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AT&T and Verizon say 10Mbps is too fast for ?broadband,? 4Mbps is enough

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  AT&T and Verizon say 10Mbps is too fast for ?broadband,? 4Mbps is enough Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-09 00:58 +0000
    Re: AT&T and Verizon say 10Mbps is too fast for ?broadband,? 4Mbps is enough Johny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2014-09-09 17:54 +0100
    Re:AT&T and Verizon say 10Mbps is too fast for ?broadband,? 4Mbps is enough RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-09-09 18:25 +0000

#4752 — AT&T and Verizon say 10Mbps is too fast for ?broadband,? 4Mbps is enough

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/09/att-and-verizon-say-10mbps-is-too-fast-for-broadband-4mbps-is-enough/

   AT&T and Verizon have asked the Federal Communications Commission not to
   change its definition of broadband from 4Mbps to 10Mbps, saying many
   Internet users get by just fine at the lower speeds.

   "Given the pace at which the industry is investing in advanced
   capabilities, there is no present need to redefine 'advanced'
   capabilities," AT&T wrote in a filing made public Friday after the FCC's
   comment deadline (see FCC proceeding 14-126). "Consumer behavior
   strongly reinforces the conclusion that a 10Mbps service exceeds what
   many Americans need today to enable basic, high-quality transmissions,"
   AT&T wrote later in its filing. Verizon made similar arguments.

   ...

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#4762

On Tue, 09 Sep 2014 00:58:50 +0000 (UTC), Rich <rich@example.invalid>
wrote:

>http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/09/att-and-verizon-say-10mbps-is-too-fast-for-broadband-4mbps-is-enough/
>
>   AT&T and Verizon have asked the Federal Communications Commission not to
>   change its definition of broadband from 4Mbps to 10Mbps, saying many
>   Internet users get by just fine at the lower speeds.
>
>   "Given the pace at which the industry is investing in advanced
>   capabilities, there is no present need to redefine 'advanced'
>   capabilities," AT&T wrote in a filing made public Friday after the FCC's
>   comment deadline (see FCC proceeding 14-126). "Consumer behavior
>   strongly reinforces the conclusion that a 10Mbps service exceeds what
>   many Americans need today to enable basic, high-quality transmissions,"
>   AT&T wrote later in its filing. Verizon made similar arguments.
>
 I can see _some_ validity for the industry's argument (but the lack
of an option to stay on the existing standard speed at a reduced
rental compared to accepting the "Free Speed Upgrade" undermines the
argument somewhat).

 In this case, I'm thinking of the UK's monopoly Broadband Cable based
supplier, Virgin Media, which was the final result of a merging of
various cable operators over the past decade or so (NTL, Telewest (and
others? - apparently there were no others, they'd already been
assimilated into the two major players, NTL and Telewest by then)).

 The last "Free speed upgrade" on their "Standard" 10/1 Mbps service
tripled the download speed (but only doubled the upload speed) keeping
the £26.15 monthly rental charge the same.

 Quite frankly, I'd have been quite happy to have had the choice of
staying on the 10Mbps service if they'd offered the option of a
reduction on rental rather than triple the speed at the same price,
say £15 or £16 a month (a mere 38.5% reduction in the rental versus an
effective reduction in speed over the new "Free Upgrade" speed of 67%
- I wouldn't expect a pro rata reduction to £8.72 a month ( it's not
_all_ about data throughput, there are other fixed overheads involved
as well).

 As things stand, the only way you can reduce your rental is to
threaten to leave and accept their "retention" offering (was 4/0.25
Mbps with more draconian traffic management, the last time I looked).
Since I've never 'tried it on' with my ISP, I don't know how much
cheaper this could be but good commercial sense would decree that it
be no more pricey than the cheapest equivilent ADSL offering or VM
doesn't stand any chance of hanging onto such customers' "By the skin
of their teeth". I don't know whether this info is openly published.

 It may not be, on account that it allows the retentions department to
"Haggle" the best deal they can squeeze out of their 'about to leave
for greener pastures' customer, looking at cheaper alternatives from
VM's competitiors who VM would prefer not to benefit at their expense.

 I can well remember, when taking over my daughter's account some 15
years or so back, changing to their cheapest broadband service (NTL
whilst they still offered a 128Kbps download / 64 Kbps upload service
for £15 per month versus the 25 quid per month on their 512Kbps
service).

