FCC chair: Speed standard of 25Mbps down, 3Mbps up isn’t good enough anymore::Chair proposes 100Mbps national standard and an evaluation of broadband prices.
I have 500Mbps in Spain. Is it that bad in the American cities or is it only like rural Montana that has these speeds?
I live in middle America and oddly enough the rural areas have started getting fiber from utility companies. I live in a town of about 40,000 and the best you can hope for is either DSL from AT&T which is maybe 25Mbps with perfect conditions or Optimum Cable internet which is sold as “Gigabit” that never breaks 400Mbps and cost about $120/mo. I’ve also had to file multiple complaints with the FCC to have issues resolved. My connection for about 6 months was completely unusable when it rained and even after “fixing” the issue I have severely reduced speeds when it rains. It’s an absolute joke and nothing is in place to protect consumers from any of this BS.
It’s widely variable, even in big cities the available ISPs can change depending on what side of a street you’re on. A lot of people are stuck with cable (DOCSIS) providers that run over legacy TV infrastructure and provide wildly asymmetric speeds. This is an excerpt from Xfinity (Comcast):
Xfinity Gigabit Internet service has advanced, next generation technology, with WiFi download speeds of up to 1000 Mbps (up to 1200 Mbps in some areas) and upload speeds of up to 35 Mbps.
There’s a new docsis version right around the corner that will provide symmetric speeds. Comcast is starting to roll it out this year. Cable will be a lot faster in a couple years.
I live in the mountain area, and my friend lives 30m from a multi-million population city, in an area with over 100,000 residents. His best option for internet to this day is hotspotting from his cell. Before that was viable, he only had access to satellite internet. Even semi-rural people here get fucked.
my friend lives 30m from a multi-million population city
It took me a beat to realize this was 30 miles or 30 minutes and not 30 meters.
Ah that’s my bad, should’ve used metric. I meant minutes, but in context it doesn’t really portray that.
Oh, metric isn’t a requirement (although I myself am striving to use it when I remember), just that “m” alone is ambiguous. And in my daily work, a number followed by a single m is meters.
The issue is mostly that it’s highly variable, hard to change without moving, and hard to predict before you actually live somewhere.
The comcast rep will happily take your money to put you on a 200mb plan, but it won’t do shit if the infrastructure in your area is bad, and Comcast (or whoever the isp is) has absolutely zero responsibility to actually provide the promised services. Now you add in that 95% of the population including most of the phone reps working for the ISPs don’t even know the difference between a bit and a byte and it becomes a total crap shoot.
That’s the same here too. My first apartment only had ADSL. In 2015.
I couldn’t even watch Netflix without it stopping to buffer.
I really wish they would put internet speeds on apartment offers etc.
…wow. That’s so shit. Where I live, your internet provider has to have the ability to provide the service or like with every other service provider it’s really open for lawyer action.
This also makes so that internet providers are at the same time keeping their own infrastructure around which in turn makes that yet another selling point (“we have up to 1 gbps in your area!”) and makes them keep it in top-notch condition.
Honestly, it’s highly variable. Generally speaking, more populated areas tend to have much better options for internet and in some large markets even have a degree of competition.
In my case, I live in a town of only 180k or so people. At my home, I am able to get 1.2 gbps download from Comcast. They are the only option in my direct vicinity with this much bandwidth. The alernative is AT&T with only DSL as an option. I don’t remember the top tier. But, it’s considerably slower at maybe 100 mbps or something like that.
I’ve lived in small towns since 2009. 100mps would be a fucking dream come true. The fastest speed I’ve had in the last decade plus is 25mps until we got TMobile home internet, and now I typically get around 50-70. Technically it’s up to 300 with our distance to the tower, but there’s a fucking mountain in between us, so I take what I can get. :/
Can’t figure out how to edit on connect, so I’m just adding:
The best wired internet available to me is dialup (old school 56k, baby). We used a mobile hotspot from PCs for people (if you’re at all low income, seriously check them out. Life changers).
Wow, that’s pretty good for a town of that size. I live in a city of 1.6 Million. I think I might be able to get 1 gbps if I shop around, but I don’t think much more than that is available to normal consumers at least.
Pathetic. The acceptance of this terrible service speed shows how the American public is so isolated they don’t know when they’re being shafted by big business and the politicians the rich and powerful own.
No more lobbying. Institutionalized bribery is killing the American public. Healthcare, food, workplace rights and safety, and quality of services. Everything’s compromised.
