showing you by area of ISP
service, the fastest speeds (down and up) that an ISP is willing to attempt*
(believe in a normal case they have a reasonable chance of success) to
provide.

Then from that map, weighted by population density, reaching qualitative
conclusions; such as mode average based on population, or the cutoffs at 20
and 80% of the population.

------
drawkbox
The internet innovation spirit in the US is high but the companies in charge,
and oversight, are on the milk it train.

Cable and broadband companies were massively innovating in the 90s and early
2000s, now they are focusing on their 'innovation' on pricing and milking it
by: slowing things down, data capping it, lobbying for more monopoly control,
trying to get access to your private info and constant pricing games. All of
these actions are due to lack of product innovation and to make up for lost
revenues of not just increasing capacity and speeds thus offering a better
product people will pay more for.

All we can hope for is another disruptive network innovation that puts them in
the rear-view or adds some competition like Google Fiber did or others. Google
Fiber had an amazing impact to pricing and speeds in any market they entered.
For the most part broadband has been lagging on real innovation and expansion,
in favor of MBA metric pricing games and value extraction for some time.

------
chank
Great so we can let ISPs off the hook for all the money we've already given
them for faster service they haven't provided. This is how our government
works folks.

~~~
sxates
It's mostly how our Republican governments work.

~~~
ganoushoreilly
Both sides are guilty of this, anyone who believe one party is less in it for
fame, power, and money, than the other is just as naive as those that voted in
our current president.

~~~
s73ver
No. This both-sidesism is laughably wrong. There are extremely clear
distinctions between the two parties. Anyone claiming they are the same is
either intellectually lazy or corrupt.

~~~
charlieflowers
Well, ok, fair point. You're forcing me to better articulate myself (I'm not
the GP, but still...).

It's not that they're "the same," but they've come to reach a homeostasis that
protects each side while not truly fixing hard problems. They may not have
sought that out intentionally, but now that they're in it, they're
intentionally, happily, staying in it.

The end result is, we're watching a play, where each side has some powerful
dramatic lines full of tense conflict, but it's all fake and they're really
cooperating to keep everything pretty much the same.

~~~
CamperBob2
_The end result is, we 're watching a play, where each side has some powerful
dramatic lines full of tense conflict, but it's all fake and they're really
cooperating to keep everything pretty much the same._

I used to believe that, but I no longer do. The Trump administration, in
particular the leaks associated with it, has given us a perspective that we've
never had before as private citizens.

There really is a good side and a bad side here, and they are not secretly in
bed with each other. No one would make themselves look this incompetent if
they were reading from a prewritten script.

~~~
vacri
I'm surprised that people don't note again and again that the fearmongering
and bitching about things like the ACA that the Republicans have done for this
entire decade has led them into power... and yet they've got _nothing_ to
offer. They've been complaining about the ACA for 7 years now, _and have had
that long to develop a workable alternative_ , and they have nothing serious.
You know, something that a white-haired conservative who claims to be good at
management should actually have. Why are the Republicans not having their feet
held to the same fire that they demanded when they were in opposition? Media
pundits are too busy laughing at Trump to really bother.

We had the same thing happen here in Australia a few years previous; the
opposition party just said "No!" to _everything_ that the incumbent government
was trying. They got into power, and then realised that that trick only works
when you're in opposition... and when that's the only muscle you've exercised,
you're now lost at sea with no idea what to do. They had nothing but poorly-
planned destruction on the cards; nothing constructive has come from their
tenure.

------
geff82
One more little sign America is more and more retiring its leadership in the
world, opening doors for other nations to be more developed?

In a time where many European countries aim at providing 100Mbit as a minimum
in the next years and thus also open rural areas for economic development,
decision/opinions as the one described in the article seem ludicrous. Of
course, providing net infrastructure in the US with its huge size is a
challenge. Yet, in a country like Sweden with similar population density,
100Mbit is already kind of the basic minimum even in remote areas.

