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Cable Fights FCC's New 25 Mbps Broadband Definition

We've noted how the FCC has been working hard to increase the minimum definition of broadband from 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up to 25 Mbps down to 3 Mbps up. As part of that push the agency has been making the rounds noting how roughly two-thirds of American households don't have more than one choice at speeds above 25 Mbps. Not too surprisingly the broadband industry isn't a fan of a change that will highlight the lack of competition in the market, and has been vocally complaining about the standard price hike.

It was the cable industry's turn to complain last week, an NCTA filing with the FCC (via Multichannel News) complaining that the need for 25 Mbps is only "theoretical" (because who would want to be forward-looking, right?):

quote:
...the two parties that specifically urge the Commission to adopt a download speed benchmark of 25 Mbps—Netflix and Public Knowledge—both offer examples of applications that go well beyond the “current” and “regular” uses that ordinarily inform the Commission’s inquiry under Section 706. Netflix, for instance, bases its call for a 25 Mbps download threshold on what it believes consumers need for streaming 4K and ultra-HD video content—despite the fact that only a tiny fraction of consumers use their broadband connections in this manner,10 and notwithstanding the consensus among others in the industry that 25 Mbps is significantly more bandwidth than is needed for 4K streaming.
Given that cable's biggest competitor, phone company DSL, usually can't support these kinds of speeds, you'd think cable companies would be in favor of a faster standard. After all, DOCSIS 3.0 (and soon 3.1) can offer speeds significantly faster, for much less money, than most DSL lines can. But it's not actually being able to provide the speeds that cable is worried about.

To legally justify its upcoming net neutrality rules and efforts to pre-empt protectionist state broadband law, the FCC intends to lean heavily on its Congressional mandate to ensure broadband's being deployed in a "reasonable and timely" timeframe. Highlighting that there's no competition at speeds above 25 Mbps gives the FCC ample ammo in that fight, and the cable industry knows it.
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TIGERON
join:2008-03-11
Boston, MA

TIGERON

Member

the fight has just begun

I'm leading the charge in my town to get either another broadband provider in or have the town wire themselves. I have had with this duopoly bullshit people are forced told deal with. There are better solutions out there.
firedrakes
join:2009-01-29
Arcadia, FL

firedrakes

Member

Re: the fight has just begun

i going to do that to. seeing only 1 isp is in town atm

fg8578
join:2009-04-26
San Antonio, TX

fg8578 to TIGERON

Member

to TIGERON
said by TIGERON:

I'm leading the charge in my town to get either another broadband provider in or have the town wire themselves. I have had with this duopoly bullshit people are forced told deal with. There are better solutions out there.

That's great. Keep us informed as to your progress.
tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Brooklyn, NY

tmc8080

Member

Re: the fight has just begun

+1

NetAficionad
@208.93.35.x

1 recommendation

NetAficionad to TIGERON

Anon

to TIGERON
Check out crowdfiber.com for organizing free community campaigns!

Cthen
Premium Member
join:2004-08-01
Detroit, MI

Cthen

Premium Member

Ya don't say....

quote:
Not too surprisingly the broadband industry isn't a fan of a change that will highlight the lack of competition in the market, and has been vocally complaining about the standard price hike.
They don't like price hikes huh? Well who would have thunk that?

camper
just visiting this planet
Premium Member
join:2010-03-21
Bethel, CT

1 edit

camper

Premium Member

It's unfortunate...

It's unfortunate that the major ISPs in this country are also cableTV providers.

That conflict of interest alters the goals of those ISPs, i.e., instead of having the goal of providing excellent ISP services to their customers, the ISP/cableTV company instead has the goal of protecting its cableTV business from video-over-IP providers.

So anything that allows customer to use video-over-IP services more easily and with higher quality will be fought tooth and nail by the cableTV companies. From the cableTV company's point of view, it is easier and less expensive to fight competition via legislation and lobbying.

KennyWest
@sbcglobal.net

KennyWest

Anon

Re: It's unfortunate...