 This was around the time when they first started their never ending
"Free speed Upgrades", initially rejigging the 512Kbps service to
600Kbps (an obvious ploy to attract potential ADSL customers away from
the original 512Kbps ADSL service offerings).

 A little later on they 'upgraded' their 128Kbps service by a poxy
22Kbps to bring it back in line with the 'quarter the speed' of the
next faster option[1]. This time, it was purely an excuse to screw
their existing 128K customers out of an extra 3 quid (totally out of
all proportion to the "upgrade" in service speed.

 It annoyed the hell out of me at the time but I knew I was still
better off on cable, even at this speed, than I would have been with
the, quite frankly, rather flaky ADSL offerings by NTL's competitors
so I 'sucked it up'.

 Although the 150Kbps service was only 3 or 4 times faster than a
decent V,90 dialup service, the key difference between using dialup
and a cable connection was the fixed charge, "all you can eat" always
on service I could readily hook up to a router, allowing all the PCs
on the house LAN to have instant internet access, versus the call
costs of dial up (even if the off peak charge was only a penny a
minute - with a 5p minimum) along with it rendering the line 'busy' to
incoming callers whilst consuming money at the rate of a penny a
minute.

 As I've already stated, there is far more to an ISP connection than
just speed. That comparison with dial up being about the most extreme
of examples I could offer against the (glacially slow by today's
standards) 150Kbps "Broadband" service.

 It may have been 'slow broadband' but the key attraction was the fact
that it worked just like the faster broadband connections, always on,
fixed monthly charge, never tying up the phone line, allowing an easy
way to utilise a cheap gateway router to share this 'expensive
connection' amongst a bunch of computers on the home LAN to maximise
the RoI and, effectively, an "All You Can Eat" download policy.

 I think there was an informally imposed 30GB a month cap on the
150Kbps service which seems to have involved a considerable amount of
commonsense give and take in regard to how it was applied (at least I
never ever saw a letter from NTL in regard of busting the 30GB cap
which _could_ be exceeded even by such a slow connection,
theoretically 44GB per 30 day month, if you _really_ put your mind to
it).

 Virgin Media's solution to saving 'the majority of their reasonable
users' from the 'greed of the less considerate few' takes the form of
a traffic management policy. Aside from this, the informal "monthly
cap" simply no longer exists, no capping whatsoever, in fact.

[1] It's a sobering thought, but this cheapest 150Kbps service has
received endless 'Free' speed upgrades over the past 14 or 15 years to
evolve into the 30Mbps service we see today ( with yet another upgrade
to 50Mbps promised during the next 12 months!).

 It took a bit of googling to track down the upgrade history (an
exercise akin to 'Pulling Teeth') but it seems the sequence went:
128 > 150 > 300 Kbps > 1Mbps > 2Mbps > 4Mbps > 10Mbps > 30 Mbps
(actually 35000000bps) with 50Mbps being the next 'free' upgrade in
the pipeline).

 NTL/Telewest/VM have progressed a hell of a long way (cable customers
only) over the past decade and a half. What I noticed most of all with
these speed upgrades was that most of the internet was incapable of
matching the cable speed, with most of the servers struggling to do a
tenth of that speed.

 There were a couple of notable exceptions, microsoft.com and
nvidia.com where downloads did manage to max out the connection. I
soon learned to ignore the temptation to pay for the next tier of
service after we tried the 20Mbps for about 6 months, reverting back
to the original 10Mbps.

 These planned free speed upgrades are far enough ahead of the curve
with regard to the internet in general as to temper temptation for
'even faster' speeds. It's got to the point where I'd rather they gave
me a choice of remaining on the 'slower' speed at a discount price,
which is why I have any sympathy at all with AT&T and Verizon's views
over the FCC's desire to set a lower limit of 10Mbps as a defining
feature of broadband.

 After all, there was a time when 128Kbps was classed as broadband
simply because it was a dedicated, always on data connection with a
wider bandwidth than possible using the latest v.90 dial up modems (
typically by a factor of three in most cases). Classifying any service
faster than 128Kbps is a broadband service in my book. The proposed
10Mbps benchmark figure proposed by the FCC is a rather arbitary one
that isn't, necessarily benefit the end users. Certainly not UK cable
users at any rate. :-)

-- 
J B Good

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#4766

The fact that they're unable to provide any more than that without
 having to invest has nothing to do with it?

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