Biden broadband benchmarks are BS, says Trump FCC The next edition of the Federal Communications Commission's broadband expansion progress report is going to paint a rosier reality than usual, if a proposal being put to a vote at next month's meeting gets a pass. The FCC announced the agenda [PDF] for its August meeting late last week, within which were plans [PDF] to change …
Let me guess, you are a European, right?!
Do you have any clue what it would cost to run fiber to places like rural Nebraska in the US? 100's or 1000's of miles? And whose land are you going to plow through to run that fiber? You can't run it above ground because this is tornado alley! Why haven't the big carriers done this and get all those new customers? Because it's not cost effective, they'd have to charge such high rates to offset the cost no one would buy it!
StarLink and other such satellite carriers ARE the answer! We have employees living in remote areas, project sites in areas with no available internet and StarLink works fine! So, what if the satellites need to be replaced, that's not the governments problem, that's StarLink's problem. Give people a tax credit for purchasing the hardware. This just is not a project we should be spending tax dollars on!
This whole Rural Internet was a scam for campaign money! Why has nothing even been done? Because it was never going to get done! By the time you get through all the legal hurdles, they easement cases where people don't want you tearing up their farms, to the environmental lawsuits, the cost even with the subsidies is not workable and certainly will not end up affordable!
Aren't there rural farmer co-operatives who want to deploy a fiber network?
If you can install windmills, laying the power grid cables, necessary to connect those windmills already comes with fiber deployment.
Cable plows do exist.
There are actually areas in Europe where running rural fiber is much more expensive than rural Nebraska. The real problem exists in particular when constructing in forested areas or along roads with trees, because of the (growing as trees do) roots.
The other major problem is rocks. The cost to deploy in the Appalachian Mountains and Adirondacks are far higher per mile and connection outside town borders than rural Nebraska.
... and who can't, because the state has a law banning coop/municipal telecom services, and/or the nominal "incumbent" monopoly refuses to so much as flicker an eyelid at actually bothering to connect people in the village "downtown" (where you're lucky to get a connection that works at all, never mind one at the nominal FCC target speed, but that One Lucky Bastard does in fact have an FCC-specified connection and so the telco can bleat that "We do SO provide that!" in their reporting to the FCC) never mind the 20 miles between villages.
I'm in a similarly sparse region of Canada, and thank $deity we at least "only" suffer from "Yeeeeaaaaahh, that's gonna cost ya $30k to bring the trunk line three poles further to bring a drop to your house" telecom giants. Want to build out a fibre network somewhere underserved? You'll have as many as *three* levels of government falling over themselves to expedite planning and throw money at you to do it.
Who says fiber has to be in the ground? Electric and phone isn't in the ground in rural Nebraska, so why would fiber need to be buried? Yes stringing that along poles when you have counties with a population density of one person per square mile like Hooker County (I used to visit it for golf every summer) is still expensive but if you're talking about INFRASTRUCTURE funding that's what you gotta do.
Nobody is telling people out there they can't use Starlink, but they shouldn't get infrastructure funding for it because zero infrastructure is being built specifically for those people in Hooker County.
100Mbps down might be OK today for a single user - it may become too little if you have more than one person working/studying from home.
And 20Mbps up are acceptable only if you are just a "consumer" of internet traffic - as soon as you need to upload something not so small they are too little.
Being "neutral" doesn't mean to accept the mimumn available technologies can deliver - you fix the speed you regard required in the nearby future, and the providers can use any technology able to deliver that speed. It's ot viceversa, companies set what technology they want to sell, and the authority set the lowest speed they can deliver as the "required" one.
during the pandemic our broadband broke & we had to rely on being tethered to my phone
me: working & attending video calls all day
she: teaching lessons via zoom all day
child: attending video lessons all day.
so 3 of us typically on video calls all day tethered to my mobile. i was typically getting ~70mbs pre pandemic which dropped considerably during the pandemic.
upload via the phone was actually faster than our broadband.
1st network i managed was connected together using frame relay with 2 main sites & typically remote sites connected to HQ @ 256kbs.
Cost ~ £1m a year in carrier fees.
