News FCC Chair Aims to Boost Minimum Broadband Speeds to 100/20 Mbps

[Admin]

Recent events and changes to peoples' work/life activity have shown the current 25/3 Mbps definition of broadband is inadequate, reckons the FCC Chairwoman.

FCC Chair Aims to Boost Minimum Broadband Speeds to 100/20 Mbps : Read more

 

[gggplaya]

" and we think you might agree, the FCC’s 25/3 metric is very much behind the times. "

No, actually I don't agree. 25mbps is actually fine as long as you're using a router with a good QOS traffic shaping algorithm like FQ_Codel or Cake. Eero uses this on their routers, so does the IQ router and some Asus routers that can load Merlin firmware. It's standard on DDWRT firmware now and available on OpenWRT as well. 25mbps is enough for 4k video and plenty enough for gaming, although game updates will take a bit longer.

3mbps upload is a little slow, I'd like to see that moved to 6 or 10mbps.

With multiple kids schooling from home, the upload bandwidth was a real issue.

But with emerging technnologies like Starlink being under 100mbps at certain times, but able to serve rural communities. DSL in many places limited to about 25-40mbps. Microwave broadband WISP providers at 10-50mbps. As well at ATSC 3.0 internet possibly in the future. There's no easy way to roll 100mpbs+ internet to these low density communities without the government stepping in to pay for it or subsidize it. You would never actually recover the cost to install fiber or cable when the population has such low density.

Most urban areas have cable internet available to them.

Instead the FCC needs to focus on delivering the current broadband speeds to EVERY household. Not all households can get it, and I know people dying to get more than 3mbps internet, or stuck on super expensive hughsnet. Starlink is an answer, the other answer I think is microwave broadband WISP. If the FCC would back setting up more WISP providers, perhaps by having the government pay for towers in rural areas, then everyone would have access to the current broadband speeds.

 

[Makaveli]

" and we think you might agree, the FCC’s 25/3 metric is very much behind the times. "

No, actually I don't agree. 25mbps is actually find as long as you're using a router with a good QOS traffic shaping algorithm like FQ_Codel or Cake. Eero uses this on their routers, so does the IQ router and some Asus routers that can load Merlin firmware. It's standard on DDWRT firmware now and available on OpenWRT as well. 25mbps is enough for 4k video and plenty enough for gaming, although game updates will take a bit longer.

3mbps upload is a little slow, I'd like to see that moved to 6 or 10mbps.

With multiple kids schooling from home, the upload bandwidth was a real issue.

But with emerging technnologies like Starlink being under 100mbps at time, but able to serve rural communities. DSL in many places limited to about 25-40mbps. Microwave broadband WISP providers at 10-50mbps. As well at ATSC 3.0 internet possibly in the future. There's no easy way to roll 100mpbs+ internet to these low density communities without the government stepping in to pay for it or subsidize it. You would never actually recover the cost to install fiber or cable when the population has such low density.

Most urban areas have cable internet available to them.

Instead the FCC needs to focus on delivering the current broadband speeds to EVERY household. Not all households can get it, and I know people dying to get more than 3mbps internet, or stuck on super expensive hughsnet. Starlink is an answer, the other answer I think is microwave broadband WISP. If the FCC would back setting up more WISP providers, perhaps by having the government pay for towers in rural areas, then everyone would have access to the current broadband speeds.

25mbps is not enough, maybe 20 years ago but certainly not now. 3 Mbps up is also a joke, it seems these numbers have been chosen so all the cable providers can keep pushing out the plans with low uploads. The standard should be 100/100 which will force all of the cable providers to go mid split from low.

With 25mbps you will be waiting days to downloads 50-60GB games on steam. Forget about Icloud backups at 3mbps heck forget about uploading anything anywhere at those speeds.\

Starlink is the answer for rural not for densely populated urban area's they don't have the bandwidth for that.

I can't believe how bad internet is in the US. Some third world countries have it better.

 

[InvalidError]

There's no easy way to roll 100mpbs+ internet to these low density communities without the government stepping in to pay for it or subsidize it.

