FCC ups broadband benchmark speeds, says rural areas still underserved

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is finally updating its standard for broadband speeds to 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload, after talking about the issue for years. The telecoms regulator has raised its benchmark for high-speed fixed broadband as part of an annual assessment of the progress in advanced …

[Snake]

I'll wait for it

I know Europeans will say that this is ridiculous, 25Mpbs as "broadband", only in America.

You forget the distances involved with living in America. My own first broadband service was DSL at maybe (can't remember) about 5Mpbs and that's because it was the best they could do - the copper run back to the service terminal was so long that they couldn't provision a higher speed than that.

I am currently rural, with 2 lakes within walking distance amongst several hundred acres of private, reserved lands. Several state parks are within a few minutes driving distance, as is the local municipal airport. The family of black bears that walked though my property very much liked the locale :D

I now have cable service at 200Mpbs, higher is indeed available, but I have no idea of the cable run length to get it to service us. It's got to be quite a run. And, being that it is both rural and a very long run, I have my choice of my current cable provider...or my current cable provider. Beside satellite, no other provider services the area.

Oh, to add before I forget: cellular service is terrible. 1 bar for T-Mobile, I must use Wi-Fi Calling within my own home.

[AMBxx]

Re: I'll wait for it

In rural England, I get 20Mbps down and just 1.1 Mbps up. Better than the midband we used to have (2 ISDN lines that sort of worked together),

[Snake]

Re: I'll wait for it

Hmm. My first DSL service was in town, the run to the telco was still so long it was the best they could do. As the town abuts the river and ends at the small mountain ridge that separates this section of land from the balance of the eastern land, I wasn't getting anything better than what the local telco had.

[heyrick]

Re: I'll wait for it

In rural France, I get 3Mbit down (used to be 4, but connection speeds suffer the endless repairs due to careless farmers giving zero fucks about either the poles or the attached wiring). It's good enough for standard quality Netflix. My upload speed is about 760Kbit (realistically around 64KBytes/sec) which makes uploading stuff to YouTube rather painful.

They've rolled out fibre around here, just waiting for things to be finalised so they can begin to transition people over. Not sure what the intended speed is, but anything will be an improvement. I do wonder how long it'll actually work for given that it is slung up on the same poles as the copper stuff that keeps getting snagged on hay bales, digger implements, one run of wiring and the associated wooden poles suffered a flailing. Oh, and somebody digging to install a new water main hacked though the big bundle serving the entire village, about five minutes before he hit the underground power cables. Yes, mate, that bright red mesh stuff buried in the ground was supposed to be a warning...

[Lurko]

Re: I'll wait for it

"In rural England, I get 20Mbps down and just 1.1 Mbps up. "

Worse still, you get no bears.

In my part of central England I've got a choice of three different physical broadband networks and about 25 odd ISPs with speeds up to 1.6 Gbps (although 330 is as much a s I'll pay for). But still no bears. I blame Ofcom.

[VicMortimer]

Re: I'll wait for it

Have you tried Grindr? Should be plenty of bears on there.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: I'll wait for it

> I know Europeans will say that this is ridiculous, 25Mpbs as "broadband", only in America.

Hold it, you've never been to Europe obviously. At least not in Germany. With a recent case where the regulator has ORDERED a supplier to deliver 10 MBit up and 1,7 MBit down. In 2024. I am along those with > 200 Mbit DSL, and I know some enjoying their gigabit fibre. But I consider myself lucky to have at least that speed. In a city, with one of the six airports in Germany which actually make profit right in my view (STR). (Don't get me started about those countless little airports living on huge subsidys sucking away my tax money for no good reason)

[Snake]

Re: never been to Europe

True, I've only visited the UK. But the last time internet speeds were spoken of around here (admittedly many years ago), America's internet "speed" was widely mocked. :p

Like I said, many of us don't live in the city. In the big cities you can get almost any speed you want and often from a choice of 2 providers (local cable and the telco, Verizon). 200Mbps was the lowest I could go and indeed is the lowest I can go on my rural cable - slower is only available for low income families that qualify based upon government rules (I tried).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: never been to Europe

Most of us DO live in a city. Not just 'big' cities, but the vast majority of Americans live in cities.

And for those of us who live where there's municipal fiber, the slowest you can go is gigabit, most cities with it range from $60 to $85 a month.

