New minimum speed for US broadband connections
Note, the official broadband definition only means service providers can't advertise it as "broadband" or **qualify for subsidies**; not that they must deliver better service.
This seems to be the point most respondents are missing.... No entity is blocking slower than X deployments; the 64 million dollar err bit question is what qualifies. (I'd be happy if it also excluded "5 Gee" if that squelched the endless tsunami of ads on same.)
I do not live in the US and I do not pay US taxes. So I have no opinion on the original question. Let me offer an observation: I live in NL and I have two strands of glass plus coax into my house in a rural village in the ‘far south’. I do not live at the end of a 50 mile dirt road but for NL it is quite rural. The fibre has been installed and paid for by a company called Reggefiber, founded and backed by not-for-profit real estate developers. They do not provide the Internet service. I have a choice of ISPs using the Reggefiber glass. I buy 500/500 from one of those at EUR 69.50, ~ USD 85 per month; this includes a data-only SIM with 1GB/month on 4G whether I want it or not. I actually get 500/500 to the office, we peer with the ISP. I get at least 450/450 to my family server hosted in DE (RTT ~15ms); so I have to bandwidth limit the back-ups I pull *to* my house from DE lest I inconvenience the rest of the family. I canceled the cable broadband which I initially kept for redundancy after a year because the glass is more than reliable enough. I am a happy customer! The reasons this got installed were not subsidies from public/tax money. They were: 1) Reggefiber was not connected to one of the incumbents with existing plant. 2) Reggefiber was run by people who understood long term, low return investments. 2a) They got their money from the part of the banks that understand such investments. 3) The government did not provide subsidies but regulations that made this viable for Reggefiber and the ISPs. 3a) Afaik the government provided a subsidy for a small number (1?) of proof-of-concept deployments. I guess you see it coming from the past tense already. KPN, the major incumbent acquired Reggefiber through some pretty impressive lobbying effort that made it impossible for the founders to keep it. The company still exists but deployment rates have gone down. On the bright side: the model has proven to work and there are quite some smaller localised efforts. I guess that these are similar to the US co-op idea that was mentioned here. Just my own observations. Think globally, act locally. Daniel
On 5/31/21 11:49, Daniel Karrenberg wrote:
I do not live in the US and I do not pay US taxes. So I have no opinion on the original question. Let me offer an observation:
I live in NL and I have two strands of glass plus coax into my house in a rural village in the ‘far south’. I do not live at the end of a 50 mile dirt road but for NL it is quite rural. The fibre has been installed and paid for by a company called Reggefiber, founded and backed by not-for-profit real estate developers. They do not provide the Internet service. I have a choice of ISPs using the Reggefiber glass. I buy 500/500 from one of those at EUR 69.50, ~ USD 85 per month; this includes a data-only SIM with 1GB/month on 4G whether I want it or not. I actually get 500/500 to the office, we peer with the ISP. I get at least 450/450 to my family server hosted in DE (RTT ~15ms); so I have to bandwidth limit the back-ups I pull *to* my house from DE lest I inconvenience the rest of the family. I canceled the cable broadband which I initially kept for redundancy after a year because the glass is more than reliable enough.
I am a happy customer!
The reasons this got installed were not subsidies from public/tax money. They were:
1) Reggefiber was not connected to one of the incumbents with existing plant. 2) Reggefiber was run by people who understood long term, low return investments. 2a) They got their money from the part of the banks that understand such investments. 3) The government did not provide subsidies but regulations that made this viable for Reggefiber and the ISPs. 3a) Afaik the government provided a subsidy for a small number (1?) of proof-of-concept deployments.
I guess you see it coming from the past tense already. KPN, the major incumbent acquired Reggefiber through some pretty impressive lobbying effort that made it impossible for the founders to keep it. The company still exists but deployment rates have gone down. On the bright side: the model has proven to work and there are quite some smaller localised efforts. I guess that these are similar to the US co-op idea that was mentioned here.
Just my own observations. Think globally, act locally.
The Stokab model, in Stockholm, still continues to impress me. Your story reminded me of them. Mark.
participants (3)
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Daniel Karrenberg -
David -
Mark Tinka