Why 6 Republican Senators Think You Don't Need Faster Broadband (cio.com) 522
itwbennett writes: Broadband in the United States still lags behind similar service in other industrialized countries, so Congress made broadband expansion a national priority, and it offers subsidies, mostly in rural areas, to help providers expand their offerings,' writes Bill Snyder. And that's where an effort by the big ISPs and a group of senators to change the definition of broadband comes in. Of course, the ISPs want the threshold to be as low as possible so it's easier for them to qualify for government subsidies. In a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, dated January 21, 2016, the senators called the current broadband benchmark of 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream 'arbitrary' and said that users don't need that kind of speed anyway. '[W]e are aware of few applications that require download speeds of 25 Mbps.' the senators wrote, missing the simple fact that many users have multiple connected devices.
Think? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it closer to "Why 6 Republican Senators Are Repeating Cable ISP Lobbyists' Talking Points on Why You Don't Need Faster Broadband"?
Re:Think? (Score:5, Informative)
Be warned that Marco Rubio also supports lowering the broadband standard, and is against net neutrality.
Anything less than 25/5 (and no scumsucking usage cap!) is like having to crawl across a swaying rope bridge on an Interstate Highway.
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Some of us do just fine on 3/768k you entitled, millenial douche.
Re:Think? (Score:5, Funny)
Some of us do just fine on 3/768k you entitled, millenial douche.
Heh. I've never seen narrow-band elitism before.
How much is enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course this is a moving scale over time. Right now, for most people, it's about 5Mbps down per person in the household. Netflix takes 3 Mbps. VOIP phone takes 0.16 Mbps. File downloads are usually limited by the server on the other end. I guess that servers will get faster if most folks have faster download speeds. Simple webpage downloads are limited by latency and broadband has little effect. I would really like to hear the case for speeds over 5Mbps/person.
But that's a different issue from what the official "broadband" definition should be. Government subsidies should only go to companies that are pushing the boundaries. Time Warner should not get money for building more of the same slow service.
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Re:Think? (Score:5, Interesting)
Be warned that Marco Rubio also supports lowering the broadband standard, and is against net neutrality.
Anything less than 25/5 (and no scumsucking usage cap!) is like having to crawl across a swaying rope bridge on an Interstate Highway.
I've been on 25/5 and on 3/1 and really can't tell much difference because most stuff is oversold to be barely tolerable. I would have no problem with them coming to some reasonable middle ground if they could figure out how to solve the oversold problem**. I currently work from home and I'm on a middle tier package which works fine during the work day but evenings it is barely usable and I've actually had to call in sick on days when the local school district has a snow day because all the neighbor kids are home and using the internet.
** The oversold problem is fixable if they want it to be. Just like fractional reserve banking or landline phones, you require a certain reserve and you build out for peak demand. Yes, this means that you're running at 50% capacity most of the time but then your service is actually usable during peak times. You can also use education, software, and incentives to try to get certain heavy non time critical downloads to happen during times where bandwidth is virtually free.
Re:Think? (Score:5, Insightful)
>I've been on 25/5 and on 3/1 and really can't tell much difference because most stuff is oversold to be barely tolerable
Just because you live in Comcast or Centurylink's area doesn't mean that other places with better internet don't exist. I currently have 100/10, and would I notice a difference between that and 25/5, no, but the four other people in my house watching videos and playing games don't notice each other slowing down the net either.
That said, until a way to sue ISPs for their complete and total lack of providing their advertized service exists, many places will continue to have crap service.
Re:Think? (Score:4, Insightful)
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"up to" should be limited to a certain ratio of oversold capacity. You can say "up to" only when you're oversold by 20:1.
So if you have a 40Mbps line but there are 40 subscribers, you can only say "up to 20Mbps" even if the line is capable of 40Mbps peak. 20:1 might be low, but I don't run a last-mile network (it likely depends on the total number of subscribers on a node).
"Up to" is a fact of life, because few people can afford a 1:1 dedicated line. Even business-class service is oversold for a good rea
Re: Think? (Score:3)
Most sites actually do have gigabit links. I have a gigabit symmetric link at work and yes, it is noticeably faster. Everything comes in instantly, most small sites come in at ~25Mbps before the transfer is done but it's nice to download an Ubuntu DVD in less than 3m. You're also using a lot less resources on web servers as you're clearing out much quicker using larger packets instead of having to keep a connection open and have routers buffer your packets everywhere along the line.
