I don't get the ISP hatred, I have Optimum (Cablevision) and pay $65/mo for 100/50 service- it let me cut cable and now I stream everything like millions of others already do. Just $65, how can I complain? They've been great!
Because the Japanese were getting those sort of speeds ten years ago for $20-30/month.
American ISP service is amongst worst value proposition for high-speed Internet in the industrialized world. We pay far more for far less in the USA.
Because the Japanese were getting those sort of speeds ten years ago for $20-30/month.
American ISP service is amongst worst value proposition for high-speed Internet in the industrialized world. We pay far more for far less in the USA.
Comparing between countries is always an exercise in futility. There are far too many demographic, political and economic differences. Better to compare to nearly identical markets in the same country.
Because the Japanese were getting those sort of speeds ten years ago for $20-30/month.
American ISP service is amongst worst value proposition for high-speed Internet in the industrialized world. We pay far more for far less in the USA.
Comparing between countries is always an exercise in futility. There are far too many demographic, political and economic differences. Better to compare to nearly identical markets in the same country.
“Let’s parse out what they say in their lobbying with us and what they say when they’re talking to consumers,” said Wheeler, a former cable and wireless industry lobbyist himself. While Verizon told the FCC that consumers are satisfied with 4Mbps/1Mbps and that "a higher benchmark would serve no purpose,” they push customers to buy much faster speeds, which cost more, Wheeler pointed out
Quote:
“In their marketing materials Verizon says, ‘while FiOS provides a lot of speed for bandwidth hungry devices, you’d be surprised how fast it goes. You can think of your household’s Internet connection like a pizza to be shared with your whole family. Some people are hungrier than others and if too many friends show up no one will get enough to be satisfied.’
This is what their website says,” Wheeler continued. “’25/25 is best for one to three devices at the same time, great for surfing, e-mail, online shopping and social networking, streaming two HD videos simultaneously. 50/50 is best for three to five devices at the same time, more speed for families or individuals with multiple Internet devices, stream up to five HD videos simultaneously.’
“Somebody is telling us one thing and telling consumers another."
Quote:
t’s not just Verizon. “Consider what AT&T told us in this proceeding,” Wheeler said. “Quote: ‘the notice presents no basis for a conclusion at this time that a service less than 10Mbps is no longer advanced.' But what they say to their customers is, ‘with downstream speeds up to 45Mbps, AT&T’s U-verse high-speed Internet lets you enjoy life in the fast lane, download music, movies and more in record time.’”
Quote:
Next up in Wheeler's list was Comcast, which told the commission that a “4Mbps connection has been found to be sufficient to handle streaming HD video,” he said. But the Comcast website tells customers that with 150Mbps, they can “game in real time, and stream HD movies,” Wheeler noted.
Wheeler finished with Time Warner Cable, “who says, ‘between laptop, tablets, and smartphones you’ll need all the bandwidth you can get. 15Mbps works for two adults with two smartphones. 20Mbps: one person with a smartphone, a TV and a video streaming device. 30Mbps: a family, two adults, two kids, two TVs, one tablet, two computers, and one on-demand device.'"
TWC also "provides a convenient link on their website where you enter the characteristics of your household and they tell you the bandwidth you need, which is far more than 4 and far more than 10," Wheeler said.
Quote:
“The facts speak for themselves,” he concluded, adding that subscriptions to 25Mbps/3Mbps service have quadrupled in the past three years.
The term first world problem comes to mind. There are actual problems out there to solve, not thinking this is one of them.
Ok I will argue with you on this point. The Internet in this day and age is a necessity. Not having internet is like not having a phone!
Internet is what brings the world together and allows equal sharing of information. The printing press helped to spread knowledge back in its day, the common man could get ahold of a book instead of only priests and princes. Multiply the printing press times a billion and you have the Internet.
To not have good internet access is a disadvantage.