Anyone is free to form s co-op or another form of company and build out. After all VZ and ATT will sell ya some customers. Rebuild the area with FTTH. If all the ones on here wanted to change the way the HSI service is here in the States could have already built many areas with FTTH by purcasing areas and overbuilding. But crying and demanding new laws and taxes is easier.

camper
just visiting this planet
Premium Member
join:2010-03-21
Bethel, CT

1 recommendation

camper

Premium Member

Re: It's unfortunate...

said by KennyWest :

Anyone is free to form s co-op or another form of company and build out.

 
Not really.

The incumbent ISPs/cableTV providers have been paying to pass legislation (and have passed legislation) to prevent competition.

So the question lingers, hanging there in the air, why are the ISPs/cableTV providers so afraid of competition that they write state laws to prevent competition?
Kearnstd
Space Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ

3 recommendations

Kearnstd

Premium Member

Re: It's unfortunate...

even more baffling is that they write the laws to strike at communities they have no intention of bringing out of the 1990s anyway. they claim x town of 5000 is not profitable, But they claim town of 5000 running its own broadband is unfair...

camper
just visiting this planet
Premium Member
join:2010-03-21
Bethel, CT

camper to KennyWest

Premium Member

to KennyWest
said by KennyWest :

Anyone is free to form s co-op or another form of company and build out.

 

It certainly makes one wonder why Comcast is so afraid of talking with its customers that it no longer supports the customer support forum here.

Why is Comcast so afraid of engaging with its customers?

(my spell-checker suggested "compost" for "comcast" Hmmmm....)
Mr Matt
join:2008-01-29
Eustis, FL

Mr Matt to KennyWest

Member

to KennyWest
said by KennyWest :

But crying and demanding new laws and taxes is easier.

Which ISP are you employed by? You may forget or are to young to remember that when the manufactures of cable and DSL modems introduced their products in the late 90's they advertised NO NEW WIRES. TELEPHONE and CABLE did not have to create new infrastructure. Broadband service was just an add on to their existing facilities (CHEAP). Competitors have to start from scratch not just adding a modem here and a server there but building out a physical network.

If the State can spend around a Billion dollars to construct a few miles of a new road, a Billion dollars would probably cover the cost to wire the entire country. It appears that incumbent ISP's are using the airlines M.O. When an attempt is made to introduce a competitive network, the incumbents will lower prices to the point where the competitive network cannot afford to continue to operate.
TheRogueX
join:2003-03-26
Springfield, MO

TheRogueX to KennyWest

Member

to KennyWest
lol, that's hilarious.

No, not just anyone is free to form a co-op and build out. 1) Money. 2) Incumbents find ways to shut them down.

elios
join:2005-11-15
Springfield, MO

elios to camper

Member

to camper
kinda like the oil co. and railroads in the early 1900's eh
if only we had laws to deal with that....
andre2
join:2005-08-24
Brookline, MA

andre2

Member

Can't have people using broadband for video

quote:
despite the fact that only a tiny fraction of consumers use their broadband connections in this manner,

And we want to keep it that way.

ARGONAUT
Have a nice day.
Premium Member
join:2006-01-24
New Albany, IN

ARGONAUT

Premium Member

This is

Stupid corporate greed will kill the tubes.
ham3843
join:2015-01-15
USA

ham3843

Member

Re: This is

said by ARGONAUT:

Stupid corporate greed will kill the tubes.

The only thing to counter that is strong gov't regulation,
which truly will benefit the consumer. Re-regulation is some of the answer.

G7777777778
@comcast.net

G7777777778

Anon

-

People already know DSL doesn't mean "broadband". Customers I talk to always talk about DSL with some reference to dialup.

camper
just visiting this planet
Premium Member
join:2010-03-21
Bethel, CT

camper

Premium Member

Re: -

said by G7777777778 :

People already know DSL doesn't mean "broadband".

 
Please describe the sample of "people" you used to make that determination. Also list the substantiation you have for asserting that your sample of "people" is representative of "people".

Thanks.
Skippy25
join:2000-09-13
Hazelwood, MO

Skippy25

Member

Re: -

Does the telecoms own words from 1996 of 45mbps both ways count as defining what it should be?

By their own words even the proposed 25mbps isn't good enough in 2015. Almost 20 years later.

Shameful, very shameful.
cqarlo932
join:2010-07-06

1 recommendation

cqarlo932 to G7777777778

Member

to G7777777778
said by G7777777778 :

People already know DSL doesn't mean "broadband". Customers I talk to always talk about DSL with some reference to dialup.

Our Mom and Pop ISP had fairly fast DSL type speeds and then Charter bought them out. Now we are getting slower dialup type speeds. We complained and they told us this was high speed broadband and raised the monthly price to $54.99. They are the only game in town. No compitition,slow speeds,no service and high prices.

SimbaSeven
I Void Warranties
join:2003-03-24
Billings, MT

1 recommendation

SimbaSeven

Member

Re: -

Huh.. We're paying $39.99/mo for a 60x4 from Charter for just internet.

v6movement
@pppoe.ca

v6movement to G7777777778

Anon

to G7777777778
said by G7777777778 :

People already know DSL doesn't mean "broadband". Customers I talk to always talk about DSL with some reference to dialup.

Strange. Sitting on a 50Mbps DSL connection I consider that broadband. More or less all cable providers have a speed tier in the 6 - 7 Mbps range which IMO is the modern day dialup speeds.
Kearnstd
Space Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ

Kearnstd

Premium Member

Re: -

said by v6movement :

said by G7777777778 :

People already know DSL doesn't mean "broadband". Customers I talk to always talk about DSL with some reference to dialup.

Strange. Sitting on a 50Mbps DSL connection I consider that broadband. More or less all cable providers have a speed tier in the 6 - 7 Mbps range which IMO is the modern day dialup speeds.

DSL is capable of more than 3mbit? that is news to me because that is all Verizon promises in my neighborhood.

v6movement
@pppoe.ca

v6movement

Anon

Re: -

said by Kearnstd:

DSL is capable of more than 3mbit? that is news to me because that is all Verizon promises in my neighborhood.

Very much so when they build out their network properly. That is the problem. They have stopped trying. They didn't even finish their FiOS build out either.

cork1958
Cork
Premium Member
join:2000-02-26

cork1958 to G7777777778

Premium Member

to G7777777778
said by G7777777778 :

People already know DSL doesn't mean "broadband". Customers I talk to always talk about DSL with some reference to dialup

Unfortunately, some of the people in the Charter forums here, and you know who you are, haven't grasped that logic yet though!

The minute you say something about choices, they're all over the fact that there's DSL and satellite. Yeah, right!
said by v6movement :

Strange. Sitting on a 50Mbps DSL connection I consider that broadband. More or less all cable providers have a speed tier in the 6 - 7 Mbps range which IMO is the modern day dialup speeds.

May I ask who your DSL provider is that gives you that much speed, as personally, I don't believe that for a second, and how close are you to them? Not everybody can be a next door neighbor to the telco/clecs, which every one knows the distance from them totally affects your speed.

bockbock
@hcs.net

bockbock

Anon

Re: -

pppoe.ca sounds like Canada to me. Mind you Canadian ISPs might offer faster DSL service. There are several European countries that offer bonded VDSL2 service with speeds in the 30-100 mbps range.

v6movement
@pppoe.ca

v6movement

Anon

Re: -

said by bockbock :

pppoe.ca sounds like Canada to me. Mind you Canadian ISPs might offer faster DSL service. There are several European countries that offer bonded VDSL2 service with speeds in the 30-100 mbps range.

Yes, that is correct. The issue isn't the technology but how the company is doing things and how they are maintaining their network or in the case of many of these areas not doing so at all which is the root of the problem. Telus here also offers 100Mbps DSL. Various European carriers offer 50 - 100Mbps tiers as well.

The Engineer
@scansafe.net

The Engineer

Anon

Re: -

DSL is a very viable technology. Vectored DSL and higher frequencies can stretch the technology upwards of 100 mbps or more. The issue is that this costs a lot of money, and the technology does not work well on really long loops. Thus, you see this kind of investment in European and other urbanized countries. It wont work well in suburban or especially rural US.
Expand your moderator at work

cralt
join:2011-01-07
CT

cralt to cork1958

Member

to cork1958

said by cork1958 See Profile
May I ask who your DSL provider is that gives you that much speed, as personally, I don't believe that for a second, and how close are you to them? Not everybody can be a next door neighbor to the telco/clecs, which every one knows the distance from them totally affects your speed.

AT&T sells their Uverse vDSL internet service in 24 and 45m and then runs IP-TV and viop on top of that. To get the 45m internet+TV they have sync rates at 60m+.
25m is very doable on DSL if you use today's tech and put DSLAM's, vRADs, whatever you want to call them closer to the customer. Its not gona fly on some rotten 1980's plant with 5mile long loops. I guess thats all VZN has in your area.

neill6705
join:2014-08-09

neill6705 to G7777777778

Member

to G7777777778
Depends on where you live. I have 20/1 from CL. It's not awful.
neill6705

neill6705

Member

3mbps up isn't enough.

We have four iPhones doing iCloud backups, a few people in the house use Dropbox, and gaming by itself doesn't require much upload speed, but things get dicey when it's competing with all these other services for bandwidth.

I'd love to stream movies from my NAS over then internet, but that's a whole different story. For some of my BD rips, I'd need about 20-40mbps up.

buzz_4_20
join:2003-09-20
Dover, NH

buzz_4_20

Member

Why

Cable had been able to meet this even with DOCSIS 1.0. And they'd instantly drop a bunch of competition.

So what's the deal.
Just more greed?

The Engineer
@scansafe.net

The Engineer

Anon

Re: Why

It gives people the means to "cut the cord". They make their money on TV, not internet.

It takes a special breed of company to push innovation that kills their existing product line. You can call that "greed", I call it human nature.

What is really driving cable costs is content (see the Fox News dispute with Dish). There might be a future where cable companies ditch their programming headaches and become true ISPs, with no provision of video. You want programming? Get Sling TV, Netflix, etc. That would take some balls to do.
TheRogueX
join:2003-03-26
Springfield, MO

TheRogueX

Member

Re: Why

Honestly, ISPs need to be dumb pipes. One thing about the dialup days was that your ISP was JUST that (unless you used AOL or something similar), and it wasn't directly tied to your phone company or your cable company. They actually had to compete on *just* their service as an ISP, so they had to give customers reliability, speed, and a competitive price.

Now, ISPs are just subunits of other companies, and they don't want their internet service to harm their existing product lines (be it telephone or cable TV). This needs to change.

gigahurtz
Premium Member
join:2001-10-20
USA

gigahurtz

Premium Member

Lack of competition hurts everyone (except the cable companies)

In most cities in America, there are two options for high speed internet access. Those are usually one from the cable company and one from a telco (AT&T, Verizon, etc). The pricing between these two are fairly similar which leaves the consumer paying more.

I live in an area serviced by Brighthouse Networks. Overall, Brighthouse isn't nearly as evil as Comcast/Time Warner but the fees are starting to add up. I would love to see more competition in our area to bring costs down. If you're in the market for internet only, you can expect to pay around $55/mo + taxes here for a 15 Mbps connection. That's about average compared to the rest of the country (except areas with Google Fiber or municipal broadband).

One way or another, I would love to see increased competition across the board. We are falling behind and I feel that's largely in part due to the stranglehold that the telcos and cable companies have on most markets.

TheTechGuru
join:2004-03-25
TEXAS

TheTechGuru

Member

Charter Already Has 60/4 as their Standard...

Charter Already Has 60/4 as their Standard, maybe other ISP's should look into how they're doing it.

Private ISP
@192.34.172.x

Private ISP

Anon

Incumbent battles

We operate a Coop fiber network that provides Gig symmetric speeds. We consistently face roadblocks due to incumbent lobbying at the state level. Communities ask for our connections but financing for builds is squelched. This needs to stop so the people who need it can get better internet.