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To clear up confusion, 6MBps (MegaByte) down would be equal to 48Mbps (Megabit). So you would be above the mentioned standard.
Or you made typo, then you’re indeed below standard ^^"
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One is a rate of data, the other is an amount.
Mbps means megabits per second.
MB is just megabytes. You can of course turn it into a rate, but then it would be MB/s.
There are 8 bits in a byte, so 100 Mbps would be 12.5 MB/s (divide by 8)
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Here’s an interesting thing- we had Spectrum on copper and we’re semi-rural so it was only about 30/5. Then a local company came in and offered to install fiber in the neighborhood if 40% signed up. Suddenly our Spectrum speeds went up to about 80/10. Then the neighborhood told Spectrum to fuck off and now we have decent fiber speeds. I’m getting 400/400 now and I could get it even faster if I wanted to pay for it.
Yep, typical. Spectrum in my area (like 5-7 years ago) suddenly over doubled everyone’s speeds almost overnight once competition came in. I loved telling them to pound sand as I got symmetrical gigabit installed.
I was so happy when we finally got a 2nd internet provider where I live. Now both providers offer steep discounts to keep customers. I upgraded my 450mpbs coax connection to 1gbps fiber when the new ISP came to town. My promotional period just ran out, so I called the ISP. They set me up with a new promotion for 2gbps at less than the price I was paying for 1gbps, and at the end of the promotional period it’ll be the same price I was paying for the 1gbps service. Competition ftw!
That’s a dream. A pray for even a single competitor on my street.
Yes, let’s pay them to just take the money… for the third time!
Big problem in the USA is infrastructure. Even cable service can be unavailable for people in rural areas. There have been situations where people had to co-op the cost to lay cable to their area. The cable companies won’t spend the money to extend coverage without the return in customer numbers.
Fiber deployment has lagged cable by at least ten years, probably more. It’s a bummer because fiber is greatly better. There are populated areas you still can’t get fiber.
People in rural areas can have problems getting service because there has not been enough government subsidy to deploy infrastructure. In some rural areas the cell network is the only option for service, and not a good one either.
The Obama administration made a call to increase subsidies for the expansion of internet infrastructure, but nothing ever came of it. If the political climate had been the same when they proposed the interstate highway system, we’d all still be driving on dirt roads.
It’s ironic the country that invented the internet has done such a poor job of deploying the infrastructure for it. Other countries are doing a greatly better job. So it doesn’t do much good to increase the standards if it’s not possible for them to apply in the first place.
People in rural areas can have problems getting service because there has not been enough government subsidy to deploy infrastructure.
Technically the Telecommunications Act of 1996 allocated a ton of money for fiber infrastructure, but telecom providers rolled it out in dense urban areas with a lot of customers, bought each other up and then pocketed the extra cash.
Fiber to the premise in rural areas is insanely expensive but I see it like a modern version of the post office. If you want to be able to write a letter to anyone and have it be delivered you need to set the price so that rural customers aren’t paying costs that are orders of magnitude higher.
Let me fix that;
People in rural areas can have problems getting service because there has not been
enoughproper government subsidy to deploy infrastructure.I mean if the feds just toss money at these providers they’ll use it how they please. It should be a matter of government doing what it is necessary to deploy service as widely as possible. Without oversight it’s just giving them free money.
I suppose now that the cell network is able to provide “hotspot” service that could be an out for subsidy, but it sure won’t make a 100Mbps standard. On 4G the best my phone can do is 50Mbps when close to a tower, less when signal strength is lower. You can get much higher speeds on 5G, but it’s even more affected by tower distance. You’re not going to get that in a rural area, same infrastructure problem.
Asymmetric speeds are a disgrace. Internet used to be about exchange of content, ideas and collaboration. You consumed, but also contributed. The overall focus on high download low upload is clearly the sign telcos want Internet to be just a troth of content, not much different from cable tv.
I want fiber internet so bad, I live in a relatively big city for Christ’s sake it shouldn’t take this long
I live in hotels. A good week is when I can measure in Mb and not Kb. A great one is when it’s more than 3mbps on a regular basis.😢
Ajit Pai never raised download speeds? Nooo. You don’t say. Asshole who was against net neutrality didn’t do anything to increase quality of network. Can’t be.
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My connection is 10/2. Please help me
We have 600/600 Mbps… In a third world country smh