[DS999]

Re: never been to Europe

Not so, the local company that started offering fiber around here has a base speed of 100 or 200 Mbps (depending on what offers there are at the time) with the next tier at 500 and the high end at 1 gigabit. Sure, everyone qualifies for 1 gigabit but that doesn't mean everyone chooses it when it costs more.

Heck when they (someday) get around to me there's zero chance I'll be signing up for a gigabit, because I don't see the point. I'll probably wait until they do a "200 for the price of 100" deal as that's fast enough and saves a bit of money versus the next step up to 500 which I had no need for. Other than downloading iOS and Linux updates a bit more quickly, why would I need more than 100? I could see the need if I had a few kids running around, but otherwise the real world difference between 100 and 1000 is indistinguishable.

Heck I'm getting along just fine with 50/20 DSL, the only reason for switching to fiber is that it is a bit cheaper not because I really need the speed. Though at the rate that fiber company is deploying around town even stodgy old Centurylink might get around to offering me fiber more quickly. They started building it out a year ago and are still behind the fiber company but maybe they'll reach my neighborhood first!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: never been to Europe

MUNICIPAL fiber. No company, the city or local utility board is the ISP.

Nobody is making a profit from it.

Socialism works!

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: never been to Europe

Until your line goes down and the tech is scheduled to arrive 4 weeks from now, unless someone more important loses their connection.

[druck]

Re: never been to Europe

And for those of us who live where there's municipal fiber, the slowest you can go is gigabit, most cities with it range from $60 to $85 a month.

Those prices would only be reasonable in the UK if there were still $2.50 to the pound, at today's exchange rates they are ridiculous.

[Version 1.0]

Re: I'll wait for it

These days 1Mb download wouldn't affect your safety, but a 100Mb download would ruin it. I used to be accessing medical customers PDP-11s to help them via a high speed 2,400 bit/s modem, and we never saw any data thefts, malware or virus problem back in those days.

Very high speed internet access has become a malware delivery feature, so we'd all be so much safer these days at slower speeds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'll wait for it

But the vast majority of Americans don't live in rural shitholes.

I'm a mile from downtown in a medium sized city. Until recently my only option was Comcrap cable, it's expensive, there's an AT&T fiber running a block from my house but the fastest they'd give me was 12 megabit DSL. Fortunately I now have a municipal fiber option, symmetrical gigabit for a reasonable price. As soon as the Comcrap contract ends this fall I'm switching.

[Snake]

Re: I'll wait for it

Cool. Although I'm "rural" I am actually only an 18-minute drive from the medium-sized city. Still, only Spectrum cable (I guess I should be thankful for that?!).

I lived in the Big City and had to leave. Don't miss the zoo that is a city, I am not a city boy. Quite a distasteful way of living: dirty, noisy, super-expensive and crowded. The rent for 400sq ft. is more than my entire mortgage plus taxes. I just don't see the reasoning any more; 20 years ago, it might have made some sense. But with landlords charging mortgage rates for their often run-down apartments (and nice apartments *certainly* going for jumbo mortgage rates), when you don't end up with any equity after paying your landlord's tithe for 15 years, I just don't see the logic of it.

FWIW my "shithole" is 3+ acres surrounded by 3 protected, private reserves of several hundred acres total. My house is an ski lodge interior home with cathedral ceilings and a 520 sq ft master with 2-person Jacuzzi (yes, I really lucked out on this property). All for less than the rent on the 400 sq ft. city apartment in a building so run down that I couldn't use my own kitchen for 5 years because the utility shut off the cooking gas and wouldn't turn it back on until the landlord did the required repairs on the plumbing. Which, of course, he didn't, so the city had to sue and force him to do the repairs or they would do it for him and send him the bill.

Oh yes, city living. I'm just DYING to return there o_O

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'll wait for it

Sounds awful, honestly. I'm in a 2k square foot house that's a bit over 100 years old, 10 foot ceilings, amazing woodwork, mortgage is less than $400/month. (Yeah, I bought at exactly the right time, it would be over 5x what I paid for it now.)

I'm surrounded by a walkable neighborhood, don't have to even bother getting in the car to get groceries, a dozen craft breweries within walking distance, lots of local arts events, excellent sushi, great pizza, friendly neighbors, just about everywhere I do drive is within range of my plug-in hybrid's battery so I don't even have to burn gas.

