back to article FCC taps the brakes on fudging US broadband speed amid senator fury

America's comms watchdog has extended a comment period on a proposal to downgrade the definition of broadband to a slower speed. The decision follows a caustic letter [PDF] from 12 Democratic Senators that accuses the FCC of "abandoning further efforts to connect Americans," and signaling "a strong departure from the …

  1. Notas Badoff
    Megaphone

    Rank

    Just appeal to the small-brained logic that demands "We're Number 1!" by monthly, publicly, listing the ranking of delivered network speeds to plebes, compared to other countries. If indeed America is number 17 on a list, perhaps that will be odious enough to short-circuit some of this "it's good enough" ?

    1. Mark 85

      Re: Rank

      If indeed America is number 17 on a list, perhaps that will be odious enough to short-circuit some of this "it's good enough" ?

      It won't be enough to move the FCC at this point. I'm not sure if an a-bomb would be enough. This isn't about reality, it's politics working for the highest bidder as Mr. Pai will need to curry favor from them for employment when his term is up.

    2. Lysenko

      Re: Rank

      The fact that the USA consistently comes in about 50th in the world[1] for maternal mortality rates (about the same as Iran) hasn't motivated them to do anything about it. All you need to do to sell "it's good enough" as a standard is characterise the alternative as "socialism".

      [1] Methodologies vary. That's a CIA World Fact Book figure.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Rank

      And it's going to go down the list probably... here in three years 87% of households will get FTTH for speeds up to 1Gb/s (the fiber infrastructure will be rented to ISP which may sell slower speeds), and the remaining - mostly isolated houses - using wireless technologies at 30Mb/s.

      It's a public/private effort - the state will subsidize part of the cost, the private company will get a 20 years concession, after which the network will return to the state.

      The incumbent telco, which was slowly deploying an FTTC network mostly in more populated and remunerative areas, was took by surprise and lost the tender, now it has to become much faster and offer more to stay competitive....

      Pai-Pai, ehm, bye-bye....

  2. GBE

    Municipal Fiber!

    I sure wish Minneapolis would hurry up and get to my neighborhood with municipal fiber. I don't even care if it's a bit more expensive that what Comcast is charging. We've got municipal wifi in my neighborhood, but it slows so much in the evenings it's useless (and it only peaks out at about 2Mbps off-peak).

  3. ma1010
    Flame

    Don't worry, it won't matter

    Comment all you like, but Pai won't do anything to upset his masters at Comcast, Time Warner or AT&T.

    New threshold for "broadband" = 600 baud down, 200 up.

    Once Pai gets that into effect, America will instantly have 100% broadband coverage! All thanks to the forward-looking FCC! (While in reality, the American oligopolies he whores for charge premium rates and provide service that would make many third world countries blush.)

    1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Re: Don't worry, it won't matter

      The link speed does not matter because the new definition will depend on "speeds that users actually subscribe to". 600↑200↓ will be sold as either "up to 100Mb/s", or (for twice the price) "up to 1Gb/s". Pai will have done his bit to make America great again by putting the US in first place for broadband subscription speeds.

    2. Mike 16

      Re: 600 baud down, 200 up.

      Now that's crazy talk.

      Very few serial ports (or USB serial adapters) made in the last decade or so will go down to 200. Something about using 16-bit clock dividers instead of the 20 (24?) on the original IBM PC, and making it sorta work with a (usually fixed) pre-scaler.

      Or are you envisioning a special WiFi box from your ISP that just throttles the crap out of connections?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just another example of American-style neoliberalism in action. Democracy anyone?

  5. Sherrie Ludwig

    I now live in a real, live third world country, complete with absurd tinpot dictator, his corrupt minions, and no services. And being told "we are no. 1!". Remind we what's the difference between the US and NK? Oh, yeah, we can grouse about it (currently, that will change). There's NO POINT in commenting, publicly or otherwise. When the net neutrality comment period opened, we still thought we had a government that might take the public's views into consideration. So, we commented. Now, we know that the fix is in, and nothing we say or do will change that. Hence, the apathy.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      defference between us and n. korea

      food.. even if most of it is poisoned with chemicals that lower testosterone levels and fog the brain turning them into docile sheep..

  6. Mr Sceptical
    FAIL

    Morons!

    That is all.

  7. Wolfclaw
    FAIL

    Why don't we just come out and say it, the FCC has been sold by Trump and bought by the Megacorps, who practically now write the FCC guidelines !

  8. fobobob

    If our FCC guy, Pai, actually wanted to convince anyone who wasn't already bought and paid for, he might use analogies like "not everyone needs a sports car or a bus or a dump truck" or similar; since we're living in some sort of bizarro world already, we can have Ted Stevens come in on a unicorn and give him a beatdown with a series of tubes.

  9. Nimby
    WTF?

    On the face of it, the suggestions seem logical.

    Um no, no it doesn't seem logical. Not at all. Not even a little bit. It is, in fact, the very definition of "illogical".

    1. "MOBILE broadband" is no more broadband than the "SPECIAL Olympics" is the Olympics. Both may cover some pretty amazing things, given their limitations, but the qualifier makes all the difference. You can't just mix them together like they are the same thing.

    2. What people SUBSCRIBE to doesn't mean $#!7 if it doesn't DELIVER. The whole purpose is to protect the consumer.

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