Re: Think? (Score:2)
I'm sorry but that is pure BS, at my previous job we had hundreds of locations all over the US and Puerto Rico and the number of places that couldn't reach 80+% of their rated download speed 90+% of the time could be measured on one hand and most of those could be fixed with a call to tech support or harassing our account exec. The only unfixable locations I can remember were Frontier or Windstream DSL connections in locations with no alternatives so those bottom suckers didn't give a damn. This covers the
Re:Think? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been on 25/5 and on 3/1 and really can't tell much difference ...
You obviously don't have a teenage daughter. The formal definition of broadband is this: A man's wife and daughter can watch two different Netflix movies simultaneously, and he can still get work done.
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You obviously don't have a teenage daughter. The formal definition of broadband is this: A man's wife and daughter can watch two different Netflix movies simultaneously, and he can still get work done.
We had a similar problem. My wife grounded our daughter and threatened to withhold sex from me, and now she is very happy with the internet speed.
Re:Think? (Score:4, Informative)
True, but this is less than 1% of the population, so shouldn't really be a legislate standard.
But generally this top 1% shows what the next 50% will be doing 5 years from now.
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Also, if it was only 6 of them then it would be time for rejoicing.
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The summary is BS. It says the Republicans are trying to change the definition, when what's being argued with is the FCC arbitrarily changing their previous definition: [theverge.com]
"As part of its 2015 Broadband Progress Report, the Federal Communications Commission has voted to change the definition of broadband by raising the minimum download speeds needed from 4Mbps to 25Mbps, and the minimum upload speed from 1Mbps to 3Mbps, which effectively triples the number of US households without broadband acces
Re:Think? (Score:5, Insightful)
I take it you don't like things like fiscal policies adjusted to inflation?
Because thanks to the ad networks and crazy web frameworks, each site has "byte inflation" every year. Some is better stuff (i.e., more streaming video, higher resolution pictures, richer pages) other stuff is just bloat, but it's all the same.
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Definitions change, shill-boy. I remember when Pentiums were 'fast' and 100MB Zip-Disks were 'huge'. Funny how those descriptors become obsolete when technology and standards progress.
I don't really know what your gripe is anyway, given that you've not offered the 'honest way to go about it', whatever 'it' is. Is it that we're finally pressing the established monopolies to provide more than the bare minimum? That we're trying to establish a standard to quantify quality of service beyond rigged speed tests a
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Being the majority of the population lives in larger population centers, that is the correct solution.
Re:Think? (Score:4, Insightful)
Being the majority of the population lives in larger population centers, that is the correct solution.
No, it's not. The large population centers don't need subsidies to get the latest and greatest, the ISPs can afford to up grade due to the large number of subscribers per line. It's the people out in the boonies that need the subsidies, just like in the days they were rolling out electricity, then phones, then water lines.
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The major ISPs (Cable, Verizon, etc) have been able to afford upgrades for a long time, but they've preferred to push the money into profits instead.
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Then we need a way to separate rural and urban markets so monopoly providers stop providing 'rural' speeds to high density areas. Of course even that would be gamed by the ISP/Cable lobby.
Re:Think? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the six senators seem to want to hand out those subsidies without the necessity for the ISPs to upgrade their networks first.
technically, 100BASE-T is baseband, ISDN is broadb (Score:2)
You're right, the words baseband and broadband actually do have definitions, they MEAN something. 10BASE-T, 100BASE-T are so named because they are10 and 100 meg BASEband transmission over telephone cable. Baseband means there is a signal frequency used, the data rate is the signaling rate.
BROADband means multiple channels are used. A cable modem may use four different (tv) channels at 2.5 Mbps signaling rate each to provide 10Mbps of data rate. A T1 is 24 channels of 64kbps each, so it's broadband, as is
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What is at question is the minimum data rate required to qualify for subsidies. Quibbling over the actual word used in the regulation text is being overly pedantic and missing the point, especially when considering that words may have multiple meanings which even so are unambiguous in their different contexts. Nobody was debating the definition of the word "broadband" in the regulatory sense when it was defined to mean "at least 4 mbps download data rate and at least 1 mbps upload data rate".