Compounding the problem is large families that are all connected now. My router routinely has 10-20 connected devices at one time. When you have everyone with iPads, smart tv's, iPhones, computers, gaming consoles....a family of 4 kids can easily eat a fast internet connection up. We have verizon fios 75up/75 down service which I routinely get 85. With a netflix 4 streaming plan, each HD stream takes about 9-10 mb connection to stream, get 3 kids watching cartoons or a movie at night that eats up 30mb right there add myself watching a Hulu HD episode and another kid on a xbox, the wife streaming music on the computer, etc. you can see that a 75 connection can get eaten up pretty quick and that's just with 4 kids, if they have friends over or out of town visitors you can see that internet speeds need to increase. Time warner is now advertising 300 mb down which i think should put pressure in our area for others to up there standard speeds. Of course wireless technology has to increase to get these speeds. A g (54mb) card can only handle 22-23mb down if your right next to the source. N (300) wireless handles about 220mb internet and the new AC can handle up to 800. With the newer time warner 300 plan people need to upgrade there routers to expect to get those speeds.
I saw an interesting comment on The Verge about this.
This will enable Comcast + Time Warner Cable to more easily go through with their proposed merger specifically because of the redefinition.
I'd say it's the opposite and why Comcast and Time warner fought so hard against it.
They've been pointing to regional DSL companies for years as signs of "competition" as a justification for their merger. This redefinition basically reduces that competition from these smaller providers to 0, effectively screwing their only major justification outside of "More bandwidth" over.
This is misleading. The FCC has not redefined "broadband". The FCC has an obligation to study and report on the availability of high-quality telecommunications across the country and especially in rural areas, and it is left to their discretion to define what "high-quality telecommunications" means. Obviously that's a moving target that should be kept up to date. It used to be 200 kbps, then it was 4 Mbps, now it is 25 Mbps. ISPs are not obligated to change a thing. If what they're selling uses more bandwidth than the 8 kHz of a plain old-fashioned telephone line, then by golly they can keep selling it and they can still call it broadband because it IS broadband.
A different matter is ISPs tapping into the Universal Service Fund to build out service to rural areas. To qualify for that funding there is a speed requirement that was recently increased to 10 Mbps.
People who live in the rural country should pay more for their internet.
I believe there is a subsidy from the government for telecommunications companies to provide broadband speeds of Internet access to rural areas and schools. Now, to qualify for this subsidy, they need to make sure their speeds meet 25MB threshold. I doubt this will affect most customers who already have broadband in non-subsidized areas, except for statistical purposes where the FCC published broadband data in the future. American households not receiving 25MB down will not be considered to have broadband by the new statistical measurements.
They were given that subsidy (multi billion dollars) years ago in the form of rate increases, and squandered it. Now they're lobbying the government so that they don't have to wire up rural areas.
A lot of legal cases will get victories for Municipalities sitting on a crap load of fiber just itching to offer Gigabit service. I'll be thrilled to consolidate on it.
Compounding the problem is large families that are all connected now. My router routinely has 10-20 connected devices at one time. When you have everyone with iPads, smart tv's, iPhones, computers, gaming consoles....a family of 4 kids can easily eat a fast internet connection up. We have verizon fios 75up/75 down service which I routinely get 85. With a netflix 4 streaming plan, each HD stream takes about 9-10 mb connection to stream, get 3 kids watching cartoons or a movie at night that eats up 30mb right there add myself watching a Hulu HD episode and another kid on a xbox, the wife streaming music on the computer, etc. you can see that a 75 connection can get eaten up pretty quick and that's just with 4 kids, if they have friends over or out of town visitors you can see that internet speeds need to increase. Time warner is now advertising 300 mb down which i think should put pressure in our area for others to up there standard speeds. Of course wireless technology has to increase to get these speeds. A g (54mb) card can only handle 22-23mb down if your right next to the source. N (300) wireless handles about 220mb internet and the new AC can handle up to 800. With the newer time warner 300 plan people need to upgrade there routers to expect to get those speeds.
With that many devices you need a faster router. Contrary to popular belief a router doesn’t talk to all the devices at the same time. It talks to one device at a time, and it moves on to the next one. It does it in bursts of milliseconds. The faster a router can do this the better
The FCC has an obligation to study and report on the availability of high-quality telecommunications across the country… …and it is left to their discretion to define what "high-quality telecommunications" means. Obviously that's a moving target that should be kept up to date.
Okay. Now make it illegal to call 720 “HD” because it’s not “high” anymore and “definition” has changed in meaning. Then do the same with 1080.
