FCC Wants Gigabit Internet Communities Nationwide by 2015

[madjimms]

[citation][nom]obama2016[/nom]This is a little thing called government regulation, it's where government tells big business that they have to do something that will benefit everybody, and threatens them with punishment if they'd rather just continue milking consumers for all they're worth while providing inferior services.Anybody who complains about the "big mean, anti-business government" ought to have their head examined...[/citation]
I hear ya!

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]raidenfox123[/nom]These kinda speeds won't be possible by the majority of ISP providers without major network overhauls to fiber. This would cost billions and realistically wouldn't happen, or would take 10+ years to accomplish. Hell for this reason Verizon Fios has stopped building there network out, cost was greater then what they were getting back in. Don't get my wrong I would love to see this happen but in reality one can't be so optimistic with what we have now.[/citation]
well... yes and no.
Where I work I have the misfortune of working with Cincinnati Bell more often than I would like. However, as terrible a company as they are, they are moving to fiber. Aparantly they did some internal studies and found that while the initial cost is higher, the long term cost was significantly lower to actively convert from copper phone lines, to fiber. And so while the company is pinching every penny they can in every area possible, they are also spending as much money as possible to convert all of their high and medium density areas as soon as possible.

Perhaps that is something specific to Cincinnati due to it being an older city where the phone system is due for replacement to begin with? I don't know. All I know is that I use to think like you in that 'fiber is nice... but it will never happen on a large scale' only to find that the stingiest company I know is rolling it out as a cost savings measure.

One thing I do know for sure though: While they are rolling out the fiber, they are rolling it out to replace existing phone and internet services, not to really provide better/faster services. If everyone were to up their plans to 20+Mbps (much less GbE) then their network would still fall apart under the strain. They would be pretty unhappy to find that they just spent all this money updating their systems, only to be forced to do another major upgrade right away.


As a side note: One of my coworkers just got back from a trip to Kansas City, and they say the new Google network is pretty sweet!

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]TeKEffect[/nom]http/www.speedtest.net/result/2448575773.pngI have FIOS in Los Angeles and this is a 4:40pm speedtest[/citation]

http/www.speedtest.net/result/2448845342.png

that was just to go with the same server...
my up speed sucks, at 5mbit, but my down can reach up to 75mbit...
granted i pay almost 100$ a month for that...
i really just wish i knew why my internet slits its own throat whenever i do something wirelessly, only wired connections can ammount to anything.

 

[CaedenV]

http/www.speedtest.net/result/2448848784.png
21 down, 1 up, 24ms ping
Other than my upload speed I am fairly happy with my service through TWC, not too stoked that they now charge some $4/mo for the 'privileged' of using the cheap cable modem box they provide. Seriously, they provide a DOCSIS2 device that probably cost them $30 when they gave it to me 3-4 years ago and want to charge $4/mo for it. But if I want to provide my own device to avoid the fee then it has to be a DOCSIS3 device off of their special 'approved list', the cheapest of which costs $80 on newegg. grr.
But other than that recent development they really have been great.

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]http/www.speedtest.net/result/2448845342.pngthat was just to go with the same server...my up speed sucks, at 5mbit, but my down can reach up to 75mbit... granted i pay almost 100$ a month for that... i really just wish i knew why my internet slits its own throat whenever i do something wirelessly, only wired connections can ammount to anything.[/citation]
Wireless is odd stuff, and it depends on what router you use, what devices you use, what signals are in your area, what band you are on, and what channels within each band you use are.
Personally, I am on an 11g network at home... but as I have few neigbors with wireless, and only have some 3-4 low-demand devices on the network at any given time, I get pretty good performance out of it, and I get reception throughout my house, and most of my yard.
Meanwhile, a good friend of mine is on the 11n network, and it is horrible. But then again he is using the 11n device provided by his ISP, and he lives in an apartment, and all of his devices are on 2.4GHz rather than 5GHz... so it is a bit more of an uphill battle for him where he will only get ~4Mbps throughput on his wireless devices, even though he has faster service than what I have in my home.
Plus you may be in the path of some major wireless communications highway for emergency dispatchers, or some other high noise traffic which can mess with things.
Wireless is a tricky thing.