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The US is falling behind many other countries in the
Re:Think? (Score:5, Insightful)
You may want people to have faster speeds, but changing what terms mean isn't an honest way to go about it.
Bullshit. "Energy efficient" has definitely changed. As has "VLSI" semiconductors, "high speed" rail, etc. Technology advances, and standards will follow.
Anything over dial-up or ISDN speeds is technically broadband.
No, if you want to be technical, bandwidth (NOT "speed", of course, that's silly) does not directly have anything to do with broadband communications.
Broadband means "using a wide band of frequencies" for communication. In practice, no one gives a shit about frequencies used in the raw physical layer, net IP data bandwidth is all that matters. And even if people did care, most of the advances in data bandwidth are not actually just using "larger bands", they are using the existing bands more efficiently. DWDM, 256-QAM, VDSL, etc. As the technology gets better, OBVIOUSLY the standards for average bandwidth to the home will change...
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The summary is BS. It says the Republicans are trying to change the definition, when what's being argued with is the FCC arbitrarily changing their previous definition:
Nope. That's not what happened. The FCC did explicitly say that a fixed number isn't the answer, and they gave a number that represented a reasonable number based on the market and available technology.
"[The FCC Changed shit] which effectively triples the number of US households without broadband access."
"broadband" is a word without a definition. It means "fast" and "fast" has no legal definition. The problem is that if you are subsidizing "fast" and "fast" is slow, you are wasting government money on inferior connections.
Why do you (and the Republican Senators) want to waste taxpayer money subsidizing
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I think its more like:
"Why 6 Republican Senators Are Repeating Satellite/DSL ISP Lobbyists' Talking Points on Why You Don't Need Faster Broadband"?
Both DSL and satellite have a really hard time getting those speeds.
Re: Think? (Score:2)
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Think large donors don't get favors now do you?
Congressmen from Republican party bought off (Score:5, Insightful)
by different lobby group than congressmen from Democrat party. New at 11
They cooperated to get the SOPA and PIPA stuff we fought against so hard crammed into the TPP so whichever evil side you support remember, this left wing propaganda article brought to you by Slashdot.org!
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Republican lobbyists are for gutting broadband, while the Democrat lobbyists are for letting their parasite Hollywood 'rights holders' prevent us from streaming anything through it.
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I'm old enough that I can still remember the good old days when "left wing propaganda" actually required misrepresenting the situation a little bit.
Families need faster (Score:2, Insightful)
25Mbps doesn't cut it in a household with everyone using the Internet.
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I am still on 10mbps/1mbps at home and I can do quite a bit with it. I could upgrade to 50mbps/20mbps for 20$ a month or something but I would consider it like a waste of money. I have 100mbps/100mbps in the data center although.
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4.5/.5 here, yup, sitting almost exactly 4km between two adsl exchanges :/
If we run two netflix HD streams at once, they keep both switching back and forth between HD and SD.
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25Mbps doesn't cut it in a household with everyone using the Internet.
This is what boggles the mind. Republicans on average have more kids (not going into speculations on reasons here), so you'd think they'd feel the pressure for more family bandwidth more?
Anyhow, I'm more worried about the upstream bandwidth. How are you going to video conference while sharing a whiteboard and stuff with just a 3 Mbps line? That's part of a normal workday these days.
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I doubt Senators are feeling any pressure over family bandwidth. You can bet they have the fastest available plans, plus those special cards [slashdot.org] Comcast hands out to members of Congress with a domestic support number that gets answered right away and provides a VIP customer service experience. Of course they think the internet is fast enough and customer service is top notch; in their world, these things are true.
What 6 Republican Senators Think? (Score:3)
Business is suffering (Score:2)
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Maybe you should lay some fiber, because clearly there is a profitable opportunity being left on the table...
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why not, it works for the drug / gun / weapons / oil / jeezus businesses
Re:Business is suffering (Score:5, Insightful)
No, if I'm not mistaken, YOU are expecting your fellow citizens to pay more tax so ISPs can reap more private profit. That's what this is about -- ISPs want more lenient definitions of "broadband" so they can more easily qualify for subsidies extorted from telephone customers [arstechnica.com].
Or maybe I'm just stepping in a big pile of Poe [wikipedia.org] again.
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Utilities are best left to governments, regardless of what the moronic Ayn Rand said.
