FCC proposes higher speed goals (100/20 Mbps) for USF providers

Mon Jun 6 14:44:20 UTC 2022

" I find it sad that so many would argue for never needing anything 
more than we have today." 

Few to none are doing that. Upgrades are an organic part of the process. Some places they're hard, but most places they're comparatively easy. Let's stop putting the cart before the horse just to feel good about ourselves. That's too expensive. 

"totally fail to provide the same to everyone." 

Why should that be desirable? 

"If we had moved to fibre everywhere then perhaps" 

Negative. DOCSIS works well enough. Modern DSL implementations are good enough. Fixed wireless in many cases is good enough. Next gen satellite is good enough. 

"If you build it they will come." 

So then build the hypothetical content that needs this? 

Gigabit download level service is available to enough (at least in the US) that if such a downstream heavy service were on our doorstep, it would work for most Americans. Once people got tired of being proven that you need such forward-looking downstream capacity in the regulatory world, they just moved to upstream and cried wolf there too. Yes, many services do have mildly inadequate upstream, but certainly not anything to change the regulatory environment over. 

----- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 
http://www.ics-il.com 

Midwest-IX 
http://www.midwest-ix.com 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Brandon Butterworth" <brandon at rd.bbc.co.uk> 
To: "Mike Hammett" <nanog at ics-il.net> 
Cc: "Michael Thomas" <mike at mtcc.com>, nanog at nanog.org 
Sent: Monday, June 6, 2022 9:31:13 AM 
Subject: Re: FCC proposes higher speed goals (100/20 Mbps) for USF providers 

On Mon Jun 06, 2022 at 08:06:50AM -0500, Mike Hammett wrote: 
> "So what happens if the Next Big Thing..." 

I find it sad that so many would argue for never needing anything 
more than we have today. It's like why did we bother coming out of 
the trees, or the oceans even (yes Apple digital watches are a pretty 
neat idea). 

The non fibre installations we have today, while working for some, 
totally fail to provide the same to everyone. While fixing that 
globally should be a priority it should not be done in a manner 
that will require it all doing again in 10 years. 

Building in some headroom for growth makes sense, we're not talking 
lots it's only 10x ish to do gigabit ish, so within error margin. 

> I see this said a lot, but it doesn't really mean anything. We 
> are sufficiently close to whatever is likely to come that it 
> can come and bandwidths will have to catch up upon its launch. 

If we had moved to fibre everywhere then perhaps, but until 
then we face many decades trying to get that done. So if 
something comes up we may be stuck waiting. Stuff always 
comes up. 

When I started the BBC streaming we were told not to bother by 
ISPs, the quality was rubbish, the network couldn't handle it and 
never will. I did it anyway and the net grew but it was a long 
slow process with lots of screaming. It'd be nice to not have to 
wait so long next time because people want to deploy more legacy. 

> If we're not that close, then it's unrealistic to pre-build 
> capacity for imaginary developments that never come. 

If you build it they will come. People are more likely to 
invest in making things if they see a realistic timescale 
to deployment. If they also have to upgrade everyones home 
too they are less likely to bother. 

brandon 

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