Copper land lines and coax are more expensive to maintain and operate than fiber yet most rural areas still have at least one if not both of those. Companies that are already there could definitely do it on their own dime if they actually wanted to, though most prefer just milking whatever they currently have until it breaks beyond economical repair before doing enacting any real change.

With 25mbps you will be waiting days to downloads 50-60GB games on steam. Forget about Icloud backups at 3mbps heck forget about uploading anything anywhere at those speeds.

If significantly faster internet comes at significantly higher prices, then there will be a large number of people who are not going to bother with it. I'm doing mostly fine on my 7Mbps DSL as a single guy and I'm not going to waste $200+/year extra on internet access for speed I may wish I had only for a few hours in any given year.

 

[Makaveli]

Copper land lines and coax are more expensive to maintain and operate than fiber yet most rural areas still have at least one if not both of those. Companies that are already there could definitely do it on their own dime if they actually wanted to, though most prefer just milking whatever they currently have until it breaks beyond economical repair before doing enacting any real change.


If significantly faster internet comes at significantly higher prices, then there will be a large number of people who are not going to bother with it. I'm doing mostly fine on my 7Mbps DSL as a single guy and I'm not going to waste $200+/year extra on internet access for speed I may wish I had only for a few hours in any given year.

Well yes to each his own.

My career is in IT and I have a Fiber connection but I also used cable internet for like 15 years prior to switching to fiber. I couldn't use a 25mbps connection based on my needs I'm not single but I do live alone and I sit on a 1Gbps / 800mbps up connection. Its not just Bandwidth its also latency and the stability of the connection. I've not had a single outage on fiber in almost 4 years. On cable probably has 2-3 a year on a regular.

I understand there is a cost to roll out to rural area's where the ROI isn't attractive.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

25mbps is not enough, maybe 20 years ago but certainly not now. 3 Mbps up is also a joke, it seems these numbers have been chosen so all the cable providers can keep pushing out the plans with low uploads. The standard should be 100/100 which will force all of the cable providers to go mid split from low.

With 25mbps you will be waiting days to downloads 50-60GB games on steam. Forget about Icloud backups at 3mbps heck forget about uploading anything anywhere at those speeds.\

Starlink is the answer for rural not for densely populated urban area's they don't have the bandwidth for that.

I can't believe how bad internet is in the US. Some third world countries have it better.

Where do you live? Because rural is the big problem, and probably 80-90 percent of the land area of the US could be categorized as "rural." Even if only a third of the people live in rural areas, getting good internet service to everyone is very difficult and expensive. StarLink might be the answer for such people, but it's also quite expensive and many rural people don't really want to have high speed internet.

As to the OP, 25Mbps is what I had back in 2000. It was okay then, but I was very happy when I upgraded to 100Mbps. And I was even happier when I moved to (somewhat rural) Colorado last year and went from paying Xfinity (Comcast) $108 per month for 400/12 Mbps service to TDR for $93 per month for 1000/20 Mbps. But I'd really, REALLY like a lot more upstream bandwidth. It's simply not offered, unless you switch to a business plan that costs twice as much and gives you 75/75 Mbps symmetrical. Fiber is supposedly in the works, so hopefully I can move to that eventually.

Anyway, 25/3 Mbps is usable for some things, sure, but it's not a great experience on a lot of other things. A single Zoom stream is typically 2 Mbps upstream. Many streaming movie and TV services are at least 15-20 Mbps for a single show. Downloading a 100GB game, which there are quite a few such titles now, would require nine hours of continuous 100% use, though, not the "days" suggested by Makaveli. (100GB = 100,000 MB. 25 Mbps = 3.125 MB/s. 100,000 / 3.125 = 32000 seconds. 3600 seconds per hour = 8.888 hours.)

@InvalidError : I don't know how you can get by with 7 Mbps. That basically eliminates most video streaming, online gaming's a crapshoot, I definitely couldn't work from home with 7 Mbps. I mean, it's fine that you can live with it, but wow. For someone as active as you are on the TH forums, I'm very surprised you're okay with 7 Mpbs!

 

[gggplaya]

25mbps is not enough, maybe 20 years ago but certainly not now. 3 Mbps up is also a joke, it seems these numbers have been chosen so all the cable providers can keep pushing out the plans with low uploads. The standard should be 100/100 which will force all of the cable providers to go mid split from low.

