The
National Broadband Plan may one day bring broadband to everyone in the United States but, as a new report from the FCC itself reveals, there's still quite a ways to go. According to the report (issued every year by the agency), between 14 and 24 million Americans have no access to broadband, which is now defined by the FCC to be a 4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream. That's a significant revision from the previous 200kbps downstream standard used by the annual report, and brings it in line with the
minimum goals set by the National Broadband Plan. What does that mean for the 14 to 24 million without broadband access? Not much at the moment, unfortunately. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski says that those individuals are mostly in "expensive-to-serve areas with low population density," and that "without substantial reforms to the agency's universal service programs, these areas will continue to be unserved." Of course, that finding is just one part of the report -- hit up the source link below to check out the whole thing.
posted July 22nd 2010 1:47AM
@gfrantz Ah, well hold on man. Also, why did Jerry Jones not put in a giant WiMax antenna in New Cowboys Stadium, that might have helped here.
@TSSaloic Haha that would have helped a ton. That article that was posted a couple of days ago about AT&T bonding two phone lines together to increase range was encouraging so we'll see. At least I can go back to school in aug and have 10 up 10 down again, my brother is the one stuck here.
@TSSaloic
Because he's evil. Anyone that looks like a praying mantis won't be interested in the common good.
So is the Nevada desert really that populated?
omfg... how may tax dollars went into this study? why do we all end up paying for the obvious? there have been reports detailing these very facts for months... dare i say years..... and now we are supposed to be all like " hooray!!" Someone finally paid attention to us all!???? GIVE ME A BREAK!
@moonbase2
About $500.
@moonbase2
Bluh bluh polotics.
As obvious as it may be, studies to make these things hard evidence are pretty necessary.
Well, cannot access the PDF. Did the FCC exceed their 200MB cap?
@pika2000
Doh!
@nastro
this bozo again...
@nastro hahaha reagan was more left wing then obama. Socialism is a big word for someone as ignorant as you.
This far into reagan's first term, he spent more, raised taxes, and gave amnesty to millions of illegals.
@stabbytheicepic
Um dude, learn history.
Regan did those things with an agreement he made with DEMOCRATS who then broke their part of the deal.
It was democrats that voted those increases in.
I get 12 down and 2 up, sooo...is it selfish of me not to care?
@B3astofthe3ast
I used to get 20mbps by living 2 blocks away in this city. I moved to a new apartment, and now the best I can get 2 freakin' blocks away is 1.5 down which really sucks.
what does your map look like for competitiveness? ie where you actually have a choice in provider?
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa....who cares about Puerto Rico? When they accept statehood then I will care about their broadband penetration.
@mcdoomington --> I
@mcdoomington What about Guam? Aren't they still a territory?
24 million = 7% of US population. That means we currently have 93% penetration which sounds pretty good to me. Especially when you consider how relatively new broadband technology is and how large the US is.
want broadband? kill the monopoly cable companies have over an area. that is a silly protection no longer needed and it is only hurting consumers by having lousy cable providers charge a ton for mediocre service and have no reason to ever worry about upgrading their networks. FIOS is helping but it isn't everywhere yet.
What's that thing between Alaska and Hawaii? I don't recognize this island...
@Vicada
Puerto Rico
Has anyone actually taken the time to read that entire 144 page report?
I moved into the city, the urban jungle to get modern technologies and what not. Why can't anyone else? If I want it, I'll move myself closer to it. I shouldn't have to pay into a slush fund for someone too lazy to do anything (ahem, welfare program).
Lazy is as lazy does [nothing].
@barkingghos
Because the lazy bastards were brought up to think they are entitled to everything under the sun and some else should pay for it.
@mcdoomington --> I care aboout because I live here and FCC still overseers communications matters here, state or not state...
For example, in my area there's only one company offering DSL... at 512K speeds only
There are places that don't have public water either. Is that a bad thing? No, no it's not. I
I have 6 down but .5 up, does that mean I don't have broad band?
@Eric H
Lucky bustard. I actually have a choice of 4 providers, but I can't get faster than 384K up from any of them, unless I pop for 10m+ down speed at $100/month or business class at even higher prices.
Although 4mbit down barely meets the minimum to watch video, be on a Voip call, and have something left to surf, and it can't handle HD, I'm OK with that as a minimum, but less than 1 up is pretty much useless if you share anything more than simple low-res pictures. You can't use online backup services, the up speed cripples the down speed in many cases, and don'tt even think about uploading some 720p video clips from your new camera....
My wifes' only using 6GB out of our 20 available on MobileMe, and that's because she gave up sharing video. Last time she tried to upload about 7-10 minutes of clips, it was still going 24 hours later, and we couldn't use the internet for shit else while that was going on.
I'd like to see up speed as a function of down speed, say, up speed should never be less than 20% of down speed. 5mBit down needs 1mBit up, minimum. 10mb down should have 2 up. etc.
Maybe we should convert from broadband to blondband
Give sprint a ton of money to put a few towers here and there, then mail everyone Virgin Mobile prepaid internet sticks.
:)
Currently enjoying 20 down and 2.25 up with 55 sec ping in Delaware. And everyone thinks we're hicks.
