The Federal Communications Commission voted [May 19, 2022] to seek comment on a proposal to provide additional universal service support to certain rural carriers in exchange for increasing deployment to more locations at higher speeds. The proposal would make changes to the Alternative Connect America Cost Model (A-CAM) program, with the goal of achieving widespread deployment of faster 100/20 Mbps broadband service throughout the rural areas served by rural carriers currently receiving A-CAM support.
The Fiber Broadband Association estimates that the average US household will need more than a gig within 5 years. Why not just jump it to a gig or more?
Money, money, money.
The Fiber Broadband Association estimates that the average US household will need more than a gig within 5 years. Why not just jump it to a gig or more?
Really? What is the average household doing to use up a gig worth of bandwidth?
Mike
The Fiber Broadband Association estimates that the average US household will need more than a gig within 5 years. Why not just jump it to a gig or more?
Really? What is the average household doing to use up a gig worth of bandwidth?
Mike
Thats almost the same question we were asked at BT a dozen years ago when moving from DSL -> FTTC when someone said, “but surely DSL is sufficient because its so much faster than dial.”
The two of us survive just fine with 25Mbs even when we have a house full of friends. I mean it would be nice to have 100Mbs so that it's never a problem but the reality is that it just hasn't been a problem in practice. I mean how many 4k streams are running at the same time in the average household? What else besides game downloads are sucking up that much bandwidth all of the time?
Mike
What is changing in the next 5 years that could possibly require a household to need a gig? That is just ridiculous.
What is changing in the next 5 years that could possibly require a household to need a gig? That is just ridiculous.
I think the key thing is just to get fiber laid. Once that happens ISP's can turn up the dial relatively easy as needed. Also: even if they gave you a nominal rate of 1G it doesn't mean that they won't oversubcribe the headend and beyond.
Mike
The Fiber Broadband Association estimates that the average US household will need more than a gig within 5 years. Why not just jump it to a gig or more?
Really? What is the average household doing to use up a gig worth of bandwidth?
Mike
Thats almost the same question we were asked at BT a dozen years ago when moving from DSL -> FTTC when someone said, “but surely DSL is sufficient because its so much faster than dial.”
—Tom
That is all obvious to me at least. I was just pointing out the folly in saying “what would one do with that much X” resource. We always have found a way
going back to the beginning. My story about back at BT was prior to video streaming. At that point in time it didn’t exist and was made a reality in
part, because of the simple increase in bandwidth available to subscribers (and everywhere else).
—Tom
Optimize their activities by remove a major delay factors from their activities.
See The Human Use of Human Beings, a book by Norbert Wiener.
Yes! Some other ways to the basic idea are that
The function of data networks is to satisfy human impatience.
and
The goal is to minimize transaction latency.
Once you accept either one, the conclusion that follows is that
there is no limit to potential demand (which, however, as always,
is moderated by cost and applications one uses).
A couple of papers that deal with this are "The delusions of net neutrality" from the 2008 Telecommunications Policy Research Conference,
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/net.neutrality.delusions.pdf
and "The current state and likely evolution of the Internet" from
Globecom 1999,
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/globecom99.pdf
Andrew
Is it?
What’s the bandwidth of a good quality 4K stream? What about 4 of them + various additional interactive technologies, software downloads, media downloads, etc.?
Looking at the graphs, my household (which isn’t average by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a household) doesn’t need a gig very often, but there are the occasional multiple hours where my Gig downstream does flatline at about 950Mbps.
So I’d say that I make sufficiently frequent use of the gig that is available as to render it unlikely I would be satisfied with less bandwidth.
Owen
If you're going to use downloads as the benchmark, what about 10G or 40G as the baseline? I mean, that's an unwinnable treadmill.
But from my reading about 25Mbs is just on the edge of being ok with 4k. Certainly 100Mbs would be fine for multiple streams.
Mike
I think a gig is not an unreasonable target… It’s 100Mbps plus adequate headroom for the likely oversubscription models and the occasional downloads that are modern day reality.