With 25mbps you will be waiting days to downloads 50-60GB games on steam. Forget about Icloud backups at 3mbps heck forget about uploading anything anywhere at those speeds.\

Starlink is the answer for rural not for densely populated urban area's they don't have the bandwidth for that.

I can't believe how bad internet is in the US. Some third world countries have it better.

I have gigabit internet, Comcast has mostly upgraded their entire network to handle above 100mbps. Maybe the most rural areas don't have the capacity.

25mbps will take about 10 hours to download a 100GB game.

Internet in the United states isn't that bad, our land mass is huge. We are a vast country and the suburbs and urban areas are well served with internet. It's just the rural areas that struggle with internet. The UK internet is horrible compared to the U.S.. They never really had the massive rollout of cable tv like we did in the 80's, so most households are stuck using what they call fiber to the cabinet(FTTC). From the neighborhood cabinet, they use copper telephones lines to the house and they tend to max out at 80mbps for the best cases. Internet there is not great, even in densely populated areas.

 

[Makaveli]

Where do you live? Because rural is the big problem, and probably 80-90 percent of the land area of the US could be categorized as "rural." Even if only a third of the people live in rural areas, getting good internet service to everyone is very difficult and expensive. StarLink might be the answer for such people, but it's also quite expensive and many rural people don't really want to have high speed internet.

As to the OP, 25Mbps is what I had back in 2000. It was okay then, but I was very happy when I upgraded to 100Mbps. And I was even happier when I moved to (somewhat rural) Colorado last year and went from paying Xfinity (Comcast) $108 per month for 400/12 Mbps service to TDR for $93 per month for 1000/20 Mbps. But I'd really, REALLY like a lot more upstream bandwidth. It's simply not offered, unless you switch to a business plan that costs twice as much and gives you 75/75 Mbps symmetrical. Fiber is supposedly in the works, so hopefully I can move to that eventually.

Anyway, 25/3 Mbps is usable for some things, sure, but it's not a great experience on a lot of other things. A single Zoom stream is typically 2 Mbps upstream. Many streaming movie and TV services are at least 15-20 Mbps for a single show. Downloading a 100GB game, which there are quite a few such titles now, would require nine hours of continuous 100% use, though, not the "days" suggested by Makaveli. (100GB = 100,000 MB. 25 Mbps = 3.125 MB/s. 100,000 / 3.125 = 32000 seconds. 3600 seconds per hour = 8.888 hours.)

@InvalidError : I don't know how you can get by with 7 Mbps. That basically eliminates most video streaming, online gaming's a crapshoot, I definitely couldn't work from home with 7 Mbps. I mean, it's fine that you can live with it, but wow. For someone as active as you are on the TH forums, I'm very surprised you're okay with 7 Mpbs!

I live in downtown Toronto Canada so yes I do have better options living in the city.

And yes rural is an issue but I think Starlink is the best option for those folks it just needs to get abit cheaper.

I have gigabit internet, Comcast has mostly upgraded their entire network to handle above 100mbps. Maybe the most rural areas don't have the capacity.

25mbps will take about 10 hours to download a 100GB game.

Internet in the United states isn't that bad, our land mass is huge. We are a vast country and the suburbs and urban areas are well served with internet. It's just the rural areas that struggle with internet. The UK internet is horrible compared to the U.S.. They never really had the massive rollout of cable tv like we did in the 80's, so most households are stuck using what they call fiber to the cabinet(FTTC). From the neighborhood cabinet, they use copper telephones lines to the house and they tend to max out at 80mbps for the best cases. Internet there is not great, even in densely populated areas.

If comcast 1gbps plan is still 35mbps up they are on a low split and there is no way you are getting 100mbps on coaxial cable with them.

And ya buddy I ain't waiting 10 hours to download a 100GB game. On my connection I can do that in like 15 mins then I can spend 2 hours playing the game. Then get a shower have dinner watch a movie. While that download is still running on 25mbps...

 

[InvalidError]

@InvalidError : I don't know how you can get by with 7 Mbps. That basically eliminates most video streaming, online gaming's a crapshoot, I definitely couldn't work from home with 7 Mbps. I mean, it's fine that you can live with it, but wow. For someone as active as you are on the TH forums, I'm very surprised you're okay with 7 Mpbs!

Streaming up to 1080p works perfectly fine in most places as long as I'm not doing much else at the same time, though most of my streaming is news as background noise and I set that to 360p. The only multi-player game I play is WoW and that peaks at about 2Mbps downstream, so no issue there either. Most of my work is reading spec sheets and writing, not much bandwidth needed for that.

 

[gggplaya]

Copper land lines and coax are more expensive to maintain and operate than fiber yet most rural areas still have at least one if not both of those. Companies that are already there could definitely do it on their own dime if they actually wanted to, though most prefer just milking whatever they currently have until it breaks beyond economical repair before doing enacting any real change.

That's why I think Microwave broadband is a good solution. I explored becoming a WISP provider and it doesn't take much to become one. The biggest 2 hurdles are getting a fiber company to run a fiber line to your main tower and getting a giant tower installed or renting tower space. If the government would take care of those 2 hurdles, then becoming a wisp provider would be easy and you can have mom and pop shops providing broadband to rural areas with reasonable speeds at reasonable prices.

I live in downtown Toronto Canada so yes I do have better options living in the city.

And yes rural is an issue but I think Starlink is the best option for those folks it just needs to get abit cheaper.

What's the internet like in Canada outside an urban city? I remember watching a tv special of Canadians complaining about their internet a few years ago. I was amazed at how bad it was compared to the united states, and at double the cost.

Australia is also a large and vast country, and I know from friends that their internet is really bad as well.

I'm in the U.S. I technically live in a rural area because my house qualified for a USDA home loan. I'm 2 hours from a major city and well outside the surburbs. I get 1200mbps from comcast and 40mbps upload for $80/mo.

 

[Peter_Bollwerk]

I'm still frustrated that we haven't started treating broadband like a utility. It's as necessary as electricity and arguably more needed than land lines.
I don't necessarily think we need 100/20 as the minimum, but we need guaranteed broadband service to 99+% of homes in the US.
It should be part of our infrastructure and the federal government can subsidize it, if needed.
I'm almost certain there would be a good ROI on this investment, as it opens up options for people to remotely work ANYWHERE, making for less traffic/etc in cities.

 

[USAFRet]

With 25mbps you will be waiting days to downloads 50-60GB games on steam. Forget about Icloud backups at 3mbps heck forget about uploading anything anywhere at those speeds.\

Not everyone does that.

I'll bet, of the 9 houses on my street, exactly 1 house has done that in the last year.
Me.

I have 100/100 FiOS, and see no need to go up to gigabit.

 

[gggplaya]

Not everyone does that.

I'll bet, of the 9 houses on my street, exactly 1 house has done that in the last year.
Me.

I have 100/100 FiOS, and see no need to go up to gigabit.

Yep, most people I know just stream netflix and surf facebook or whatever social media. 25mbps is perfectly fine for them. It's mostly just the kids that download games that large on a regular basis, or young adults. If I download a game, it'll just be an update which is usually much smaller. I tend to play the same game for months.

The FCC's focus needs to be on facilitating access to their their current 25mbps definition to EVERY household. For remote work, I think they should raise the minimum upload speed to 6-10mbps. But I think the 25mbps download as the "MINIMUM" is fine. Most people don't need more than 25mbps.

 

[Makaveli]

That's why I think Microwave broadband is a good solution. I explored becoming a WISP provider and it doesn't take much to become one. The biggest 2 hurdles are getting a fiber company to run a fiber line to your main tower and getting a giant tower installed or renting tower space. If the government would take care of those 2 hurdles, then becoming a wisp provider would be easy and you can have mom and pop shops providing broadband to rural areas with reasonable speeds at reasonable prices.



What's the internet like in Canada outside an urban city? I remember watching a tv special of Canadians complaining about their internet a few years ago. I was amazed at how bad it was compared to the united states, and at double the cost.

Australia is also a large and vast country, and I know from friends that their internet is really bad as well.

All rural area's will have crap offerings for internet. Doesn't matter if its US / Canada / UK. The ISP don't want to invest in area's where they see the ROI being low.

You also cannot do direct price comparison since dollar value is different.

 

[hotaru251]

i pay too much and only get 800 down and 20 up....i'd gladly offer half my dl for even 100 up...

 

[Integr8d]

but it's also quite expensive and many rural people don't really want to have high speed internet.

This…

The FCC proposal is just another high-minded projection of the needs of one set of people onto another set of people. They’ll spend billions of dollars rolling this crap out and then… maybe 5 people will upgrade... and 3 of them will get busted in an illegal porn ring.

Here’s the deal; if you live in a rural area: you don’t have to deal with insane traffic, insane taxes, insane real estate prices, homeless people taking dumps in your front yard or breaking into your cars... all of the joys we get to experience in LA. But you may have to wait a few more days for your Amazon Prime delivery or pay a few more bucks for your internet. That’s the trade-off.

Tell this lady to stop WASTING TAX DOLLARS…

 

[Makaveli]

i pay too much and only get 800 down and 20 up....i'd gladly offer half my dl for even 100 up...

Yup most people are so use to asynchronous internet connections because that is what Cable has been pushing for decades.

Its not until you actually use a connection that has better uploads that you will see how limited you were.

If you are on a 1Gbps/35mbps connection uploading at full speeds will affect your download speed.

And downloading at 1Gbps will use a good chuck of that 35mbps just for ACK Packets.

Its 2022 and its time to move away from the asynchronous connections.

Here is a typical Cable 1Gbps internet package upload speeds totally hidden because they know they are poor!!

 

[Giroro]

Yup most people are so use to asynchronous internet connections because that is what Cable has been pushing for decades.

Its not until you actually use a connection that has better uploads that you will see how limited you were.

If you are on a 1Gbps/35mbps connection uploading at full speeds will affect your download speed.

And downloading at 1Gbps will use a good chuck of that 35mbps just for ACK Packets.

Its 2022 and its time to move away from the asynchronous connections.

Here is a typical Cable 1Gbps internet package upload speeds totally hidden because they know they are poor!!

I'm on that "gigabit" package, although I pay far more for it due to Comcast's true monopoly in my neighborhood. But I occasionally have to upload 4k video, and it was the only way to get a "barely usable" 45mbps.
Although packages like this are largely a scam, since very few of their home customers have the equipment to take advantage of speeds that exceed a 1Gbps ethernet connection.
But I would pay the same amount of money if the plan were even 400/200, despite the fact the overall throughput is essentially halved from the plan I'm on.
But you can't expect customer choice from a government enforced monopoly. You can't even expect them to teach their salespeople the "this might actually be criminal fraud" level difference between telling customers "bit" and "byte", because nobody has lawyers powerful enough to do anything about it.

 

[aalkjsdflkj]

Yep, most people I know just stream netflix and surf facebook or whatever social media. 25mbps is perfectly fine for them. It's mostly just the kids that download games that large on a regular basis, or young adults. If I download a game, it'll just be an update which is usually much smaller. I tend to play the same game for months.

The FCC's focus needs to be on facilitating access to their their current 25mbps definition to EVERY household. For remote work, I think they should raise the minimum upload speed to 6-10mbps. But I think the 25mbps download as the "MINIMUM" is fine. Most people don't need more than 25mbps.

I agree 100%. The question is one of a national MINIMUM, and 25/3 seems like a perfectly reasonable minimum to me, or 25/6-10 as you suggest. I currently pay about $30 a month for 40/5 and it's more than adequate for everything I do. I'm certain I could get by just fine with 25/3. Sure, if I want to download a game I usually try to schedule it for overnight or another time when the TV isn't streaming, but that's the extent of the hassle we have to deal with. Streaming is fine, video calls are fine. I'd much rather see the difficulties my family in rural areas deal with addressed rather than setting a minimum that's way beyond what most people need. I worry that by setting such a high minimum that internet access will be less affordable to people on low incomes.

 

[Unolocogringo]

For those of us who do not live in the cities or suburbs internet is mediocre at best.