Doesn't Hughesnet cover them? But, anyways, this whole thing is just absurd. It's another attempt to try and excuse the government's attempt to implement net neutrality or expand "free," as in tax payer funded internet.
If they want to spread the internet so much, they should just remove corporate income taxes on these ISPs. That's more money to invest and not a cost passed on to the consumer, thus lowering the cost of internet. Though, logic in the face of the FCC(and this Congress and this President, for that matter) has nothing to do, but wither and die a painful death.
Ahh, 2010 and 2012 can't come soon enough to stop these clowns.
@SnowSoul Hughesnet and really any satellite provider is not viable if you do anything more than go to web pages. If you use YouTube, you get fapped, upload too many photos you get fapped. The latency is unbelievably bad, especially on Wildblue, where the typical ping runs anywhere from 1300ms to 1400ms. If it weren't for the bandwidth restrictions, one would be able to make use of satellite internet, but where it stands now if you do much more then Visit web pages and download a bit of music (not much, mind you) you simply can not use satellite internet without being cutoff from your internet entirely.
@meditry That's not too surprising. I have DirecTV, so I know how annoying a stormy day can be and I have a 1Mbs(1.5Mbs?) through Qwest and I know how annoying that slow speed can be, especially when a friend of mine can download a game in 30 seconds, whereas I will spend an entire day and night downloading it. Regardless of it all, it can be assumed that Hughesnet, glitches and all, is still available in these places and is still high speed internet. People will still be able to do their work and if they have a successful venture into the internet maybe they'll have to relocate in the meantime. As non-fun as that may be, that's how it works.
I'm perfectly content with it all. As much as I'd love to be able to download stuff and not tie up the entire connection(Yes, my connection basically stops doing anything else when I download a large file at whopping speeds of 119kbs at max), the fact is, I can't at this point. As much as I'd love to be able to stream hulu or adultswim within seconds as my friends do, rather than wait 5 minutes and hope that that's long enough so I don't have to wait while in the middle of said episode because it loads to slow, I can't at this point.
Admittedly, I don't have it as bad as I'm assuming you may, it will grow and it will get better in time. Eventually, cables will be laid out there and eventually you'll have a better connection. At this point for the FCC to come in and demand better access and yes, I would be falling under that category, and be benefiting with a higher speed of connection, I would still wonder at what price and what's next. The cost would immediately grow for connection speeds to make for having to been forced to lay out the cables sooner rather than when prepared.
As well, if they get into this, what else will the government grab onto? Will they monitor what you do online? What you download? Or what you share through communications with others and financial transactions you make? As conspiratorial as that may sound, we already have a bill(The Obamacare bill or some other bill that will destroy this country in one way or another) that passed that makes it so the government will know of all financial transactions of $600 or more. As well, I would reference the link on Drudge Report that says the government now wants a database to monitor how much everyone in the country makes. Now why would a friendly government need to know this?
At this point, anything this government does I am cautious of and wonder what the ulterior motive is and would argue the above is enough of a reason to be so.
So what about all those of us with RoadRunner and 384kbps upload bandwidth? Is that below the line? Upload speeds in this country are shameful.
Perhaps I'm the only one that thinks that 95% coverage roughly 15 years after a commercial service has been invented... isn't that bad.
Let's talk about how long it took running water, electricity, television, the telephone, paved roads, and so on, to reach 95% of the United States.
Now. How many people with broadband have a choice between different ISPs?
So it would be helpful to provide a high resolution version of the map you posted in the article...or at the very least the PDF you got the image from.
http://www.fcc.gov/ftp/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2010/db0212/DOC-296239A1.pdf
ME ME ME!! This is basically the situation I am in. I can pay $100 for Satellite and not be able to download what I need/want because of a stupid FAP or I can pay $90 for DSL, and because I live so far away my speeds are.. Sub-par...
i live 7 miles from los gatos California and i don't have access to more than a 1mb/s internet connection.
I work in RTP (NC), and live 4 miles from work. Just ran the FCC's speed test at http://www.broadband.gov/qualitytest/about/ and my dl speed was 3.5 Mbps.
I have roadrunner at home, and based on the test history on my phone's fcc app, its a little closer to 4 Mbps, but hasn't broken 4 yet.
Looks like this area is deprived of broadband :(
No AT&T coverage in the Bay Area, that's for sure :-)
sooo... what's the deal with the pdf/chart icons. i would assume those signify there is a pdf download somewhere?
Is it just me or do others find it annoying when people under-utilize the web? You can't read the damn map in this article. I want to see a bigger version of the map. This is an extremely simple task for the web. But is there a link to a bigger/readable map? No. WTF?! There is however a really nice link attached to the image of the map that brings you right back to the same story. How convenient - NOT!!!
On speedtest.net I get 25.26Mbps down, and 1.72Mbps up on my desktop that is physically connected to the router via modem. On my netbook it reads 14.54Mbps down, and 1.71 Mbps up via Wi-fi. My cell phone is currently running EDGE, but I'm about to upgrade to a HSPA+ phone on T-Mobile. I have this to say, if you want fast internet then move to the city. I live in Dallas, TX by the way. Here I can get up to 50 Mbps down, and 20 Mbps up if I wanted via Verizon, but that would be $140. Right now I pay only $50 on TWC.