Here in my town in Germany we had super slow internet until 3 years ago. Now I
can choose up to 400Mbit from different providers (100Mbit DSL or up to
400Mbit cable). Connectivity skyrocketed and it does in many other European
areas. Now the US decides to lower standards? Is it the same kind of thinking
as "we don't need high speed trains, we will have Hyperloop in 50 years", just
adapted to "everything will be mobile one day"?

~~~
rayiner
Looking at population density alone is misleading; what you really want is
population-weighted population density ( _i.e._ how dense are the places where
people live). Sweden has large sparsely-populated areas, but almost the whole
population is clustered in a handful of major cities. The Stockholm metro area
has a quarter of the entire country's population. If the U.S. population were
distributed the same way, the D.C. metro area would have 80 million people
over an area including Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.
(Instead, it has only 6 million people and the vast majority of those states
are rural).

In any event, the U.S.'s proportion of higher-speed connections compares
pretty well to Sweden. According to Akamai, in Q4 2016 the U.S. at 42% of
connections above 15 mbps. That's less than Sweden (49%) but comparable to
Finland (44%). It's way higher than Germany (30%).

~~~
_delirium
Even many dense urban areas in the U.S. have quite low broadband penetration,
so it can't be chalked up entirely to low-density areas like small towns and
rural areas. According to Fivethirtyeight [1], only 28% of adults within the
D.C. city limits have home internet faster than dialup. And _Manhattan_ ,
pretty much the most urbanized locale in the country, is only a bit higher, at
36%. Many low-density exurban areas are actually higher than that, so
something other than density is responsible.

[1] [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lots-of-people-in-
citie...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lots-of-people-in-cities-still-
cant-afford-broadband/)

~~~
rayiner
That's comparing apples and oranges. American metro areas are shaped very
differently than European ones. Only 10% of people in the D.C. metro area live
within city limits, versus 40% of people in Stockholm's metro area. That inner
city population skews much poorer than the metro area as a whole, with a
quarter of households making under $25,000 annually. That notwithstanding the
city itself is very well wired. If you live in Anacostia (one of the poorest
neighborhoods) you can choose from two gigabit fiber providers and two gigabit
cable providers.

And as far as I can tell the difference in uptake is not really because
broadband is cheaper in Stockholm Internet. Telia charges 990 SEK ($122) for
gigabit. Comcast charges $150 for 2 gig, while Verizon charges $70-100 for 1
gig. At the low end, Telia charges $50 for 100/100, versus $40 for Verizon's
50/50 plan.

DC also is a good example of what I mean about population-weighted density.
The D.C. metro area has about the same density as the Stockholm metro area,
and the municipalities have about the same density too. But in Stockholm 40%
of people live in the denser core city versus only 10% of people in D.C. So
even though the metro areas have the same density, the distribution makes DC
harder to wire (all else being equal).

~~~
_delirium
> That inner city population skews much poorer than the metro area as a whole,
> with a quarter of households making under $25,000 annually. That
> notwithstanding the city itself is very well wired. If you live in Anacostia
> (one of the poorest neighborhoods) you can choose from two gigabit fiber
> providers and two gigabit cable providers.

Ah so the internet is good in theory, it's only in practice that internet
connectivity is poor.

~~~
rayiner
No in practice the Internet is great (see the Akamai stats above). And at
least for fiber the price is comparable (see my edit above). The US just has
more income inequality, and segregated poor people into inner cities. While
lamentable, that is an orthogonal issue that has nothing to do with broadband
policy.

------
hiisukun
Unfortunately, a similar position is held by the NBN here in Australia
(National broadband network), and indeed appears to be held by some members of
the government.

This has been a long standing position even prior to the NBN existing,
resulting in almost two decades of delays and debates in replacing half
century old copper phone lines that provide much of the people's internet.

I wouldn't wish such lengthy technological delays on another country, so I
hope this gets sorted out rather quicker than our issues have been.

~~~
ianhowson
The irony is that in Australia, mobile broadband is superior to wired in most
areas.

Dear USA: please do not use this as evidence for mobile broadband's inherent
superiority.

I recently moved to Germany and am on what is considered a slow DSL link:
32Mbps down, 8Mbps up. It's wonderful and life changing compared with the
4/1Mbps Telstra DSL I used to have.

~~~
cJ0th
The situation in Germany isn't perfect though. If you live in a more rural
area it is not unlikely that there is no DSL available at all.

------
iokevins
California Assembly Bill 1665 attempted to something similar:

"Both Frontier and AT&T maintain antiquated DSL systems that serve millions of
Californians who live in communities that don’t have sufficient revenue
potential. Low income and low density communities in other words."

[http://www.tellusventure.com/blog/california-bill-
magically-...](http://www.tellusventure.com/blog/california-bill-magically-
improves-broadband-service-to-280000-homes/)

AB 1665 seems on hold until legislators return on August 21:

[http://www.tellusventure.com/blog/hostile-takeover-of-
califo...](http://www.tellusventure.com/blog/hostile-takeover-of-california-
broadband-subsidies-on-ice-for-now/)

------
rndmize
> But during the Obama administration, the FCC determined repeatedly that
> broadband isn't reaching Americans fast enough, pointing in particular to
> lagging deployment in rural areas.

No skin off my back. I already have internet service significantly better than
the FCC broadband definition, and my core concern in this space is net
neutrality. Rural areas are the ones that will be negatively affected by this
kind of policy change in the coming years. You get what you vote for in this
case.