 

[Guest]

I love my internet and use my VPN's extensively but honestly unless you're downloading several(dozen) files that are 5GB+ a month I don't see the need for gigabit internet. Just double what most people get now(20Mb) and lower the cost then everyone will be happy.

Seems like yet another waste of taxpayer money.

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]caedenv[/nom]Wireless is odd stuff, and it depends on what router you use, what devices you use, what signals are in your area, what band you are on, and what channels within each band you use are.Personally, I am on an 11g network at home... but as I have few neigbors with wireless, and only have some 3-4 low-demand devices on the network at any given time, I get pretty good performance out of it, and I get reception throughout my house, and most of my yard.Meanwhile, a good friend of mine is on the 11n network, and it is horrible. But then again he is using the 11n device provided by his ISP, and he lives in an apartment, and all of his devices are on 2.4GHz rather than 5GHz... so it is a bit more of an uphill battle for him where he will only get ~4Mbps throughput on his wireless devices, even though he has faster service than what I have in my home.Plus you may be in the path of some major wireless communications highway for emergency dispatchers, or some other high noise traffic which can mess with things.Wireless is a tricky thing.[/citation]

belkin F5D8236-4

yea, after reading the most recent router stuff on the main page, im betting money most of my wireless internet problems are router related, but still i cant be 100%, and that not being 100% sure is what stops me from spending the 150-200$ on a good router.

 

[razor512]

(google fiber and verizon fios have a very similar network layout, most current routers and other network systems are modular and can be fitted to handle coax, fiber, standard phone lines and a host of other obscure connection types (including wireless)

many older networking systems even from nearly 9-10 years ago were rated to handle hundreds of gigabits per second to multiple terabits per second, so it is likely that ISP's today are not replacing as much equipment as you might think. they are simply swapping a few modules.

 

[catswold]

Great, all we need is more government regulations and mandates . . . that customers will be forced to pay for. /rolleyes

I have been surfing the internet since the first days of dial-up and 600 BAUD modems. In the progression from 14.4k, to 28.8k, to 33.3k, to 56k (whew, we're really rolling now), all the way to my 20+mbit cable modem I have today, it has not been because of the actions of some government bureaucrat and his mandate that I have experienced these advances, it has been because of private enterprise, consumer demand, and the innovation that the free market system.

All government can do is make everything more expensive, more complex and more difficult to obtain. The best government is that government which governs least.

Any limitations I now have on my internet are largely the result of our local governments eliminating competition by allowing one corporation to control all of the broadband sector. As noted by jn77, the problem is a GOVERNMENT MANDATED MONOPOLY.

Get the government out of broadband and allow some competition, so that Comcast isn't the sole source of cable and AT&T isn't the sole source of ADSL in my town. It is competition, not government, which will bring us faster service at lower prices.

When sufficient customer demand is there, gigabit will appear like magic.

 

[A Bad Day]

Get the government out of broadband and allow some competition, so that Comcast isn't the sole source of cable and AT&T isn't the sole source of ADSL in my town. It is competition, not government, which will bring us faster service at lower prices.

Internet service is like power, water or natural gas service.

Multiple providers can not easily co-exist in one area unless if they are using the same hardware that they all agreed to maintain. Which is inconvenient.

Instead, state/local governments allow monopoly for the power/water/gas services, but requires many, many strings attached.

And a lot of ISPs prefer to not share their hardware with competitors. Australia is a prime example of an ISP refusing to share, and thus gaining absolute monopoly.

 

[mlopinto2k1]

Everyone has all the answers. So many professionals commenting here and for what? Do we really think they haven't thought about everything said here? If they didn't, you should start filling out applications.

 

[Capm]

[citation][nom]raidenfox123[/nom]I realize that, running it to the house is another animal, and ya sure current DOCSIS could do gigabit connections but the amount of bonded channels needed would wither at the limited capacity of there coaxial network. Under the current 6Mhz wide 256 QAM modulation per channel, conservatively I would say you could get a maximum of 25Mbps/per channel. So that would require 40 6Mhz wide channels a total of 240Mhz on a network that probably doesn't even surpass a max frequency of 900Mhz! That's a lot of real estate[/citation]

You've not done your homework. A 256QAM Docsis channel does 40mbs. The Docsis 3.1 standard will do away with the traditional channel barrier, and introduce 200mhz wide 4096QAM OFDM channels. It calls for downstream capability starting at 1Gbs, then 5 and 10Gbs, with upstream speeds up to 1Gb/s. Most operaters deploying ftth today are using 1ghz electronics.

