The FCC wants a Gigabit Community in every state by 2015. Meep meep.
On Friday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski challenged broadband providers and state and municipal community leaders to have at least one gigabit Internet community in each state by 2015. The challenge is obviously propelled by Google's accomplishments with Google Fiber in Kansas City which is currently offering gigabit internet to residents along with a streaming TV service.
"American economic history teaches a clear lesson about infrastructure," Genachowski said. "If we build it, innovation will come. The U.S. needs a critical mass of gigabit communities nationwide so that innovators can develop next-generation applications and services that will drive economic growth and global competitiveness."
To help communities meet this challenge, Genachowski revealed plans to create a new online clearinghouse of best practices to collect and disseminate information about how to lower the costs and increase the speed of broadband deployment nationwide, including ways to create gigabit communities. He also proposed working jointly with the U.S. Conference of Mayors on the best-practices clearinghouse effort.
As part of Genachowski's plan, the FCC will hold workshops on gigabit communities that will include broadband providers and state and municipal leaders. Subjects will include evaluating barriers, increasing incentives, and lowering the costs of speeding gigabit network deployment. The resulting collaboration of all workshops will inform the Commission's clearinghouse about how the industry, local and state leaders can effectively establish gigabit communities nationwide without breaking the local economies.
"The FCC’s Broadband Acceleration Initiative is working to expand the reach of robust, affordable broadband by streamlining access to utility poles and rights of way, and improving policies for wireless facilities siting and other infrastructure," the FCC said on Friday. "Gigabit communities can also benefit from tens of thousands of miles of critical 'middle mile' fiber infrastructure funded throughout the country by the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program run by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration."
The FCC noted Google's success in building a gigabit community in Kansas City as well as a local utility in Chattanooga, Tennessee which deployed a fiber network to 170,000 homes. This latter new network created more than 3.700 new jobs over the last three years thanks to Amazon and Volkswagen. The FCC also noted the Gig.U initiative which has catalyzed $200 million in private investment to build ultra-high-speed hubs in the communities of many leading research universities.
"The Gigabit City Challenge is designed to drive a critical mass of gigabit communities like these, creating new markets for 21st century services, promoting competition, spurring innovation, and driving economic growth nationwide," the FCC added.
Future Gigabit Add:
Now with Gigabit Speeds!
Small print
$19.99 for the first six months, $149.99 + one child + one limb every month thereafter. Gigabit speeds only guaranteed for 2.5 nanoseconds a month. A limit of 2 MB a month applies, once you've reached this limit your speed will drop arbitrarily to speeds were you might as well break out your old 1800 baud modem. 2 year contract, early termination fee equal to Federal Deficit applies for ending contract early.
(Then again this kinda looks like a lot of cell phone contracts today)
I've got fiber to the premise here. There is only Cat 5e from that point on. They could provide that kind of speed to my community already but the quickest I'll see from ATT Uverse is 18Mb. That's because they don't care to increase it until they get more profitable build outs done.
First off, most ISP's do run on a fiber optic network. Just not all of them go to the house/premises. Second, The newer iterations of DOCSIS can support 1Gbps, So the excuse that ISP's will have to spend a great deal of money to make 1Gbps work wont fly.
The reason why there isn't a big push for 1Gbps is there is no need for it yet. However, with more and more companies push digital distribution (at least video games) and with the most likely rise of 4K video (which Netflix and others will want to stream) there will be a greater need to have 1Gbps internet connections
FCC: "Yup"
ISP: "Well, we do have a gigabit connection, though it only hits that speed for only a few seconds every day. Rest of the time it's less than 50 megabits per second."
Customers: "..."
Future Gigabit Add:
Now with Gigabit Speeds!
Small print
$19.99 for the first six months, $149.99 + one child + one limb every month thereafter. Gigabit speeds only guaranteed for 2.5 nanoseconds a month. A limit of 2 MB a month applies, once you've reached this limit your speed will drop arbitrarily to speeds were you might as well break out your old 1800 baud modem. 2 year contract, early termination fee equal to Federal Deficit applies for ending contract early.
(Then again this kinda looks like a lot of cell phone contracts today)
I realize that, running it to the house is another animal, and ya sure current DOCSIS could do gigabit connections but the amount of bonded channels needed would wither at the limited capacity of there coaxial network. Under the current 6Mhz wide 256 QAM modulation per channel, conservatively I would say you could get a maximum of 25Mbps/per channel. So that would require 40 6Mhz wide channels a total of 240Mhz on a network that probably doesn't even surpass a max frequency of 900Mhz! That's a lot of real estate
There either needs to be mandate and financing for the federal/state/local authorities to push the payment for buildout to 10 - 15 years. Without both these things it will not happen.
10Gbit Ethernet will be in homes in about 5 years, at the data center level CISCO successfully tested 100Gbit ethernet back in 2011 and when I move into my next home, it will have Cat 7 10Gbit copper already wired in the walls.
I have FIOS in Los Angeles and this is a 4:40pm speedtest
480ms ping to a server 100mi away, with 1.85 Mb/s down and .15 Mb/s up: http://www.speedtest.net/result/2448672010.png
Anybody who complains about the "big mean, anti-business government" ought to have their head examined...
Nah, just set their home internet connection to dial-up mode, and install a software on their phone to also restrict the connection bandwidth.
...
Actually, that would be fairly lenient.
FORCE THEM TO USE AOL DIALUP SERVICE! (and throw in a free 500 hour CD to sweeten the bitterness)
...and I'm still using 100Mbps on my LAN.
I hear ya!