More recently our team of ~ 20 network guys ran our customers network for ~ 3 months using a 20/3mbs dsl connection from our office to connect to their network (~6 DC's 400 WAN connections over 40k users)
anyone who says 100Mbps might be ok has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. If 100mbps is not enough for 1 person then they should pony up the money for something that is appropriate, everyone else will just crack on
It just take one user start a download to kill all the other ones, unless QoS is used. Even an upload can kill downstream traffic if ACKs aren't prioritized. Video calls are within 15-20Mb/s, even less with reduced quality, so you can do that with 100Mb/s - i you don't attempt to stream video at the same time. There are people with some heavier loads...
video calls are not 15-20mbs
~2007 we where rolling out Tandberg video conference units over 3 x dual channel ISDN ~384 kbs.
a teams call should be ~ 3mbs for group calls, 4mbs for HD calls.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4384253/microsoft-teams-bandwidth-requirement
in the office where our wan went offline we used notes internally & that initially syncing would cane the bandwidth but settled down once everyones had caught up.
US ISPs have been caught rigging coverage maps to look like they cover areas that they don't for at least a couple of decades. People complained to the FCC about this since DSL days and nothing was ever done. I waited for years to get AT&T to provide DSL (they never did) and finally gave up and went to cable internet. And this was inside the Dallas city limits. Strangely enough it didn't take long at all to get AT&T fiber internet after they started rolling it out here. It still costs too much, no competition due to rigged coverage maps and bribes (sorry campaign contributions) but at least it's more reliable than cable when real bad Texas thunderstorms cause power outages at least five or six times a year.
the FCC may well decide that morse code is more than adequate for the next 10 years.
Those buggy whip makers that have survived will be planning to expand very soon.
Keep on winning MAGA, you are doing a great job of turning the USA into a 4th world country.
So does the majority of the US... in the rural areas with population density of 1 person per 10 square km do they get 10g speeds?
Thats what this us about, and after Obama failed, Trump 1 failed, Biden failed to get it done after spending tens of billions for the rural areas.... its obvious get can't get it done at those rates and doing something else is about time.
Many states in EU have ongoing projects to deliver high speeds even in rural areas - with fibre cabling. Only very remote buildings can be reached via FWA or satellite. They might not be expecting some private company to lay down the cables, because they won't. So there are public projects to install fibre.
And the max speed on GPON deploys became 2.5GBps on most contracts - because, unlike US - of real competition among providers, even on remote areas. Here a building owner can't impose what tenants could use.
The 10Gbps contratcs are offered in more and more areas, since most OLTs already support them, just change the transceivers - then it's up to the backhauling speed.
It is true US may have more sparse buildings over a large are - but the correct procedure would be to individuate - in a neutral manner - which areas are so remote they can be only covered by radio technlogies (but still they got power and phone lines, because that was profitable), and which are not. Let it to telcos - and but the larger cities everything is not profitabe.
The major stumbling block is the monopolistic nature of the US telcos and the stranglehold that their lobbying has on the state and federal govt.
Telco "oh no, we couldn't possibly provide a connection THERE and still make good profit"
Govt "OK, this other company says it can be done"
Telco "Fine, we will sue you, raise prices on everyone else and stop funding your PAC if you let them do that"
Even here in the UK the govt is having to pay our near monopoly last mile provider to wire up anything that openreach classes as a 'bit hard'.
Ok, so you want to get hard wired internet to a guy whose farm is 500 miles from the nearest moderately sized town where there is a connection point. Between him and the connection point there are 7 farms. You now have to negotiate easement agreements with each of them to dig a trench through their farm and have them grant you an easement that you can invade their land any time you want in case you need to fix things. Most of them don't want you do to this, so they sue to stop you. (COST) Then, the Enviro-Nazis enter the picture, filing lawsuit after lawsuit to stop you again (COST). The after all this additional cost, you get the project done and you are supposed to charge this farmer $60 / month for internet? Sorry, not going to happen! The cost to make a profit is not going to be close to $180, then the farmer says screw you and buys StarLink!
You Euros have absolutely no clue of the vastness of the US heartland!
I think the point of my previous post might have passed you by. And for reference I've lived in the USA but it was not quite that rural as the local big shops were only a 45min drive.
I had not specified a type of connection. My point is that due to the monopolistic history of the US telcos they object to ANYTHING other than them getting paid to do the job.