 

[razor512]

Wanted to also add, Many of the newer (within the last 5 years) large scale routers are designed for 100 gigabit end to end service, where you will have multiple 25+ terabit connections connected to multiple 100 gigabit routers, at one of the ISP's offices. At that point, each of the 100 gigabit connections will go into one of the ISP's SONET systems and to the customers house.

if the ISP's wanted, they could fut out that last switching layer and just give you a 100 gigabit internet connection (Imagine being able to download must and porn at 16GB/s (if they made a 100 gigabit pci-e x16 ethernet card )

100 gigabit to the home is still far off, but 1 gigabit to the home is still possible for almost all ISP's right now. If google were to expand their service to almost every state today, you would see verizon and all of the other companies offering gigabit connections tomorrow.

especially considering that many of the current top end enterprise routers can handle 44 100 gigabit interfaces (meaning 44 customers with 100 gigabit internet, or 4400 customers with gigabit connections, each paying like $60-70 a month for that connection adding up to $308,000 a month of income per router, and you can oversell if you feel that everyone will not be using the full bandwidth at the same time and generate even more income (if you don't mind pissing off your customers if they do decide to use the connection at the same time.

 

[palladin9479]

The US ISP's are milking the sh!t out of their customers. The cost to upgrade their networks is supposed to come out of previous profits, it's part of their service plan. Problem is that many ISP's have setup virtual monopoly's in their area due to private ownership of the network medium (cable / telephone lines). Because of that monopoly they is no pressure from competition to upgrade their equipment or offer better priced plans.

Makes me happy I'm living here in South Korea. KT owns most of the fiber but the government forces them to lease it out at competitive rates "or else". The result is that we have three major ISP's providing home service. SK, KT and LG all offer their own 100Mbps home service with 1Gbps being discussed but only available in newer apartments. The Korean construction system has been the primary driver of high speed internet service. For the past 10 years every home has been built with 100Mbps wiring inside the walls and connecting every room, they treat it the same as electrical wiring. If your in an apartment then all the units are connected together to a concentrator on each floor that is then connected to the central distribution fabric in the basement via fiber option. It's at the distribution fabric that all the ISP's have connections into. When you sign an agreement with the ISP all they have to do is go into the distribution fabric and set the port that leads to your apartment to their VLAN and *poof* your now on their network. For people living in actual houses it's a bit more complicated, they have 48~100 Mbps DOCIS and VDSL if there isn't a Fiber distribution point near your home somewhere. The costs tend to be between $10 to $40 USD a month depending on service.

So yeah it's more then possible, more then economical, the only thing stopping it from happening in the USA is greedy network owners who don't want to upgrade and would rather maintain the current status quot.

 

[Capm]

You have no idea what you're talking about. I'm sure its easy to build out fiber everywhere when your entire country is about the size of Michigan. The simple fact is, its not as cheap to upgrade things as you like to tell yourself. And just because you can run a cat5 jumper from your wall jack to your computer doesn't mean you know squat about broadband distribution technologies or economics.

Oh yes, then there is the sharing of lines regulations..

This is quite possibly the single worst possible thing that could happen. It would be a catastrophe. Let me put it to you this way. You go out and buy a 200,000 dollar race car, and decide that you're going to give rides in it for 10 bux. But then the government steps in and tells you that you have to let Redneck Larry use your car so that HE can sell rides. So now, instead of getting $10 from a ride, you only get $6, and Redneck Larry scratches the paint and dents the bumper. But he doesn't have to pay to repair it, because its YOUR car.
And, in addition to that, the government regulates how often you can drive and where, and you have to submit form after form and pay fees to a government agency who keeps track of it, and if you fall out of compliance, you get fined.

Now, tell me what thats going to do to your ride service? Is that going to make it better?

Did you know that a regulated phone company, in deploying FTTH, under certain circumstances, if their grant says to deploy in whatever "city" they cannot build out to serve a customer who is outside that city boundry? Even if it is LITERALLY right across the street. Your neighbor could have gigabit ethernet to his house, and you could get nothing.