~~~
forapurpose
> No skin off my back

How many customers have trouble accessing your website or service? How many
potential customers, vendors, partners, employees etc have limited education
and income because they lack basic resources?

~~~
rndmize
Rural areas went strongly for Trump and the Republicans, and now Republican
appointees are making policy decisions that will have negative effects on
those areas. The conclusion I draw from this is that those voters either don't
care about their internet speeds, or they do but value other things more and
vote with those in mind (or maybe they think the market will take care of it).
Regardless, they're getting what they voted for, and it doesn't affect me.

Side note - the US population is heavily urban/suburban, so even if I was
running some kind of internet-based business, the loss from ignoring/losing
rural areas is something like ~25% of the population; imo it doesn't really
matter that much.

~~~
thatcat
An alternative might be that they are slowing independent media penetration in
rural areas. If internet speeds are ~ 1-2 mbps then streaming HD isn't smooth,
but all the digital over the air broadcast FOX / NBC / ABC are available in HD
for free.

------
mnm1
Fuck Pai. More and more Americans are working from home. That alone is reason
enough that we need fast broadband. I know he doesn't care about people and
their needs but scum like him are at least usually persuaded by business
arguments so I'm making one here. He's not a representative of anyone. He was
not elected. It's not his job to decide what Americans want. The only way to
fix this FCC travesty is to get rid of the pro business, anti citizen scum who
appointed him.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _I know he doesn 't care about people and their needs but scum like him are
> at least usually persuaded by business arguments_

I think Pai is the kind of scum that's only persuaded by what's filling up his
own intestines.

He's not on some kind of Peter Thiel-level of cerebral, cold-hearted business
mastery. He's just a big fat leech that somehow managed to climb the ladder
far too high for anyone's good.

------
iokevins
Fix link so it points to article top, instead of comments (?)

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/08/maybe...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/08/maybe-americans-dont-need-fast-home-internet-service-fcc-
suggests/)

~~~
LyalinDotCom
Yeah you have to click full story button to see article

------
norea-armozel
I wonder how long until Pai adds extra regulatory requirements for utility
cooperatives that will spring up to kick the telcos out of the rural areas?
I'm not joking about that notion since the telcos really _hate_ cooperatives
that spring up and replace or compete with them.

------
bdickason
As someone who lives in a very expensive area, I would happily live in a more
rural or less populated area if there was decent infrastructure to do so. I
don't think that internet alone is the solution, but faster internet across
the country is one of the hurdles for remote work and (theoretically) better
distribution of the population.

I know that a lot of other pieces have to fall into place to make this happen,
but the entire country wired with strong backbones and last mile service will
definitely help.

------
drallison
The FCC is wrong. The Internet is intertwingled with everything we do these
days. I live in non-urban Montana at the end of a DSL line suffering
"bandwidth exhaust", a term my ISP (CenturyLink) coined to describe what
happens when they sell "high speed" Internet to many customers but do not
adequately provision their DSL network to support them. This shortfall is
being fixed, but progress is glacial. How to bring everyone on-board the
Internet is still a work in progress.

------
malchow
Clickbait headline.

FCC expresses possibility that in the near-future wireless connectivity may be
more important to consumer internet users.

Admitting "we don't know which way this industry is going to go" is probably a
healthy thing for government to do.

~~~
khedoros1
The headline's accurate, IMO. The FCC is seeking comment on whether slower
mobile connections should be considered sufficient when measuring overall
broadband internet access deployment.

25Mbps/3Mbps wired is already an unambitious requirement, and Pai dissents
from it having been raised from a previous 4/1 requirement, and suggests that
a 10/1 mobile connection would be enough.

The whole proposal sounds like they just want to lower the bar to what's
available now and toss up the "Mission Accomplished" banner.

~~~
e9
I don't think you read actual proposal by FCC. They seem to suggest set 25/3
as a minimum and don't say anything about maximum. Their goal is a bit
different from what you are thinking, their goal is to make sure every single
person in USA has access to reasonable speed. You want 1gbit internet, but if
that comes at a cost of some people in rural America to not have internet then
it doesn't fit their goal. Therefore statement like "if we only had one choice
of 25/3, we'd take it" can be easily taken out of context. They are clearly
suggesting minimum and not maximum.

~~~
khedoros1
You're right, I didn't read the FCC proposal; I'm basing my information on the
article itself. If the facts in the article are that far off of what the
proposal itself says, then I'm confused why the whole post hasn't been flagged
to oblivion.

~~~
e9
I honestly have same question for a lot of articles these days. Especially
with any sort of "hard to read" documents like research papers and stuff like
long proposals/memos. I noticed trend where journalists just want to get
clicks at any cost and willing to take things out of context to do so. Also
there are more and more people that want to push their agenda with identity
politics and rather than judge each idea on it's own merits, they will reject
anything that comes from particular person/establishment/group that they don't
like. After getting burned by this a number of times in recent past, from now
on I always read original source before jumping to conclusions.

------
mpolichette
Yeah and the telecoms are going to charge for each device... with my home
connection. I can serve all my devices locally from one trunk... With mobile I
have to have a data plan for each device...

------
heisenbit
A lot of people did not read this article: It is about mobile.

It is actually about mobile home access. Generally:

\- mobile coverage in the home is different from outside of the home. The
primary focus of radio planning was outdoor coverage and the networks reflect
this. I suspect this is about having a mobile access point at a fixed location
which helps a little via antenna and positioning vs. a cell phone.

\- mobile networks have been planned with totally different traffic
assumptions and those are literally cemented into base-station locations.

\- mobile is a shared medium with low constraints. It will be hard to
guarantee minimum rates. Much harder than for fixed networks. There is a
reason for the data caps - if there were not then competition would have long
eliminated them.

\- disincentives for scale: Providing data rates for one home may be easy. But
if all the neighbors hop on that bandwagon then things get more difficult.

It is possible in principle but the cost for universal mobile access service
and these bandwidth guarantees with the current technology may be quite high
at this time. Anecdotal evidence of localized solutions also in other
countries exist but can anyone point to a place where such a service has been
deployed in a large country?

------
A1phab3t
This is about suppressing information availability and opportunity in rural
areas.

Sorry financially-challenged rural dweller, you only have a phone with a fixed
data allowance. I guess you'll need to continue relying on old media for your
information needs. Have fun with whatever the public library has to offer-- oh
by the way we're cutting the library from our budget.

Oh and those of you who, despite our best efforts, discovered that you can
learn a knowledge trade and work from home, staying near your family and
friends, bringing money into the local economy rather than move to a city?
Sorry, it's not in our political interest to allow you to broaden your
horizons.

------
smsm42
Also, could somebody explain to me what is the function of FCC in setting
those "standard" speeds?

> This would also be the first time that the FCC has set a broadband speed
> standard for mobile; at 10Mbps/1Mbps, it would be less than half as fast as
> the FCC's home broadband speed standard of 25Mbps/3Mbps.

I mean, what that "standard" does? Is it prohibited to sell connection slower
than this? Clearly not, since there tons of home internet offers slower than
25/3\. So what is the meaning of this standard, what consequences does it
have? Of course the press, who is supposed to inform me, is too busy trying to
propagandize me and forgets to explain what that all actually means. Could
fellow HNians fill the gap?

~~~
speedz
Money, the answer is always money.

The speed standard is used to funnel money to the incumbents. The incumbents
are supposed to improve and/or upgrade their speeds or coverage to match these
standards in return for these subsidies, but reality has a way to get in the
way. In practice the incumbents pocket the money and deliver whatever they
feel like.

~~~
smsm42
If this is true, then the meaning of the article is "FCC was going to spend
tons of money to bribe ISPs into upgrading everybody to unrealistically high
speeds, but instead they decided they would spend slightly less money to have
ISPs to upgrade everybody to still unrealistically high speeds, but slightly
lower, which wouldn't be happening in any case because there's no enough
infrastructure to support it".

~~~
speedz
I don't quite follow your argument. Which speeds are unrealistically high?

~~~
smsm42
Looking at current offers and infrastructure, expecting everybody to be hooked
up to minimum 25/3 line IMO is unrealistic.

~~~
speedz
Why do you feel that? You can get within spitting distance with ADSL, and
that's without bonding. Plenty of other DSL flavors beyond that too.

------
stevefeinstein
The sentiment, that Americans don't NEED fast home internet is probably more
accurate than not. It's not relevant though. Need has never been the driving
force in the market. It's want, and if people want it, there's no reason they
shouldn't have it. Why would the head of the FCC care if people need high
speed? Only if he were in the pocket of the ISP's. Then he'd need a way to NOT
create rules that mandates high speed internet. And if it's not a requirement,
then it's up to the business to charge whatever they want without regulation.
It's insidious, and quite clever albeit evil.

~~~
xoa
> _The sentiment, that Americans don 't NEED fast home internet is probably
> more accurate than not._

No, it's total bullshit, except in the pedantic "well, humans don't NEED
electricity/medicine/communications/synthetic shelter/[anything since we
wandered the plains of Africa and had a life expectancy in the 40s]" sense.
Fast, symmetrical end point Internet is of massive importance and in not just
direct but emergent ways that a surprising number of people, even on HN, don't
seem to consider. Think for example of many of the concerns that have been
raised over the last few years here about how the net has become ever more
centralized, or about the difficulties of efforts like Tor. A lot of the core
driver for that comes down to lack of end point bandwidth vs demands. If
symmetrical gigabit connections were the rule rather then the exception, it'd
be possible once again for significantly sized services run directly.
Obviously if a service grew large enough they'd eventually need to move
towards the core, but for a lot of people it'd completely eliminate the need
for many current colo and cloud offerings. Would you be happy going back to
thinnet or 10BASE-T on your LAN? Everything that runs there could run over the
net with more bandwidth, latency only becomes a significant issue over
extremely long distances.

More bandwidth also means more can start to be devoted to meta-content issues
like privacy. If we consider 25 Mbps to be a target for many services say,
then onion routing networks are hard to make use of because they tend to
impose significant overhead and be limited by slow nodes (particularly as even
someone with a "enough" 25 Mbps connection themselves often would not be
willing to allow all of that to be used by the larger network). But if
everyone had 1000 Mbps (or more) to play with, then they could easily devote a
bunch of that to sharing networks, take even a 90% overhead hit, and _still_
have as much bandwidth as they needed. Just as more power in CPUs/GPUs has
allowed us to not merely run things faster, but optimize towards the value of
human time vs computer time, more bandwidth "then needed" represents leeway to
optimize towards goals beyond the bare necessities.

Seriously, giving everyone (or close enough) fast, symmetrical connections
should be one of the absolute highest priorities of anyone concerned about
market competition, centralized control, privacy, and so on. It'd be one of
the best investments America could make, just as national electrification,
telephone, and roads were.

~~~
jack9
> No, it's total bullshit, except in the pedantic "well, humans don't NEED
> electricity/medicine/communications/synthetic shelter/[anything since we
> wandered the plains of Africa and had a life expectancy in the 40s]" sense.

That assertion seems reasonable to me. What does "fast" even mean? Don't know?
Then it's a good assertion. You don't need what isn't defined.

This is not the same as "humans don't NEED access to nuclear materials",
because the acceptable safety measure is currently 0. So that's also a
feasible assertion. The question about tradeoffs and what is practical has to
be answered first. Until you say what the minimum is, there's no point arguing
about how supposing an upper limit (to what is needed) is wrong.

~~~
coldtea
> _That assertion seems reasonable to me. What does "fast" even mean? Don't
> know? Then it's a good assertion. You don't need what isn't defined._

Says who? Love and friendship aren't defined either, but humans need both.

~~~
jack9
So do you need a lot of love and friendship or a little? "Need" of a category
type isn't about what that is, it's always a matter of scale. I was speaking
to scale, which is why I phrased the example in that manner. Can you stop
trying to avoid the question and at least give some answer to my question?
What does "fast" mean? What the FCC calls "fast" or some other value
measurement?

~~~
croon
Do you need electricity? How much?

Do you need food? How much? If you get thinner your TDEE lowers, so you "need"
less.

Do you need running water to your house? Hoe much? Our hygiene has in part
made us live longer, but maybe we just "need" a few pints a day to drink?

Do you need a refrigerator?

Stop muddying the waters. Internet access is increasingly relevant, and before
we had it (as with electricity and running water) we didn't know so. It's not
a problem to give people much better, faster and uncapped access, it's only
not in the monetary interests of incumbent ISPs and their puppet Ajit.

~~~
jack9
> Internet access is increasingly relevant,

I would argue it's a necessary right. That's not the issue and I ask again,
what does fast mean? It has no intrinsic meaning.

> Stop muddying the waters.

Insisting the terms of a negotiation before taking an agreement is not
muddying the issue. It's rationally rigorous and seems to be problematic.
That's why it's worth discussing. I'm still waiting.

~~~
croon
> Insisting the terms of a negotiation before taking an agreement is not
> muddying the issue.

Is that why you conveniently disregarded my other questions? If you can't
answer those, it should inform you of why your question is disingenuous, which
was my point. I'm still waiting.

~~~
jack9
> Is that why you conveniently disregarded my other questions?

The question is still about degree. Starting with new off-topic propositions
to attempt to derail, are for your own entertainment. Since you're just here
to argue about anything but the issue at hand, I'll wish you good luck.

The question stands. What does "fast" mean, in regards to need? A natural
negotiation before condemning an imagined policy that has not specified limits
or prerequisites.

------
dboreham
The need for high throughput residential connections is almost entirely driven
by use of video streaming services (Netflix etc). So if you assume people
don't need those (e.g. if you are a satellite tv company) then this makes
sense.

------
just2n
The title seems a little clickbaity. It seems all that's being said is the FCC
is recommending a reasonable minimum, not a maximum. I don't think it makes
sense to run gig fiber connections to rural homes unless someone is footing
the bill, but they definitely should have some internet capability, and 10/1
mobile and 25/3 direct seems at least minimally viable.

This title makes it sound like the FCC is advocating that speeds above those
are unnecessary for anyone, as if they're coming for your network speed. I
don't get the sensationalism here, this hardly even seems newsworthy.

~~~
qubitcoder
While not exactly rural, I certainly enjoy having rock-solid gigabit fiber
here in Rome, Georgia (via AT&T Fiber). And while mobile networks are
improving, I can't envision mobile as an adequate replacement to dedicated
fiber, at least currently. Especially given the variability in signal strength
and speed. Not to mention data caps and throttling are also pre

And just because a cell provider purports to offer LTE within a geographic
area, that doesn't translate to LTE being available and reliable _within and
throughout_ your residence. In the past, I frequently experienced downgrades
to 3G and Edge, with only intermittent LTE availability.

I don't think we're in disagreement; I just wanted to share my perspective.

------
rabboRubble
American's don't need modern fancy cars either. We have surreys, wagons, and
horseless carriages too.

(The sarcasm is real. Claiming that home internet access is unneeded implies a
fundamental misunderstanding, a regressive misunderstanding, of how society
has transformed in the past 20 years.)

------
danjoc
It's too bad internet speeds went nowhere under President Obama's
administration. According to Wikipedia, internet speeds are currently faster
in Mongolia and Romania than in the US. I hope the change in leadership and
changing regulations will help the US regain its competitive edge.