AT&T and others are pissy that T-mob are working with starlink to provide a satellite phone service and have complained to the FCC. There is also the issue with the whole rural broadband funding where the FCC has refused starlink any subsidies despite the fact that, however much you hate the guy behind it all, they CAN connect these rural places, can do it quicker AND can do it CHEAPER than the local wired carrier.
Broadband and mobile pricing in the US is bloody insane. The inlaws cannot comprehend just how little we pay on the other side of the pond. For the amount that the US providers get paid from their customers and from the govt the service should be far superior!
**** Ok, so you want to get hard wired internet to a guy whose farm is 500 miles from the nearest moderately sized town where there is a connection point.
Bullshit. Where is this mythical farm that is 500 miles from any town? I'll bet he's got electricity thanks to the REA. If he can get electricity he can get internet.
**** You Euros have absolutely no clue of the vastness of the US heartland!
Neither do you apparently.
I am quite interested to see you pinpoint a farm 500 miles away from a moderately sized town, even in the USA.
But to grasp how issues like this were done without any substantive government funding: farmer co-operatives!
Iowa is actually quite famous for that approach.
And in 1999 I already got presentations about rural fiber roll out in Gant County in Washington State. They did that with the Bonneville Power Administration.
In the USA around 2000 40% of land area is served by telecom co-operatives. They operate in the far more difficult areas and were already deploying fiber at main routes in the 1990s.
The real issue for connections and spurs in terms of cost is with trees and roots, as well as digging in rocky areas or passing riverbeds with flood zones.
It is not a big issue to plow cables along a rural road in prairies.
Also other farmers who don't want to co-operate and obstruct fellow farmers are quite the exception.
In particular it is an exception as farmers have tractors which can pull the plows for a trench to install cables and ducts.
They don't need a construction company to do the most expensive part: trenching and supply their own labor.
Trenching with cable plows to install a duct is quite familiar technology for any farmer familiar with irrigation and water regulation on their fields.
I can't remember the name of the town but somewhere wanted to go full fibre really early on in the whole broadband thing and the town was going to form a non-profit co-op type to do it and the local fixed line telco went mental and got it blocked through the courts. Mid 2000s from memory.
In reference to someone elses mention of rural electrification, the generating companies are likely not too worried about you putting up your own poles cos you've still got to buy the elec from them. Its effectively more profitable for them. Also the handling of the cables is a lot simpler, jointing, insulating etc.
Even here in the UK the govt is having to pay our near monopoly last mile provider to wire up anything that openreach classes as a 'bit hard'
CityFibre are expanding quite quickly - my Zen connection used to be 900/100 (which is the fastest that OpenWoe would provide). Zen then signed up with CityFibre (who had cabled my area a year or so ago) so now I get 900/900 for £25 less than I was paying with Zen/Openreach.
CityFibre were MEANT to cable up my parent's place by 2025, first operator to announce they were connecting their town, 5 years on - Openreach have been in and cabled the town, Gofibre have covered most of the town, Nexfibre/VMO2 have made strides in laying out their network from scratch and Cityfibre now have no mention of my parent's town, and even asking them to provide an update on their intentions just gets a standardised reply.
This is the Market at work.
The companies in question maximised their profits and their senior executives were richly rewarded.
What is the problem here?
Isn't this capitalism working as advertised?
Or can it be that the Free Market is not the best way to roll out infrastructure?
Here the areas where the state is deploying fibre are exactly called "market failure areas" - since they are not regarded profitable enough by private companies (often they are not so little profitable, but the effort to cable is higher when there only high-rise buildings).
Unregulated free market never worked but to enrich a few damaging many. Free market works were there is working regulated competition. Otherwise it fails. There are systems like large scale infrastrutures which aren't profitable enough, or in relatively small timeframes, to be appealing to private companies which now have an horizon limited to next quarter.
So public intervention may become needed. It's better to use taxpayer money to build infrastructure needed by the same taxpayers, then using them to bail out banks and insurances that made too risky bets and lost. Or subsidize companies that will take money and won't deliver antything. or just very little just to say they did something.
After all the New Deal meant also infrastructure building to improve and modernize the life of many who would have been reached far later is they had to wait on private companies only.
If people have ready access to the Internet and can roam at will then they may stumble across 'off-message' news sites telling the truth about politicians. If the connectivity is so poor that you give up and rely on broadcast news channels then it is easier to control your viewing options.
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