I'm also quite certain that this kind of legislation would put every remaining small operator out of business. All Cable providers with less than... 50,000 subs... they'd probably go under within 5 years. Larger ops would see a reduction in quality of service, because you'd suddenly have god knows who, trained to do who knows what, out there messing with your cable plant every day, causing all kinds of problems, and then you'd be buried under regulated paperwork before you could do anything about anything.

It'd be a total complete effing nightmare.

Competition? How about Dish and DirectTV, and their deals with ILEC's like Century Link and whatnot, to provide a triple play, is that not competition? You've got small towns with 3 phone companies, a cable company, dish companies, 2 wireless internet and 2 wireless phone providers, don't even get me started on the big cities.. no competition my hind end!

 

[game junky]

Am I interested in having access to gigabit speeds at home and at the office, you betcha. I still think this only helps if it doesn't bankrupt the consumer. I would be impressed if AT&T or Verizon bundled wired and wireless services into a single package for the average metropolitan household. I know plenty of people who have been trying to live without cable to try to reduce their bills, this might be the only way to get those services back into the mainstream.

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]Capm[/nom]You have no idea what you're talking about. I'm sure its easy to build out fiber everywhere when your entire country is about the size of Michigan. The simple fact is, its not as cheap to upgrade things as you like to tell yourself. And just because you can run a cat5 jumper from your wall jack to your computer doesn't mean you know squat about broadband distribution technologies or economics. Oh yes, then there is the sharing of lines regulations..This is quite possibly the single worst possible thing that could happen. It would be a catastrophe. Let me put it to you this way. You go out and buy a 200,000 dollar race car, and decide that you're going to give rides in it for 10 bux. But then the government steps in and tells you that you have to let Redneck Larry use your car so that HE can sell rides. So now, instead of getting $10 from a ride, you only get $6, and Redneck Larry scratches the paint and dents the bumper. But he doesn't have to pay to repair it, because its YOUR car.And, in addition to that, the government regulates how often you can drive and where, and you have to submit form after form and pay fees to a government agency who keeps track of it, and if you fall out of compliance, you get fined.Now, tell me what thats going to do to your ride service? Is that going to make it better?Did you know that a regulated phone company, in deploying FTTH, under certain circumstances, if their grant says to deploy in whatever "city" they cannot build out to serve a customer who is outside that city boundry? Even if it is LITERALLY right across the street. Your neighbor could have gigabit ethernet to his house, and you could get nothing. I'm also quite certain that this kind of legislation would put every remaining small operator out of business. All Cable providers with less than... 50,000 subs... they'd probably go under within 5 years. Larger ops would see a reduction in quality of service, because you'd suddenly have god knows who, trained to do who knows what, out there messing with your cable plant every day, causing all kinds of problems, and then you'd be buried under regulated paperwork before you could do anything about anything.It'd be a total complete effing nightmare.Competition? How about Dish and DirectTV, and their deals with ILEC's like Century Link and whatnot, to provide a triple play, is that not competition? You've got small towns with 3 phone companies, a cable company, dish companies, 2 wireless internet and 2 wireless phone providers, don't even get me started on the big cities.. no competition my hind end![/citation]

satellite internet is barely better than dialup. granted i haven't had to deal with it in years, but i cant imagine it being much better because they don't have to be, people only go satellite internet if they have no other choice.

now correct me if im wrong, which i may be. major parts of the infostructure for the internet are things laid by the government, who than allow access and more or less monopolies on the services. sure, getting the connections out to homes probably costs a bit of money, but again, i do believe that in many cases government aid is need to lay lines.

sure opening up the lines to everyone instdead of one company will have problems, but have you ever looked at someones cable bill...

most of the country runs cable on monopolies, who have very little reason to ever downgrade their service.

dsl, not great, cable great, satellite, only if you have no other option.
there is no direct competition with each other which forced better prices.

hell, the only reason i get bumped up every now and than is because i pay for the top tier service, when they do small infrastructure upgrades to accommodate more people, i also get bumped up just because. its not like they suddenly make a new tier, its that smaller upgrades boost what the top can do.