Geezaloo.
Originally Posted by K2kW
People who live in the rural country should pay more for their internet.
I can’t even begin to dissect how ludicrous this sounds.
Never had a problem with my 5th generation airport extreme with lag or HD streams. Handles 20 devices no problem. I think it's rated for up to 50 devices. My point was that higher speeds like time warners new 300 down takes a newer router to get those speeds. My 5th gen looks like it maxes out at around 120 according to this site compared to the 6th generation airport extreme. My sister-in-law has the 6th generation airport extreme on time warners 300 down service and she gets 200-240 down on wireless N 5ghz band and 290-300 on gigabit ethernet but she has a older macbook that doesn't have the new wireless AC band.
I have U-Verse, I guess I no longer have broadband. My speed is suppose to be like 18/1.5 yep, upload is really, really SLOW. I get more like 12/1.0. I am $35 for their promotional year price for the second year. Other wise it's $55 a month and really if it's going to be that high for such low speeds, I might as well pay a little more and switch to Comcast to much faster speeds!!! In fact that's what I told them after the first year was up and my price jumped. I told them exactly that and I'd switch if the price didn't drop back down. Of course I had to go another year, but so what.
I also only pay for Internet service. No way in hell will I pay for TV service anymore. I threw up a Antenna when I got my house. The days of $170 a month Comcast bills are no more.
The FCC Speed Test app's servers suck, probably intentionally. I barely get 35 Mbps at work, where Ookla Speedtest.net easily hits 90+.
While everybody's bashing US broadband and calling for Government Bell, I'll just point out that the US leads the world in IPv6 and LTE deployments.
are you sure about that? Sweden was the first country in europe to get LTE- a year before Verizon did in the u.s. now the world is on LTE-A almost a year before the u.s.
so, no- you are wrong. and at the price?? your american 'broadband' companies make a tonne more money than most (if not all) cable companies anywhere else in the world but is slowest to get a move on with speed as they just take the money instead of investing into faster internet. and yes- america is a very big country- but factor in all the money being made by con-cast and slow-warner and if you saw some spending instead of pocketing of the money, you could join the rest of the world.
"FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel stated today that she thinks the broadband threshold 'frankly, should be 100 Mbps' -- a move that would finally put the United States in line with the speedy connections available in countries like South Korea. According to the 2014 State of the Internet report issued by Akamai, Korea tops the global charts with an average download speed of 23.6Mbps (which worked out to about six times the world average)."
?I know Korea is the home of everyone's most hated company on this site, but my iPhones and macs are ridiculously fast.
They are in fact highly regulated. Monopolies in cable have only existed due to local and state government deals with cable suppliers, not because of 'wild, uncontrolled free market competition'.
The free market model meaning every supplier digs up every road to lay their own cable, which is impossible.
Comparing between countries is always an exercise in futility.
Close, it's an exercise in humility. What harm does it cause forcing suppliers to improve? They need called out now and again. They've been given the opportunity to match the rest of the world without anyone holding them back and they've failed because they are profit-driven. They make more profit by denying people service, the telecoms companies have always done this. You have to pay per message if you want to use cellular but on wifi, go nuts. They'll do whatever they can get away with.
The biggest scam is convincing people that bandwidth is something that runs out over time. It's all about concurrent usage so metering usage is profiteering. The technology is there to give everyone practically unlimited download and upload speeds concurrently:
That would take a single installation and anyone would be allowed to compete for the connection opening up competition to more suppliers. Netflix could be a connection provider. They'd just pay back a fee on their service to the government (that thing what invented the internet) for installing the advanced cabling. Net neutrality comes for free.
Say 100 million miles of cable, employ 1 million contractors to do 0.1 mile per day = 3 years and the job's done.
Unlike Google, the government doesn't need to find an economically sustainable model for doing something like this because they aren't answerable to profit-driven shareholders. That's both a good and bad thing but good in this case. $11b per year is nothing vs government spending.
Comments
I don't get the ISP hatred, I have Optimum (Cablevision) and pay $65/mo for 100/50 service- it let me cut cable and now I stream everything like millions of others already do. Just $65, how can I complain? They've been great!
Because the Japanese were getting those sort of speeds ten years ago for $20-30/month.
American ISP service is amongst worst value proposition for high-speed Internet in the industrialized world. We pay far more for far less in the USA.
Because the Japanese were getting those sort of speeds ten years ago for $20-30/month.
American ISP service is amongst worst value proposition for high-speed Internet in the industrialized world. We pay far more for far less in the USA.
Comparing between countries is always an exercise in futility. There are far too many demographic, political and economic differences. Better to compare to nearly identical markets in the same country.
Can you do it for us? Please?
The vote Passed btw
Some choice quotes.
This is what their website says,” Wheeler continued. “’25/25 is best for one to three devices at the same time, great for surfing, e-mail, online shopping and social networking, streaming two HD videos simultaneously. 50/50 is best for three to five devices at the same time, more speed for families or individuals with multiple Internet devices, stream up to five HD videos simultaneously.’
“Somebody is telling us one thing and telling consumers another."
Next up in Wheeler's list was Comcast, which told the commission that a “4Mbps connection has been found to be sufficient to handle streaming HD video,” he said. But the Comcast website tells customers that with 150Mbps, they can “game in real time, and stream HD movies,” Wheeler noted.
Wheeler finished with Time Warner Cable, “who says, ‘between laptop, tablets, and smartphones you’ll need all the bandwidth you can get. 15Mbps works for two adults with two smartphones. 20Mbps: one person with a smartphone, a TV and a video streaming device. 30Mbps: a family, two adults, two kids, two TVs, one tablet, two computers, and one on-demand device.'"
TWC also "provides a convenient link on their website where you enter the characteristics of your household and they tell you the bandwidth you need, which is far more than 4 and far more than 10," Wheeler said.
Ok I will argue with you on this point. The Internet in this day and age is a necessity. Not having internet is like not having a phone!
Internet is what brings the world together and allows equal sharing of information. The printing press helped to spread knowledge back in its day, the common man could get ahold of a book instead of only priests and princes. Multiply the printing press times a billion and you have the Internet.
To not have good internet access is a disadvantage.
Compounding the problem is large families that are all connected now. My router routinely has 10-20 connected devices at one time. When you have everyone with iPads, smart tv's, iPhones, computers, gaming consoles....a family of 4 kids can easily eat a fast internet connection up. We have verizon fios 75up/75 down service which I routinely get 85. With a netflix 4 streaming plan, each HD stream takes about 9-10 mb connection to stream, get 3 kids watching cartoons or a movie at night that eats up 30mb right there add myself watching a Hulu HD episode and another kid on a xbox, the wife streaming music on the computer, etc. you can see that a 75 connection can get eaten up pretty quick and that's just with 4 kids, if they have friends over or out of town visitors you can see that internet speeds need to increase. Time warner is now advertising 300 mb down which i think should put pressure in our area for others to up there standard speeds. Of course wireless technology has to increase to get these speeds. A g (54mb) card can only handle 22-23mb down if your right next to the source. N (300) wireless handles about 220mb internet and the new AC can handle up to 800. With the newer time warner 300 plan people need to upgrade there routers to expect to get those speeds.
I saw an interesting comment on The Verge about this.
This will enable Comcast + Time Warner Cable to more easily go through with their proposed merger specifically because of the redefinition.
I saw an interesting comment on The Verge about this.
This will enable Comcast + Time Warner Cable to more easily go through with their proposed merger specifically because of the redefinition.
I'd say it's the opposite and why Comcast and Time warner fought so hard against it.
They've been pointing to regional DSL companies for years as signs of "competition" as a justification for their merger. This redefinition basically reduces that competition from these smaller providers to 0, effectively screwing their only major justification outside of "More bandwidth" over.
People who live in the rural country should pay more for their internet.
They were given that subsidy (multi billion dollars) years ago in the form of rate increases, and squandered it. Now they're lobbying the government so that they don't have to wire up rural areas.
With that many devices you need a faster router. Contrary to popular belief a router doesn’t talk to all the devices at the same time. It talks to one device at a time, and it moves on to the next one. It does it in bursts of milliseconds. The faster a router can do this the better
Okay. Now make it illegal to call 720 “HD” because it’s not “high” anymore and “definition” has changed in meaning. Then do the same with 1080.
Geezaloo.
I can’t even begin to dissect how ludicrous this sounds.
Never had a problem with my 5th generation airport extreme with lag or HD streams. Handles 20 devices no problem. I think it's rated for up to 50 devices. My point was that higher speeds like time warners new 300 down takes a newer router to get those speeds. My 5th gen looks like it maxes out at around 120 according to this site compared to the 6th generation airport extreme. My sister-in-law has the 6th generation airport extreme on time warners 300 down service and she gets 200-240 down on wireless N 5ghz band and 290-300 on gigabit ethernet but she has a older macbook that doesn't have the new wireless AC band.
http://www.tekrevue.com/pure-speed-2013-802-11ac-airport-extreme-benchmarks/
I have U-Verse, I guess I no longer have broadband. My speed is suppose to be like 18/1.5 yep, upload is really, really SLOW. I get more like 12/1.0. I am $35 for their promotional year price for the second year. Other wise it's $55 a month and really if it's going to be that high for such low speeds, I might as well pay a little more and switch to Comcast to much faster speeds!!! In fact that's what I told them after the first year was up and my price jumped. I told them exactly that and I'd switch if the price didn't drop back down. Of course I had to go another year, but so what.
I also only pay for Internet service. No way in hell will I pay for TV service anymore. I threw up a Antenna when I got my house. The days of $170 a month Comcast bills are no more.
The FCC Speed Test app's servers suck, probably intentionally. I barely get 35 Mbps at work, where Ookla Speedtest.net easily hits 90+.
While everybody's bashing US broadband and calling for Government Bell, I'll just point out that the US leads the world in IPv6 and LTE deployments.
are you sure about that? Sweden was the first country in europe to get LTE- a year before Verizon did in the u.s. now the world is on LTE-A almost a year before the u.s.
so, no- you are wrong. and at the price?? your american 'broadband' companies make a tonne more money than most (if not all) cable companies anywhere else in the world but is slowest to get a move on with speed as they just take the money instead of investing into faster internet. and yes- america is a very big country- but factor in all the money being made by con-cast and slow-warner and if you saw some spending instead of pocketing of the money, you could join the rest of the world.
"FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel stated today that she thinks the broadband threshold 'frankly, should be 100 Mbps' -- a move that would finally put the United States in line with the speedy connections available in countries like South Korea. According to the 2014 State of the Internet report issued by Akamai, Korea tops the global charts with an average download speed of 23.6Mbps (which worked out to about six times the world average)."
?I know Korea is the home of everyone's most hated company on this site, but my iPhones and macs are ridiculously fast.
The free market model meaning every supplier digs up every road to lay their own cable, which is impossible.
Close, it's an exercise in humility. What harm does it cause forcing suppliers to improve? They need called out now and again. They've been given the opportunity to match the rest of the world without anyone holding them back and they've failed because they are profit-driven. They make more profit by denying people service, the telecoms companies have always done this. You have to pay per message if you want to use cellular but on wifi, go nuts. They'll do whatever they can get away with.
The biggest scam is convincing people that bandwidth is something that runs out over time. It's all about concurrent usage so metering usage is profiteering. The technology is there to give everyone practically unlimited download and upload speeds concurrently:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/192929-255tbps-worlds-fastest-network-could-carry-all-the-internet-traffic-single-fiber
That would take a single installation and anyone would be allowed to compete for the connection opening up competition to more suppliers. Netflix could be a connection provider. They'd just pay back a fee on their service to the government (that thing what invented the internet) for installing the advanced cabling. Net neutrality comes for free.
Say 100 million miles of cable, employ 1 million contractors to do 0.1 mile per day = 3 years and the job's done.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/nationwide-google-fiber-would-cost-11b-per-year-probably-will-never-happen/
Unlike Google, the government doesn't need to find an economically sustainable model for doing something like this because they aren't answerable to profit-driven shareholders. That's both a good and bad thing but good in this case. $11b per year is nothing vs government spending.
But how can that be? Everyone knows the free market is God and that unregulated corporations must therefore inevitably achieve perfection.
It's a lie. All we need to do is trust our telecomm providers and stay out their way.