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>Do you expect your fellow citizens to pay more tax so that you can reap more private profit?
Yes. Because when you do this for something that isn't just a pet project, but benefits everyone in society it increases everybody's profit. Of course I'm sure you've not read a damn thing about utilities and public works in the last 100 years so you're a little ignorant about all that.
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I live in a country that has already leap-frogged America by *AVOIDING* the Big Government solutions you are advocating.
Bullshit. You live in a country where the government enabled a monopoly to control the infrastructure and for the time being you are seeing the benefit. If history has taught us anything, it is that this will change.
Businesses don't exist to keep their customers happy, that's not our job. We do what we do to keep our investors happy and if that means squeezing the customer for every last drop of blood we can get, we damn well do it.
25 Mb/s would be amazing!! but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Actually, if you read the letter (ha!) sent by the Senators, one of their concerns is that the FCC is using two different benchmarks and definitions of broadband for the urban and rural markets. Urban benchmark is 25/3 while rural is anything above dialup essentially. You can obviously see that there the FCC is creating a rich/poor standard which runs counter to Congress wishes to get everyone (urban, rural) up to the 25/3 benchmark (which they say is also rather arbitrary). The letter does not call for any
Re: 25 Mb/s would be amazing!! but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's an easy solution to that. Order a POTS line then tell them your FAX doesn't work. They are legally required by the state to make that work, and they'll fight the city to be allowed to replace wiring and equipment. That's what I did, and now 160 kbps DSL now works for me.
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it is Rick solid
So it's never gonna give you up [youtube.com]?
Broadband definition... (Score:4, Informative)
...has nothing to do with speed. It has to do with transmitting multiple signals over different frequencies.
"a high-capacity transmission technique using a wide range of frequencies, which enables a large number of messages to be communicated simultaneously."
Call it high speed Internet. Please stop fucking up our language.
Time for a "broadband" test. (Score:4, Interesting)
So, six ignorant Representatives think 25Mb is far too fast for people.
Fine. In order to support this argument, I want to mandate that these six individuals get their own broadband service capped at 10Mb for an entire year. Let's see how quickly their opinions change. After a week of trying to explain to their families that 10Mb is "fast enough", it won't even matter how much corporate grease is on their palms.
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... or the experiment could totally backfire, as the Representatives find that 10Mb/sec service is indeed "plenty fast" for their Internet needs (which include emailing their relatives, browsing the web, and using Facebook/Twitter, but not streaming HD movies).
(As for their family, their children have grown up and left home, and their husband's/wife's Internet habits are likely similar to their own)
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Honest question - Besides updates or torrents, when do you regularly exceed 10Mbs? I host 6 moderately used servers, have a house with multiple users, and before watching any Netflix tonight my usage is:
Peak Min Average
15.89 Mbps 1.75 kbps 925.23 kbps
And for the month:
Peak Min Average
37.15 Mbps 6.22 kbps 476.25 kbps
Sure, my peak can hit my limit of 35Mbps, but my average? Not even close. Comcast has sold everyone the idea they need 100Mbps to watch movies or something, but in reality that isn't the requirement. I'm not saying that you can't tell the difference from 10Mbs to 25, but that isn't the problem that needs to be solved. The problem is what someone else posted - 2Mbps via high-latency satellite for $hundreds. Solve that first.
Perfectly reasonable response hit with a -1. Slashdot mods are literally the worse.
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You must be uncapped to be doing 1.2TB/mo
Nah a single user on a 10Mbps line wouldn't notice the difference in streaming 1080p video but two three users? Your going to start to notice.
Bought a new UHD smart tv? Oh now you've went and done it. Now you need 25Mbps for ONE stream.
Now does anyone really need to be able to watch a 4k streaming video? Probably not but if we stick with a top speed of 10~15Mbps we will never find out.
How exactly does average speed come into play here?
Afaik its really only useful whe
Alternative: Republicans Endorse Corporate Welfare (Score:3, Insightful)
If anything goes to poor people who have no lobbyist and no campaign contributions it's welfare and is evil.
Capitalism should be pure and not fettered by evil and incompetent gumment interference. Unless there is free money with no strings attached, at which point the more gumment involvement the better.
And if you think it's not free money, just try taking it away. The recipients will start squealing like stuck pigs.
How much bandwidth is enough? (Score:3)
I ask myself, if I could get 5 Mbps for $20, 20 Mbps for $40, 100 Mbps for $80 or 1,000 Mbps for $160, which would I chose?
And the answer (for me) is 20 Mbps for $40.
I'd like more, but I'm not willing to pay for it.
The average Slashdotter is likely to pick a higher tier, but the average American?
I bet most would be satisfied with (5Mbps * number_of_people_in_household), and $20/month would look very attractive to many.
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I'd pick 5Mbps for $20, that's for sure. That's more than enough for Netflix.
Broadband needs to be a utility (Score:3)
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Is there ANY place in America where converting anything into a monopoly that is tightly-tied to government has made the customers happy?????
Yes, Chattanooga, to name only one. Just because you have no idea what you're talking about (as evidenced by your above statement) doesn't mean you have an educated opinion. Get a fucking grip, will you?
read this Slashdottards learn sometin (Score:3, Informative)
https://www.daines.senate.gov/news/press-releases/daines-calls-on-fcc-to-clarify-broadband-definition
Daines Calls on FCC to Clarify Broadband Definition
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senator Steve Daines today led five of his Senate colleagues in urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to clarify their inconsistent and arbitrary definitions of broadband, which could detrimentally impact rural Montanans.
The letter is also signed by Roger Wicker (MS), Roy Blunt (MO), Deb Fischer (NE), Ron Johnson (WI) and Cory Gardner (CO).
The senators expressed their concerns that:
The FCC’s arbitrary 25/3 Mbps benchmark speed does not reflect what most Americans consider broadband
The use of this benchmark discourages providers from offering speeds at or above the benchmark
The definition contradicts the broadband definition used in the Open Internet Order
The FCC uses a different benchmark when referring to broadband in rural America
“We are concerned that this arbitrary 25/3 Mbps benchmark fails to accurately capture what most Americans consider broadband, the use of this benchmark discourages broadband providers from offering speeds at or above the benchmark, the definition contradicts the ‘broadband’ definition the Commission used in its Open Internet Order, and that the Commission uses an entirely different benchmark when it comes to rural America,” the senators wrote.
The senators also sought additional clarification of the FCC’s broadband definition in its application to rural consumers: “It is unclear how applying a different definition of broadband to urban and rural areas is consistent with this clear Congressional directive. Nor is it clear how the Commission can justify defining broadband by the 25/3 Mbps benchmark in one context (when assessing the market under section 706), but ignoring this definition when it sought to regulate 'broadband' Internet access providers in its Open Internet Order -- there, essentially including any service above dial-up as ‘broadband’."
Senator Daines’ effort to encourage innovation and gain certainty for rural broadband providers and consumers was applauded by the Montana Telecommunications Association: “The Montana Telecommunications Association (MTA) shares the concerns that Sen. Daines raises in his letter to the FCC. Montana’s rural telecom providers continue to push advanced broadband capabilities to consumers throughout their service areas, including in some instances deploying gigabit services to schools and other anchor institutions in the near future. It is important to recognize that it costs more to deploy broadband infrastructure in rural, remote areas. Given the substantial challenges facing rural telecom providers, regulatory certainty is important in meeting the goals of the federal Telecommunications Act to ensure that all Americans, no matter where they live, have access to reasonably comparable broadband services at reasonably comparable rates. MTA appreciates Sen. Daines raising these points, and looks forward to working with him and the FCC as we deploy broadband infrastructure throughout rural Montana.”
Daines has long worked to improve rural Montanans’ access to broadband and increase transparency and accountability at the FCC. This fall, he introduced the Streamlining and Investing in Broadband Infrastructure Act, which would help increase broadband deployment in rural states.
Daines recently urged the FCC to consider strict enforcement measures and increase transparency for the recently announced Connect America Fund funding, which is intended to expand and support broadband service in rural areas. Daines also introduced the Small Business Broadband Deployment Act of 2015, which would protect Montana small businesses from burdensome FCC regulations.
Read
Retire, already. (Score:3)
All the more reason old people should not be leaders of any stripe.
Take your Geritol, watch Matlock, and have a nap. No, I don't know where your cereal bowl is. No, I don't care that you remember when "this was all farmland". And, no, your time "in the war" isn't a bargaining chip.
Right about one thing (Score:2)
If you build it it will come? (Score:2)
Broadband is supposed to be a baseline (Score:2)
I don't buy the proposition people are deriving much value from >10megabit pipes. Even with a half dozen people sharing one 10 mbit pipe at once lack of queue management and round trip latency is why your experience will suck long before available bandwidth is a limiting factor.
There are counter examples... 3 people streaming different HD titles at the same time while playing xbox games, bit torrent, using a cloud backup service and talking on VOIP at once. However it is still a mistake to allow policy
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I sit with 10/100 and in most cases it's enough, but whenever it's time for some download of OS updates it's still limiting.
As soon as there's a matter of streaming videos, like YouTube videos at 4k it will not work well with 10Mbps, quirky with 25 and probably decent with 100MBps. "UMAX in Korea, for instance, compresses its 4K p60 streams at 32Mbps", but even if the video stream is at half your bandwidth it's an average figure and in some cases it can peak at a higher level which may mean lost packets and
We still use Carrier Pigeon (Score:4, Funny)
Back in 1985... (Score:3)
Back in 1985, 2400bps was fast enough for anyone -- users typically didn't need the kind of speed 4800bps (or -- gasp -- 9600bps) gave you.
But you know what? As more bandwidth became available, developers were able to write different kinds of applications to take advantage of it.
So sure -- if you're just browsing /., you probably don't need anything higher than 25Mbps. But saying that's all anyone needs discounts the probability that with more bandwidth, new types of applications and usage scenarios can open up.
Fortunately, I sit here in Canada with a 120Mbps home cable connection, and don't have to give much of a crap about idiot Senators in the US.
Yaz
Re:Back in 1985... (Score:5, Interesting)
So sure -- if you're just browsing /., you probably don't need anything higher than 25Mbps. But saying that's all anyone needs discounts the probability that with more bandwidth, new types of applications and usage scenarios can open up.
Could you give us some examples? Outside extreme cases, the highest bandwidth apps only require 3-4Mpbs (and this has nothing to with any Internet standards, we run high def Apps on our 1Gb LAN and we still have nothing requiring more than 5Mbps. So no, even if you had 1Gbps you couldn't use it if you tried.
Sure I could. I shuttle around AMI images, and do checkouts against large Subversion repos with 11+GB of data in them. I can easily saturate a 1Gb connection.
But that's neither here nor there. If I knew what the next-generation hit application would be, I wouldn't be here chatting with you about it -- I'd be out there writing it. The thing is nobody really knows what sorts of applications we can come up with that benefit from ubiquitous, high bandwidth availability. Perhaps we start working more with applications that can offload their processing needs on-the-fly in a nearly invisible manner. If the network speed were crazy high enough, you could run as if you had completely dynamic RAM online for loads that suddenly require it (that would require an approximately 100Gbps connection, FWIW).
But without those speeds, such applications can't be built. And as they can't be built, we can never know what amazing ideas people could come up with to make use of it. It's like a farmer with a cart and a mule saying "I can move both hay and milk from home to market -- what use would anybody have of an 18 lane paved freeway?". And yet, we have 18 line, paved freeways, and we make use of them all the time.
Yaz
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If the network speed were crazy high enough, you could run as if you had completely dynamic RAM online for loads that suddenly require it (that would require an approximately 100Gbps connection, FWIW).
Latency would still be an issue, so this wouldn't replace local RAM for all purposes, though it could be good enough for some cases. It's more like a disk than memory, and many people already use The Cloud(TM) this way, privacy and availability be damned.
Is this dailykos? (Score:3)
or slashdot?
I live in India (Score:4, Interesting)
I live in a small town in India and I have a fibre to home 24Mbps connection for around 20 USD a month with 80GB cap. I can go for a faster connection with a larger cap but I have no use for it as of now.. Surprised the US is still lagging behind in terms of broadband..
That's Funny (Score:3)
I'm just go ahead and assume that it is (Score:3)
because they got campaign financing and lobbying from entrenched ISPs?
That and the fact that Republicans have gone full pants-on-head retarded recently.
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We would be ideally suited for the proposed due to our legendary geriatric sexual prowess or because of our boundless predisposition with porn?
Re:Because... (Score:4, Funny)
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yea but they watch it on VHS
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The "right to privacy" that some people assume is part of the Constitution is really just an excuse that activist judges use point to in order to make sure the side they favor wins. Outside that context, it's too hard to define what it means. (By contrast, ever
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That's 5mbps which is better than what some rural area get. It's like 3.33 T1s.