Nobody is going to consistently use 1Gbps, but the difference in wire time for a large download between 100Mbps and 1Gbps is significant.
Making 1Gbps available in today’s network technology isn’t significantly harder nor is it any more expensive than making 100Mbps available when you consider oversubscribed bandwidth which is inherent in today’s residential models.
I’m not so unreasonable as to suggest dedicated gig CIR everywhere, but something close to 100Mbps CIR with 1G burstability isn’t an unreasonable target IMHO.
Anything over 1G gets more complicated and more expensive with available technology today, though that silly 2.5G stuff is not unlikely to gain traction in the residential aren in the near future.
10G or 40G are pretty absurd because the average residence can’t possible make realistic use of it… Most residences have a 1G bottle neck to the modem.
Owen
There is the other significant problem — using downloads as the benchmark. This ignores being the family “IT consultant” doing remote support. This ignores voip telephony, hosting Zoom meetings with friends and family, class reunions, show and tell, informal classes, and eventually, shared Virtual scenarios. If the FCC ignores upload speed parity and BufferBloat controls, the end result will probably not be favorable from the user viewpoint. And I haven’t yet mentioned virtual presence at the SpaceX launch control center.
I agree that it probably doesn't change much for the ISP's (my rural ISP installing fiber apparently disagrees tho). The thing is that if you're talking about downloads, the game manufacturers will just fill to whatever available capacity the pipes will give so it probably won't ever get better.
Maybe there a Next Big Thing that will be an even bigger bandwidth eater than video. But I get the bigger limitation these days for a lot of people is latency rather than bandwidth. That of course is harder to deal with.
Mike
Remember, this rulemaking is for 1.1 million locations with the "worst" return on investment. The end of the tail of the long tail. Rural and tribal locations which aren't profitable to provide higher speed broadband.
These locations have very low customer density, and difficult to serve.
After the Sandwich Isles Communications scandal, gold-plated proposals will be viewed with skepticism. While a proposal may have a lower total cost of ownership over decades, the business case is the cheapest for the first 10 years of subsidies. [massive over-simplification]
Historically, these projects have lack of timely completion (abandoned, incomplete), and bad (overly optimistic?) budgeting.
The real problem most users experience isn’t that they have a gig, or even 100Mb of available download bandwidth…it’s that they infrequently are able to use that full bandwidth due to massive over subscription .
The other issue is the minimal upload speed. It’s fairly easy to consume the 10Mb that you’re typically getting as a residential customer. Even “business class” broadband service has a pretty poor upload bandwidth limit.
We are a pretty high usage family, and 100/10 has been adequate, but there’s been times when we are pegged at the 10 Mb upload limit, and we start to see issues.
I’d say 25/5 is a minimum for a single person.
Would 1 gig be nice…yeah as long as the upload speed is dramatically increased as part of that. We would rarely use it, but that would likely be sufficient for a long time. I wouldn’t pay for the extra at this point though.
Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> writes:
The Fiber Broadband Association estimates that the average US
household will need more than a gig within 5 years. Why not just
jump it to a gig or more?Really? What is the average household doing to use up a gig worth of
bandwidth?
I don't think this "need" is based on using up all the available
bandwitdh, but about speed expectations. Customers want to download the
same amount of data as before, only faster. Increasing the subscriber
port bandwidth allows the ISP to oversubscribe their access network even
more, so the cost doesn't necessarily increase much. You get faster
downloads for "free". Customers will want that.
Don't know how many of you on the wrong side of the pond followed
RIPE84? There was an interesting talk there from Init7 in Switzerland on
their experiences delivering 25 gig FTTH:
I noticed in particular the "Monthly volume won't change" on one of the
slides..
Dealing with extreme syncronized peaks, like a popular game launch for
example, will be harder with higher bandwidths. But we do have CDNs for
efficient distribution of the same content to many ports. You'll just
have to move those further out in the access network.
Bjørn
Do they help with a local government ("we do not need your cables, go avway")?
23.05.22 21:56, Sean Donelan пише: