FCC will vote to cut off 41 million broadband users this Thursday*

Re: Seems they've forgotten what "broadband" actually means

>>Vermin Media and BT in the UK have redefined 'fibre optic' to mean 'partly fibre optic but there's copper cable for the last bit to your house'

American Theft and Thoughtlessness (AT&T) does very much the same thing with their uVerse offering, its fiber to the SAI or whatever they call the cabinets for it (it would be an SAI for DSL and PSTN, so I'm assuming they use the same terminology). They market it as fiber optic but except in very limited circumstances your "last mile" is going to be copper.

I well and truly hate that company, there is no reason whatsoever that a connection that requires no digging or replacement of their equipment should cost $500 even before the equipment deposits and that's exactly what they wanted to charge me. I have pretty good credit, not the best but I don't have a foreclosure and my revolving non-student debt's under $5k so the deposits wouldn't have been much, but attempting to extort 500 bucks out of me to make up for the lack of deposits I'd have to pay before even using the service is insane. I laughed at the salesman who was trying to sell me on it, because I thought he was joking. He wasn't.

I wish FPL offered access to their fiber optic network for consumers, as they're one of the few public utilities that doesn't fuck up that often (at least they've never had their techs cause so much damage to the containment buildings at their two nuke plants that led to the closure of a reactor like Florida Power/Duke Energy did at Crystal River 3) and has fairly good customer service, but the Cable and telecom companies have successfully managed to swindle the state into not letting them sell directly to anyone but other large businesses.

Re: Seems they've forgotten what "broadband" actually means

I'm FTTC - at 1.7M - since BT decided the cabinet 2 miles from my house was not a cabinet any more and my cabinet is next to the exchange now.

But at least they got some public money for modifying a DB record!

Re: Adak's bad, Shemya's worse

>>No, send them to Adak, AK for a permanent tour

Back when my Dad was in the Navy that was the threat they'd always use as a punishment detail for people (not the permanent part, but the Adak part) that the Navy wanted out but couldn't involuntarily chapter for whatever reason and refused to take an early "voluntary" separation. If you were there by your own volition, you have my utmost respect sir. In the Army we used Fort Irwin, WSMR/Fort Bliss and Fort Greely in mainland Alaska for the same kind of thing.

The Navy base at Adak's closed nowadays so I'm assuming they use Ascension in the South Atlantic and Shemya relatively close to Adak in the Aleutians, and maybe even Diego Garcia (though its not anywhere near as harsh and oppressive a landscape) for the same purpose.

Re: horse and cart

Unless you expected to be somewhere in 120 miles away in say a few hours. Of course that was solved by something like the Pony Express (where is that business now anyway? For those without access to petrol?).

Of course this is classic:

"In its submission to the FCC's comment period, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) said that people simply didn't need 25Mbps, complaining about the "hypothetical use cases" that would explain why that speed would be useful and noting that they "dramatically exaggerate the amount of bandwidth needed by the typical broadband user."

Yes, but your members (Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and RCN - latter of which I have) is advertising faster speeds than competitor (*limited time only) every damn @&!(ing night, so obviously speed is not important (insert sarcasm icon).