 

[Capm]

No, The beginnings of the internet may have been government and research based, but today, the internet backbone segments are owned by Tier 1 ISP's, which are large multi-national conglomerations, They sell access to Tier 2 ISP's, which in turn service the Tier 3 ISP's that you know of as TWC, Comcast, etc.

Just because TWC has a cable or fiber system in one town, doesn't mean they're a monopoly, anyone can come in and overbuild them with their own system. This can and does happen.

DSL Technologies can still be competitive, but most everyone, phone companies and cable companies alike are starting to use fiber. A cable monopoly is really a contradiction in terms as most cable companies have overbuilt existing telco systems, and many large cities have two or more cable operators. Technology such as VDSL allows phone companies to push IPTV over their existing phone plant.

If you want to complain about the price of your cable bill, complain to the programmers(your Turners, FOX's etc) that keep forcing higher rates on the cable operators, and force them to add superfluous channels to their basic lineups just to keep the one decent channel on. They're the ones that determine the cost of your cable bill. They're the ones that keep you from having an a-la-cart digital service. They won't allow it.

Get this: The law states that a cable operator in the DMA of a broadcast TV station, MUST carry that TV station. Now, that broadcaster can charge $$ from the cable operator, per sub, per month, to carry that channel. The cable operator has to pay, and cannot choose not to carry. For something that is available FREELY OFF-AIR.

Now tell me, Who has the monopoly?

 

[palladin9479]

satellite internet is barely better than dialup. granted i haven't had to deal with it in years, but i cant imagine it being much better because they don't have to be, people only go satellite internet if they have no other choice.

now correct me if im wrong, which i may be. major parts of the infostructure for the internet are things laid by the government, who than allow access and more or less monopolies on the services. sure, getting the connections out to homes probably costs a bit of money, but again, i do believe that in many cases government aid is need to lay lines.

sure opening up the lines to everyone instdead of one company will have problems, but have you ever looked at someones cable bill...

most of the country runs cable on monopolies, who have very little reason to ever downgrade their service.

dsl, not great, cable great, satellite, only if you have no other option.
there is no direct competition with each other which forced better prices.

hell, the only reason i get bumped up every now and than is because i pay for the top tier service, when they do small infrastructure upgrades to accommodate more people, i also get bumped up just because. its not like they suddenly make a new tier, its that smaller upgrades boost what the top can do.

Nah he's just pissing vinegar and has no idea who he's talking to.

The telco's laid a ton of fiber in the mid nineties during the dot.com boom. They all expected to reap huge profits from the sudden increase in demand from multimedia on the web. As we know that didn't happen and we got the dot.com bust. Nearly two decades later we're hitting the point where we need that extra capacity. It's down as Dark Fibre.



There is already plenty of Tier 1 fibre available, the Teleco's haven't used copper for their backbone since the mid 90's. The core routing and distribution layers are all fibre now, DSL / DOCIS are only used for the "last mile" due to how spread out USA communities tend to be. This is actually where the big traffic jam is, the ISP has plenty of bandwidth on the outgoing end. Their end user distribution networks are old and they don't want to spend the money to replace them, nor do they want to purchase additional lines from the Tier 1 providers. From the ISP's point of view, you (the subscriber) pay the same rate regardless of how much they upgrade their distribution network or how much additional bandwidth they purchase. They only need to keep it "good enough" so that you don't switch to another provider, and in the USA with the state sanctioned monopolies there isn't much choice to spur competition. That is why Google decided to build their own network, their purchasing lines from the Tier 1 and building their own user distribution network instead of using the ones laid by the Teleco / Cable companies. This allows them to provide a competitive product while bypassing the state monopolies those other ISP's possess. It also means Google needs to pay large amounts of upfront cash to build the network with the aim of recouping their investment + profit in the long run.

I'm laughing at Capm. The SK government forcing KT to sell their lines at a reasonable rate is what allows for cheap fast internet across all of SK (population 51M). KT still posts record profits, their not hurting in the slightest. Of course they have the Chaebol system here which creates it's own layer of interest "arrangements". The Chaebol mega companies (Samsung, LG, Hyundai, Kia, KT, SK, Ssyangyong amongst others) and the SK Government have been intertwined in various agreements and "understandings".