I wouldn't want to have to maintain 3+ acres, I can do the little bit of mowing I have to do with a battery powered lawnmower.

I grew up surrounded by woods, never want to live like that again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'll wait for it

I grew up surrounded by people, never want to live like that again.

[Gene Cash]

Re: I'll wait for it

> You forget the distances involved with living in America

That is absolutely no excuse. There are things known as repeaters. And technical knowledge, which it seems your ISP is sadly lacking.

I'm switching to Starlink because neither of my local ISPs (AT&T/Spectrum) can keep a link up. And boy, did they sh*t their pants when I called to cancel.

They offered free TV, a cheaper rate, a hike in speed, and it always came back to "what good is it if it doesn't go 2 weeks without breaking?"

The salesperson was apparently peeved that I was insisting on actual working service.

[Snake]

Re: distances

You forget the distances involved with living in America

That is absolutely no excuse. There are things known as repeaters. And technical knowledge, which it seems your ISP is sadly lacking.

It has nothing to do with technical knowledge, ir has to do with ROI. When you're feeding a low population density area, will your infrastructure rollout costs get amortized across a reasonable return time?

Verizon wouldn't even do that for the inner city, delaying upgrades even after receiving millions of dollars in subsidies. The municipalities had to sue. They had the density but the roll-out costs were so high in the business districts that they dragged their feet until the law dragged them to their senses.

By that time we had switched to cable. When the Verizon rep finally came along to try to sell us on FIOS, after all these years of waiting whilst dealing with crap service in the meanwhile, I literally - not figuratively - laughed in his face. "Not happening. Have a good day."

[Jellied Eel]

Re: I'll wait for it

That is absolutely no excuse. There are things known as repeaters. And technical knowledge, which it seems your ISP is sadly lacking.

Sure. Repeaters. So snag with those is they a) cost money and b) need space, heat and power. So ISP would have to get wayleaves and rent/buy land to install anything from a containerised PoP to a cabinet. Not so bad if you can spread those costs over a few thousand connections, but expensive if there's only a dozen or so properties. Then you need to connect to those customers at $100+ per meter, and you need wayleaves to run those connections. Rural stuff has legal challenges with private, unadopted or unincorporated land and roads, which makes life even more complicated. And then there's just the issue that US properties tend to be larger, and further apart. So land might be platted for anything from say, 0.2 acres to 0.5+ per dwelling. Then if you've got a decent sized plat, you probably don't want your home built bang up to the road, so long digs to get from the curb to the property.

Most of the issues with rural broadband aren't technical, they're in dealing with the paperwork and costs for the civils. The technical stuff is actually the easy bit, ie SMF (Single Mode Fibre) gives you a span of say, 40km. Then either run 144f or 288f cables and drop out a fibre per home, or more often use PON (Passive Optical Networking) to drop wavelengths. But you'll need pit boxes or similar to install PON cassettes, or splice out the fibre drops. Those often don't need power, but do need space and construction costs. Or use catenary cable, slap all that on poles and hope people don't drive into them, trees fall on them etc etc.

[IvyKing]

Re: I'll wait for it

I had an interesting chat with a fellow who works for a telecon company in eastern Montana. He said that they could run fiber up to 40 miles from the equivalent of a central office. This beats the hell out of DSL which is limited to about 5km (line length requiring loading coils). The one downside is that the customer would have to kick in the cost of placing the line, but is likely to get reimbursed if mmore customers sign up for the service provisioned by that line.

[ThatOne]

Re: I'll wait for it

> but is likely to get reimbursed

Pull the other one! Give back good money when instead you can make some more? Will never happen.

Besides I don't believe their constant sob stories about those terrible, terrible infrastructure expenses. European operators have apparently managed to do it, in what looks like a way more competitive market (which means smaller slices of the pie for everyone). I know people (admittedly living in a city) in Europe who pay around $30 a month for a 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-premises (plus a phone line and around 60 TV channels, all in the package). $30 a month!

The explanation is probably that they have a choice of 3-4 different and competing operators (and that's without considering cable offers). And yet all those operators aren't starving to death, so apparently it's commercially viable. US telecom operators monopolies are just being fed subsidies for not doing anything.