~~~
plandis
It's great you have your own opinion, but if you're going to claim that
internet access and bandwidth did not improve at all in the past 8 years you
should probably back that up with reputable data.

~~~
danjoc
>if you're going to claim that internet access and bandwidth did not improve
at all in the past 8 years

I don't see where I said that. If you'd like a data point, then look no
further than the ultimate failure of Google Fiber. The largest internet
company in the US can't successfully deploy fiber. Meanwhile in Japan, fiber
is available almost everywhere, even in rural Hokkaido.

I don't want to be stranded on slow internet while the rest of the world races
away to faster and faster speeds. I hope president Trump's strategy to Make
America Great Again works out, and we get fast internet here too. Whatever the
previous administration's plan was, it clearly wasn't working.

------
basicplus2
More likely the FCC is doing the bidding of those who wish to squash
competition.

------
lnx01
And this is why Kenya has faster average mobile internet than the USA.

------
zeep
Symmetrical 2Gbps, which is offered by Comcast in some regions, is probably
too fast for 99.99% of consumers... but it is nice if you have the option

------
ams6110
10Mbps is more than I've had at home up until very recently.

It's fine for me; I work mostly in plain text and prefer it whenver there's an
option. But undertand many people want more. Don't understand the FCC weighing
in one way or the other. Should be up to private enterprise to provide what
customers want to pay for. Get rid of the local monopolies, get out of the
way, and watch what happens.

------
imron
_sigh_ they're taking a leaf out of the Australian government's book.

------
rsj_hn
We are seriously becoming a third world country.

\- 5300 water systems in violation of lead rules:
[http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/28/us/epa-lead-in-u-s-water-
syste...](http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/28/us/epa-lead-in-u-s-water-
systems/index.html)

\- rank 16 in road quality [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-sad-state-of-
americas-roads/](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-sad-state-of-americas-roads/)

-expensive, slow mobile phone service compared to rest of the world [http://time.com/money/3633758/wireless-cost-us-world-ofcom/](http://time.com/money/3633758/wireless-cost-us-world-ofcom/)

\- Piss Poor electrical grid, with an increasing number of outages
[http://insideenergy.org/2014/08/18/power-outages-on-the-
rise...](http://insideenergy.org/2014/08/18/power-outages-on-the-rise-across-
the-u-s/)

\- 1 out of 9 bridges are structurally deficient
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/19/transp...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/19/transportation-
for-american-us-bridges-repair/2434369/)

\- rising death rates for prime age whites due to massive drug epidemic,
obesity, and loneliness [http://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2017/03/23/52108333...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2017/03/23/521083335/the-forces-driving-middle-aged-white-peoples-
deaths-of-despair)

\- highest incarceration rate in the world
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate)

\- highest first day infant mortality in the industrialized world
[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-has-highest-first-day-
infant-...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-has-highest-first-day-infant-
mortality-out-of-industrialized-world-group-reports/)

\- U.S. adults rank below average in basic educational skills
[https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/08/us-adults-
ran...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/08/us-adults-rank-below-
average-global-survey-basic-education-skills)

\- Expensive, broken healthcare system that bankrupts families. We spend twice
OECD average on a percent GDP basis with below average results
[https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/Health-at-a-
Glance-2015-Ke...](https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/Health-at-a-
Glance-2015-Key-Findings-UNITED-STATES.pdf)

\- Expensive, broken tertiary education system that bankrupts students. We
spend twice OECD average on tertiary education and get poor results.
[https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/spending-on-tertiary-
educa...](https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/spending-on-tertiary-
education.htm)

\- Awful, expensive secondary education system compared to rest of
industrialized world [https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance-
pisa.htm](https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance-pisa.htm)

\- Slow, expensive broadband compared to rest of the world
[http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-falls-behind-rest-
of-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-falls-behind-rest-of-the-
worlds-broadband-download-speeds-2017-8)

-all of the above probably contributes to us ending up poorer (in terms of median wealth) than other industrialized nations even though per capita GDP is high and taxes are low

[http://www.middleclasspoliticaleconomist.com/2012/07/us-
trai...](http://www.middleclasspoliticaleconomist.com/2012/07/us-trails-at-
least-15-oecd-countries-in.html)

------
chemmail
I get by with 0.9mbps so F you all.

------
shmerl
Yeah, corruption runs amok. May be Americans don't need corrupted FCC more?

------
tempodox
I'm just flabbergasted by this preposterous proposition.

~~~
coldtea
Are you? Or did you just wanted to use several $10 words in a row?

------
smsm42
> the 25/3 Mbps standard we propose would not even allow for a single stream
> of 1080p video conferencing, much less 4K video conferencing.

Could somebody explain to me why one needs 4K for video conferencing? No, I
mean it'd be nice to have tons of bandwidth, but why 4K video conference is an
absolute necessity? The article kinda makes it sound like not having 4K video
conferencing is the state of absolute depravity and without it it can't be
even called proper internet service. Can anybody explain it to me?

~~~
fulafel
This is about broadband, broadband is supposed to be fast.

From the law: "(1) Advanced telecommunications capability: The term 'advanced
telecommunications capability' is defined, without regard to any transmission
media or technology, as high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications
capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice,
data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology."

Originating high-quality video for the near future should reasonably mean 4k
video worth of upstream bandwidth.

Also, 25 MBps is still really wimpy. In any reasonable moore's law resembling
curve we should have 1-10 Gbit broadband by now.

~~~
smsm42
> This is about broadband, broadband is supposed to be fast.

It is fast. The question is what is the use of 4K video conferencing. None of
the usages I've seen require anything even close to it.

> In any reasonable moore's law resembling curve we should have 1-10 Gbit
> broadband by now.

Why internet speeds should follow Moore's law? Where did you find the law of
nature that requires it? Should we also have flying cars, real hoverboards and
robots doing all the work while we relax in holodecks?