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In the middle (well, off center to the side a bit), of one of Australia's larger non-capital-cities. Best any telco can give me without 4-digit price tags is 4.5/.5
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from my house where I get 3 meg on a good day. With trees between me and the closest connection
Maybe your connection speed varies depending on how many birds are in said trees at a given moment in time ;-)
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That's nice. My local electric co-op is running fiber between all of their substations. But they aren't sharing. The board decided it would be best if they just sold electric.
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Restrict their work offices to their definiti
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Did the mil and gov project the US would be stuck on existing coax plans, and POTS copper for a long time?
What was MAINWAY, MARINA, FAIRVIEW, STORMBREW or even back to MAIN CORE keep up but only after another contractor upgrade again?
Thin copper and long POTS networks would have needed a lot of regional collection teams.
On one side are the telcos with too much copper P
Re:GOP stuck in the past in the pocket of big busi (Score:5, Informative)
GOP stuck in the past in the pocket of big business.
to fix it we need to vote Bernie sanders or trump.
Anyone who hasn't been under a rock for the past 25 years knows that Donald Trump is the pocket of big business.
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Exactly. He's not in their pocket. He is them.
So once he runs the US, he's going to run it like his company.
Or are you implying that he is somehow going to fuck his own company over just so other companies can make a profit?
Doesn't sound logical to me.
So you'd like to see him run the US as his company. Which would mean that the proceeds of the country's economy become the property himself and his cronies, and everyone else works for wages set to a level competitive with offshore labor.
Man, you people are suckers.
Re: (Score:3)
And in the 1930s, you'd be the one telling us that we "had" to vote for either Stalin or Hitler, amirite?
No, in the 1930s, we'd be telling you that we need to provide telecommunications and electrification to just about every single address in the entire country.
Amazingly, we did this and when it came time for the entire country to ramp up production, we were able to meet that demand - unlike what might have happened if we listened to the morons now pushing this shit all over again.
Re:Because it's true? (Score:5, Insightful)
and my family are a heavy user.
No, no you're not. I telework from home. I have to kick off data file downloads the night before so that they're hopefully here by morning.
Data files that are sampled at 1 MHz that need to be analyzed. I max out my 25Mbit connection constantly. Sending data files back is even worse.
If you want your little part of the country to step into this century and have jobs for this century everyone is going to need 1 Gbit to the home. And as soon as I get 1 Gbit to the home I'm probably going to be asking when 10 Gbit is coming.
If you can get by with 20 Mbit you are not a heavy user.
Re: (Score:2)
You should keep your files on the cloud...more efficient.
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Save in some ways, spend more in others: Analyze your file in the cloud, and you need to pay for processors in the cloud. If you have real processor use, buying your own hardware beats the cloud, price wise, in about 3 months.
Re: (Score:3)
The analogy is horribly broken to absurdity with only basic common sense.
Only if you can't read.
The GP was referring to doing the load at the Data Centre, and merely transmitting the display to your house (ie Remote Desktop/Citrix or similar). 3Mbps is the bandwidth of Hi-def raw video, but most of these technologies can do it for far less with compression (25-50kbps from memory).
So for any argument saying I need X bandwidth to move all my shit to my house and back, the solution is don't move it. keep it in the datacantre and only move the display information.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So why are they helping companies get corporate welfare?
*checks calendar* oh wait, they must need donations for their upcoming election. Nevermind.
The core Republican political philosophy (before the insane took over the nut house) is that the proper role of government is to make sure the rich get richer quicker.
Of course they would never win elections if they ran on that platform, so they pretend they're actually about anything and everything else, in order sucker people into voting against their own self interests. But you see it in almost everything they do.
Re:Governmental solution to government problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this a race or something? Is such "lagging behind" — whether it is even true or not — automatically bad?
Perhaps one of the stupidest things i've read today..... We're basically talking about how the US compares to other counties in the basic medium that allows us to compete as a world economy, so YES, IT IS AUTOMATICALLY VERY FUCKING BAD. You may like the idea of burying your head up your ass and dreaming of 1950, but suggesting our country should be able to compete with the rest of the world while they move ahead and we're stuck looking at the inside of our colon is just stupider than shit.