[IvyKing]

Re: I'll wait for it

Have you ever been in eastern Montana? Or any very rural area in the western US? While not as sparsely populated as the Australian Outback, there can be quite a bit of distance between customers, so it often doesn't make economic sense to string fiber on speculation. The rollout of fiber optic service in my city was base in part on how many people in a neighborhood were willing to put down a very nominal sum to pre-order service. Keep in mind the city I live in probably has as many people as the State of Montana wast of Billings.

As far as the reimbursement, I've known people who had to pay to have utility lines extended to their homes, but did get a partial reimbursement every time a new home was built in their area.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: I'll wait for it

Yes, as DSL is copper and you can only run a signal through so many repeaters. If you spring for that initial fiber install though, don't expect to see any reimbursement from them.

[Korev]

Re: I'll wait for it

> I know Europeans will say that this is ridiculous, 25Mpbs as "broadband", only in America.

Here in Switzerland you can get 1000X quicker fibre for ~73USD a month...

Although I'm a massive nerd, I've opted for the slower package as I don't want the noise of a machine that can route 25Gbs :)

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Teaser text error

It should read "25Mbps download and a paltry 3Mbps for upload... and some places even have that"

[My other car WAS an IAV Stryker]

Re: Teaser text error

I've said it before: I pay for just better than that (25/5). It's the max the legacy phone company copper wires can do, but that's here in some relatively affluent suburbs, not long-distance rural.

My only non-wireless option for more bandwidth is the "cable" company whose uptime is horrendous. You'd think that for what my neighbors pay them (a lot) that the phone company could easily suck in all that dosh with a fiber rollout. But no... phone company want to push me to wireless home "broadband" without any mention of bandwidth (max speed and/or stability), uptime (connection stability), or cost -- just "no added cost", but there's no obvious benefit.

These new targets might still be satisfied in our neighborhood, but only for customers of brand "X" when it's actually working (and they're all paying out the nose).

The lack of choice is the problem. Open the market -- more choices would make all providers offer more performance for lower cost.

[DS999]

Re: Teaser text error

The lack of choice is the problem. Open the market -- more choices would make all providers offer more performance for lower cost.

In what way is the market not "open"? Is your city preventing a company from coming into town and offering fiber?

The reason for lack of competition is that (I'm speaking of the US here) traditionally there were two alternatives, the local phone company and the local cable company. If the phone company didn't offer fiber and DSL was good as it got, the only alternative for fast (>100 Mbps) internet was the cable company.

Now you see fiber companies come in and offer service, but running fiber all over town is expensive and you have to have an expectation of a certain number of customers to make it worth it. If both the telco and cable company are offering high speed service, the only way a fiber competitor can make it work is if they can undercut them on price. If you have a telco, cable and fiber company the odds of it being worth it for a fourth provider coming in making it worth it is very low, unless there are underserved parts of town (or more likely filthy rich parts of town) they can target in a very limited fashion rather than trying to compete across the whole city.

This isn't like opening a restaurant or a gas station where the initial investment is modest and there is always room for one more. If a city already offers high speed internet and the public is mostly satisfied with them, there is little chance of someone else coming in because they will have a hard time recouping their investment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Teaser text error

Traditionally, there were dozens of options. You picked your ISP, and dialed them up.

The FCC tried and failed to make broadband work the same way. Republicans broke it, as usual.

[DS999]

Re: Teaser text error

There were dozens of options with phone lines because they were using the telco's phone network, and multiple options in many places with DSL when DSL was a viable option for the definition of "high speed" at the time, since the telcos were forced to unbundle their copper plant.

There's no way they could have been replicated with cable though - it is a shared medium once you leave fiber so there's no way a cable company should share its plant with third parties as was done for DSL.

So I'm a little confused exactly what you think the republicans "broke" as far as local competition for internet access. Once DSL was no longer viable then it is the cable company versus whoever wants to run fiber.

Now sure some republican state legislatures banned municipal fiber projects, but there were precious few of them in states that did not have such laws so it is hard to argue those laws are responsible for preventing a lot of competition. There's no law in my state against municipal fiber etc. but my city never set it up. I'm not sure of the number but I think you can count the cities that have that in my state on one hand. So yeah in the few places where that was done, if the city didn't operate an ISP itself (which is primarily what the republicans are against) but instead leased the fiber DSL style to third parties, you might see more competition than you do where everyone has to run their own fiber. But if that was such a great model then it would be widespread in the states that don't have laws against it.