Ihave the very best DSL available to me. 50/2 but in reality 40/1.75.
We have an AirBnB rental 300 yards up the road and max for it from them is 25/1.
I am slightly over .8 miles from the closest switch box.
I have Windstream which has a monopoly over my area . So no other choice.

 

[gggplaya]

For those of us who do not live in the cities or suburbs internet is mediocre at best.

Ihave the very best DSL available to me. 50/2 but in reality 40/1.75.
We have an AirBnB rental 300 yards up the road and max for it from them is 25/1.
I am slightly over .8 miles from the closest switch box.
I have Windstream which has a monopoly over my area . So no other choice.

If the upload were better, you would be fine.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

I would say they should do three things:

1) Define "High speed" as 25/8 and "Broadband" as 50/16 MINIMUM SUSTAINED SPEEDS, meaning if they dip below this at any time a customer does not have access to those definitions of levels of internet, and the ISP will be in breach of contract and the customer entitled to a rebate for the entire day's service. This way when an ISP advertises "high speed" and "broadband", customers will know they are buying into a minimum standard that is fast enough in 2022 for internet activities, and the ISPs will be held responsible for their crappy networks not being up to par.

2) Prohibit ISPs from advertising in such a way as to infer that the maximum internet speed of the package is the typical speed of the package, so that while they can sell, say, "Gigabit Intetnet 1000mbps", they must state in the same size lettering the "Typical" internet speed, which is very relevant for non fiber services.

3) Penalize ISPs who fail to provide the defined minimums of High Speed and Broadband with monetary fines.


It's 2022, 25/8 is about the minimum speed you need to do anything with internet you see advertised as "High Speed". Telecoms have been getting paid by the government with our tax money for years to expand their services and they haven't, it's time to hold them liable. And while they're at it they can attack the Big 3 for their lousy cell phone coverages.

 

[InvalidError]

1) Define "High speed" as 25/8 and "Broadband" as 50/16 MINIMUM SUSTAINED SPEEDS, meaning if they dip below this at any time a customer does not have access to those definitions of levels of internet, and the ISP will be in breach of contract

It is impossible for ISPs to guarantee any particular speed since speed can be affected by factors beyond the ISPs' control such as server-side constraints at the other endpoint.

The internet as a whole is designed around "best effort" routing where the IETF's definition of "best effort" provides no guarantees whatsoever, you just get to use network providers' spare bandwidth after all of their premium grade services (ex.: OCxxx and their metro-Ethernet counterparts) are provided for including all of the necessary over-provisioning for redundancy and projected growth. The only IETF traffic class with worse priority than "best effort" (normal priority) is "background" (stuff like file transfers for networks and software that can be bothered to flag them as such) which is only allowed to use whatever is left after everything else.

If networks had to be built to guarantee a high (50+Mbps) worst-case speed from any point to any other point worldwide under all circumstances, telecomms costs would increase drastically. It would also proportionately increase the power of DDoS attacks to bring down ISPs and online services.

 

[USAFRet]

1) Define "High speed" as 25/8 and "Broadband" as 50/16 MINIMUM SUSTAINED SPEEDS, meaning if they dip below this at any time a customer does not have access to those definitions of levels of internet, and the ISP will be in breach of contract and the customer entitled to a rebate for the entire day's service.

Tested and defined where?

 

[wr3zzz]

US broadband "minimum" is a joke as it lacks any enforcement power compared to other countries. All it does is that telco companies cannot use "broadband" in its advertisement. Almost 1 million households in NYC alone, including my parents, have been stuck in ADSL which is ~15 Mbps if you are lucky because Verizon kept snowballing "to the door" FiOS orders while its lawyers stalled the city on its monopopy contract to "wire the whole city" with FiOS by 2015. This is NYC which actually had a legal binding contract that Verizon just ignored. My parents finally got T-Mobile 5G for home this year ASAP which gets to around 35-50Mbps. Under the new FCC rule T-Mobile just need to drop broadband in its advertisments instead of raising speed because Verizon and ATT both have local fixed line monopolies no longer being upgraded and wont bring their 5G Home services to NYC any time soon. Rural communities are <Mod Edit> out of luck if they are deemed not worthy to have 5G regardless whatever FCC says broadband is.