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A promised 'right' to fast internet rings hollow for millions stuck with 20th-century speeds
The Conversation, Phys.org, ^ | March 24, 2015 - 3 hours ago | Bianca Reisdorf And Anne-Marie Oostveen

Posted on 03/24/2015 10:22:40 AM PDT by Patriot777

In response to the government's recent declarations that internet speeds of 100Mb/s should be available to "nearly all homes" in the UK, a great many might suggest that this is easier said than done. It would not be the first such bold claim, yet internet connections in many rural areas still languish at 20th-century speeds. The government's digital communications infrastructure strategy contains the intention of giving customers the "right" to a broadband connection of at least 5Mb/s in their homes.

There's no clear indication of any timeline for introduction, nor what is meant by "nearly all homes" and "affordable prices". But in any case, bumping the minimum speed to 5Mb/s is hardly adequate to keep up with today's online society. It's less than the maximum possible ADSL1 speed of 8Mb/s that was common in the mid-2000s, far less than the 24Mb/s maximum speed of ADSL2+ that followed, and far, far less than the 30-60Mb/s speeds typical of fibre optic or cable broadband connections available today.

In fact a large number of rural homes still are not able to access even the previously promised 2Mb/s minimum of the Digital Britain report in 2009.

(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: fast; internet; nationalizeinternet; netneutrality; nonexistent; publicutility; speed
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I know of the following types of internet in existence: public-domain, state, government, university, tech, science, space, military, defense. I'm not going to give specific names to some of these as it would be a LLSS scenario. There are extremely fast speeds, just not available to civilians, only to those with top-secret or better clearance.
1 posted on 03/24/2015 10:22:40 AM PDT by Patriot777
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To: Patriot777

I was surprised to find San Diego CA all wired at DSL speeds.
I now have lived in two town with population smaller than 100k who have better internet service


2 posted on 03/24/2015 10:27:09 AM PDT by Zathras
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To: Patriot777
Any person in the US can have Gigabit Ethernet to their house. All they have to do is pay the local carrier to bring fiber optics to their house. If they can't afford that, they can make their own decisions as to the trade offs of speed vs cost. It is call the free market and it does NOT need government to interfere.
3 posted on 03/24/2015 10:28:34 AM PDT by taxcontrol
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To: Zathras

I live in a town with less than 100 people and have high speed internet.

The free market werks fer me.


4 posted on 03/24/2015 10:29:29 AM PDT by cripplecreek ("For by wise guidance you can wage your war")
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To: Patriot777

he done gave us Our Obamaphone and caint give us no Obamanet??


5 posted on 03/24/2015 10:30:07 AM PDT by MeshugeMikey ("Never, Never, Never, Give Up," Winston Churchill ><>)
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To: Patriot777

Good to know that the guys at Los Alamos can download their Netflix in 1/8 the time.


6 posted on 03/24/2015 10:31:12 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: taxcontrol; All
You are right. good post. However, have you heard that the dictator Barak Obama has already unconstitutionally ordered his FCC to impose 300 pages of Soros socialist net neutrality laws. This supposedly will go through some sort of judicial and or congressional (laugh) review. I assume the judicial is some sort of lawsuits filed by ISP. so this net neutrality is not fully implemented yet but when it will be the Internet in the USA will be ruined.
7 posted on 03/24/2015 10:33:48 AM PDT by Democrat_media (Obama illegally imposed socialist net neutrality on the Internet to ruin it)
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To: taxcontrol; All
You are right. good post. However, have you heard that the dictator Barak Obama has already unconstitutionally ordered his FCC to impose 300 pages of Soros socialist net neutrality laws to regulate the Internet. This supposedly will go through some sort of judicial and or congressional (laugh) review. I assume the judicial is some sort of lawsuits filed by ISP. so this net neutrality is not fully implemented yet but when it will be the Internet in the USA will be ruined.
8 posted on 03/24/2015 10:34:39 AM PDT by Democrat_media (Obama illegally imposed socialist net neutrality on the Internet to ruin it)
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To: MeshugeMikey

“he done gave us Our Obamaphone and caint give us noObamanet?”

Careful, he might give you free COMCAST !!! You’ll be sorry...


9 posted on 03/24/2015 10:34:51 AM PDT by litehaus (A memory tooooo long)
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To: Patriot777

The internet is like cars.
Some can afford Ferraris, while others have Fords and Chevys.
Some can afford 4G. Some can afford dial-up.

But everybody gets to work................


10 posted on 03/24/2015 10:35:51 AM PDT by Red Badger (Man builds a ship in a bottle. God builds a universe in the palm of His hand.............)
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To: litehaus

ObamaCast....theres a dreadful thought!


11 posted on 03/24/2015 10:39:30 AM PDT by MeshugeMikey ("Never, Never, Never, Give Up," Winston Churchill ><>)
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To: MeshugeMikey

and what ‘bout our right o fast pron downloads?


12 posted on 03/24/2015 10:43:38 AM PDT by bigbob (The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. Abraham Lincoln)
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To: bigbob

that will be covered in that new Net Nueterality Beel!!!


13 posted on 03/24/2015 10:46:36 AM PDT by MeshugeMikey ("Never, Never, Never, Give Up," Winston Churchill ><>)
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To: Patriot777

Here in NH, I’m half a mile from a cable connection, so I have to rely on DSL.

Our DSL was great, until the geniuses in Concord decided that a fly-by-night, seat-of-the-pants, shoestring-operation should be given the communications franchise for the whole state.

Verizon out, Fairpoint in.

Now when communications equipment breaks, it stays broken.

I’m thinking of going to satellite, because the on-again-off-again, 1 Mb connection is extremely frustrating to use.

The only time we can see HD is if we rent a DVD.


14 posted on 03/24/2015 11:00:46 AM PDT by Westbrook (Children do not divide your love, they multiply it)
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To: Patriot777

I live in a town of about 14k population.

I got cable + Internet in late 2003. The speed was 1 Mbps and it cost around $35. Not long after, the cable company increased the speed to 4 Mbps.

Periodically (2x per year until the last 2 years) the cable co would raise the rate a $1 to $3. Occasionally, they would increase the speed, too.

About 2 years ago I had to buy a new modem because they had increased their speed, but in order to access it, I needed a DOCSIS 3.0 and I had a 2.0.

Last year, they increased the price and the speed. I now have around 50 Mbps at $65.

The advantage with cable Internet is that my preferred-level service also allows me 250 Gb of download/upload, so video streaming (Netflix, youtube, etc.) is no problem. I seldom exceed 100 Gb of downoad/uploads.


15 posted on 03/24/2015 11:01:41 AM PDT by TomGuy
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To: Democrat_media

I saw some remarks claiming that the new net neutrality regulations require a service speed of at least 25 Mbps for a provider to call it ‘broadband’.


16 posted on 03/24/2015 11:05:19 AM PDT by TomGuy
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To: TomGuy

Some clever marketing guy will have to rebrand the 10Mbps service as “Boardbrand”.


17 posted on 03/24/2015 11:19:26 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: Patriot777

How could people possibly have survived in the dark ages of dial-up?


18 posted on 03/24/2015 11:21:27 AM PDT by Fresh Wind (Falcon 105)
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To: taxcontrol
Any person in the US can have Gigabit Ethernet to their house. All they have to do is pay the local carrier to bring fiber optics to their house. If they can't afford that, they can make their own decisions as to the trade offs of speed vs cost. It is call the free market and it does NOT need government to interfere.

Internet interconnection is different then ethernet, this makes your post suspect from the start. I am not so sure about the availability of really high-speed internet if the customer is willing to pay.

We are in a small town in southern Oregon. 8 years ago, I checked on even getting cable internet to our house, and the cable company was not willing to extend their network the 4000 feet we needed. Even if we paid for the entire extension ourselves. I told them that $20k was not out of the question, although I would have preferred less.

For years we had DSL from the local phone company, which was advertised at 1.8 Mbps, but measured 0.3 to 1.2 depending on the day and who had squawked the most recently. They had a few good pairs, which they would rob from someone else when we complained. Then they gave them to others when they complained and put us back on the noisy ones.

Right now, we have a provider who has microwave internet, which is not very common. We get almost 3 Mbps which is great compared to the old DSL, but not "modern" in any sense.

I admit, I never checked on fiber optic, but suspect that right-of-way issues would make it impractical for costs under several million$.

We would love to have any improvement.

19 posted on 03/24/2015 11:29:02 AM PDT by CurlyDave
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To: TomGuy; All

I tried reading through that 300 pages of FCC regulations. It’s a bunch of Soros researched legaleze . they made it really hard to understand for a lay person. Soros funded the research to implement these socialist net neutrality regulations regulating the Internet.
I did hear and read that almost anyone can file a grievance complaint with the FCC against an ISP and or web site “oh that’s unfair” or “against FCC regulations”. that alone will throw a monkey wrench in the Internet as was the intent. It’s obamacare for the Internet at BEST


20 posted on 03/24/2015 11:38:35 AM PDT by Democrat_media (Obama illegally imposed socialist net neutrality on the Internet to ruin it)
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