[VicMortimer]

Re: Teaser text error

Most of the population of the US can get gigabit. That's been true since at least 2019.

[DS999]

Re: Teaser text error

That doesn't mean there aren't many millions of people who cannot, or can't get it at all. That's what the FCC's broadband standard is about - insuring that companies that take money to help them build out their networks are offering service that's fast enough. The former standard of 25/3 doesn't cut it these days when people want to use stuff like Zoom or stream 4K movies, hence the increase to 100/20 which ISPs will have to offer to qualify for the money to help them extend their networks to unserved/underserved areas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Teaser text error

I beg to differ!

I'm in a neighborhood in a suburb of a major city (in the top 50 most populous US cities). My internet options are:

1. Spectrum cable. $100+/month, speeds "up to" 200 Mbps down, realistically lower than that and have frequent downtime, plus constant billing issues (like getting charged late fees for non-late payments).

2. DSL, one provider. At my house, max speed is 10 Mbps. $50/month.

3. Two different providers for cell-data-as-home-internet. 20-50 Gbps down. $50/month.

If you ask most folks around here about fiber, they're thinking dietary. Gigabit is a pipe dream for most folks here, assuming they've heard of it.

[IvyKing]

Re: Teaser text error

Gigabit was first available two years ago in my city of 50,000 in a county of >3,000,000 and that was for a small portion of the city. The rollout is still in progress. OTOH, most of the city has had 200+Mbps cable modem service for several years now, though uplink speeds were 10Mbps for cable versus 940Mbps for Gigabit fiber.

[Marty McFly]

Still the same Bravo-Sierra game

The big shiny telco phone box down the street is where the service is coming from. Because signals degrade over distance, the further you are from to box, the worse the signal. However, live with the phone box in your back yard and get pretty darn good service. My sister lived on a rural property with the box at the bottom of her driveway and pulled down 60-70 Mbps on DSL no problem. I am 11k wire feet from my phone box and get 6 Mbps on a good day on DSL.

The dirty secret... If just one subscriber gets over 25 Mbps off that phone box, then the telco gets to count the ENTIRE AREA as having that level of service. So under the regulations my 6 Mbps counts as having broadband and meeting the FCC's requirements.

So what will the Telco's do....? A bit of wiring upgrades for the customers closest to the phone box, and get them over the 100 Mbps mark. Then take credit for providing that service to everyone else coming from the box.

That said... How much bandwidth do we really need?? 6 Mbps can stream 1080p video just fine, but it fails for 4k. Yes, if I have a massive download it takes a while. Right now my little geeky household has 22 WiFi devices and 69 Wired devices on the network. Sure the 6 Mbps struggles, but it doesn't fall over.

All 100 Mbps would do is allow more undesired activity to occur - smart devices monitoring all audio, constant telemetry from everything, a continual stream of advertisements to every device. Yuck.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still the same Bravo-Sierra game

They're getting rid of the copper now.

2 of the 4 big ISPs in my town have gone to fiber to the home. They pull the fiber to wherever you want the modem. The other 2 are fiber to the node, then coax. All of them offer gigabit, one of them doesn't even bother offering anything less than gigabit.

The telco (AT&T) won't even sell new DSL where they've got fiber available. And you have to throw a fit if you want a POTS line (it's still a regulated service, so they have to. But they don't want to).

6Mbps would be unworkably slow now. I haven't had internet that slow in nearly 20 years. It's been years since I've had as slow as 100Mbps.

If you don't want devices monitoring your audio, don't install them. If you don't want telemetry to happen, block it. And for f*ck's sake block the ads. Slow internet won't protect you, that's got to be the dumbest thing I've read this week. If you don't filter that crap, your 6 will turn into 0 in a hurry.

[Marty McFly]

Re: Still the same Bravo-Sierra game

>"They're getting rid of the copper now. 2 of the 4 big ISPs in my town ..."

Glad you live in town and have plenty of options. The title of the article is "...rural areas still underserved". No fiber upgrades coming to my area any time soon. No cell service either. Only one ISP to choose from.

The other problem is governments require like-for-like. So it is easy to string new fiber over poles where existing copper hangs. But the world has changed since the copper went in the ground 50-years ago. Back then it was trivial to take a trencher where they needed it, drop in the copper, and push the dirt back. Nowadays they can't dig a hole without an "earth disturbance permit", which makes replacing copper with fiber enormously expensive in rural locations.

Run 300 feet of underground fiber in the suburbs and that can feed 30 apartments, condos, townhomes and other sardine-can living arrangements. Makes it easy to spread the costs around. Run 300 feet in rural America, do it a few more times, and maybe get one house. Difficult to pass along that expense to a single customer.

[ThatOne]

Re: Still the same Bravo-Sierra game

Yet in Europe (most? all?) rural homes have fiber.

The difference was probably that (from what I heard, grain of salt required) many years ago European operators were gently asked to deploy fiber to everyone or else. Bonuses will be lower for a couple years, but I didn't hear that European Internet operators watch they children go to bed weeping from hunger.

_{"We don't care; we don't have to... We're the phone company."}

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Still the same Bravo-Sierra game

> Yet in Europe (most? all?) rural homes have fiber.

No. Please specify which european countries you talk about. The northern have, Switzerland has. Austria has, but not yet as much as Switzerland. Germany? Welcome to the backwater of weirdly lobbied regulation nonsense to prevent it. It is currently on the way, but about a decade behind - at least.

[ThatOne]

Re: Still the same Bravo-Sierra game

I specifically know a couple living in the NE of Germany (in the state of "Niedersachsen") in a house in the middle of the fields, and yet some years ago they got fiber--despite not wanting it! They wanted to keep their old DSL line, which was enough for their needs (older people, so no streaming and such), but the utility guys still installed the fiber to the house "because we're supposed to connect all the houses. You don't need to use it, it's there".

The other three Europeans I know are in France. Two in the capital Paris (obviously fiber), but also a scientist living in a house in the boonies in southern France, several miles from any settlement. And yet he has fiber to the premises (and a very good 5G reception too...).

Long story short, I don't know many people, but not a single of them has anything less than fiber to the premises. Seems to be a case of YMMV.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Still the same Bravo-Sierra game

As for your case of Germany: That fits exactly the "weird regulation" stuff I mentioned. You may not be able to get fibre in the city, but may get it in the outbacks where it does not make sense 'cause "we've been told to do so". Having fibre to the home in the middle of nowhere practically doubled the house value since this is, to some extend, a nerds dream.

Thanks for your response!

[DS999]

Re: Still the same Bravo-Sierra game

The dirty secret... If just one subscriber gets over 25 Mbps off that phone box, then the telco gets to count the ENTIRE AREA as having that level of service

I think the FCC has addressed this, or at least there was a lot of talk about how they were going to address it but I haven't followed closely enough to know for sure whether they followed through or ISPs found another loophole.

[IvyKing]

Re: Still the same Bravo-Sierra game

FWIW, my fiber connection goes direct to the local equivalent of the central office. The "CO" presumably has a much higher speed connection to the internet as a whole.The internet connection for my first ISP was a T1 line - theoretically it would only need 30 56K dial-up connections to saturate that T1 connecting the ISP to the internet backbone.

[Michael Strorm]

The FCC says they've upped their recommended speeds, so...

...up yours!

[Anonymous Coward]

For gods sake, FCC, please make broadband be symmectrical.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that really what most people want or need? I'd assume that the majority download a lot more than they upload.

[Korev]

I've just gone from 600/60Mbs to symmetric Gigabit, I only really notice the increase in upload as my photos backup in no time at all.

[xyz]

FFS

FCC, just bite the bullet, get over the whole "it must be an ISP" thing, and rollout Starlink (or whoever) and everyone will be happy. No ISP is going to drag their ass into the bushes for what you are willing to pay.

Teams or whatever chews through around 6GB a day so mobile is no use and mobile is all Wi-Fi calling these days anyway because there are no tower costs.

My "connection" to Starlink is always >300mbps down and 30mbps up, around 30ms latency and 45€ a month and I don't give a fuck which ISP it hooks up to as long as it works.

[dandandandandan]

Arseumptions are the mother of all ....

"rollout Starlink (or whoever) and everyone will be happy"

No they wont

"Teams or whatever chews through around 6GB a day so mobile is no use"

Sorry you are on a plan from 2015

"and mobile is all Wi-Fi calling these days anyway"

I've used WiFi calling about 3 times in the last year. No one I mention it to has ever heard of it outside of my IT friends