FCC abolishes gigabit speed goal, suggesting it is unfair to slower technologies | FCC decides 1Gbps is too fast, standard must be “technologically neutral.”

[u/FreeHugs23]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/fcc-abolishes-gigabit-speed-goal-suggesting-it-is-unfair-to-slower-technologies/

[u/samcuu]

And people who live in deep mountain areas. There's a reason developing countries are signing up for it. A whole lot cheaper than doing the infrastructure by themselves.

[u/-spartacus- → u/samcuu]

I live in the moutains of Montana and here everyone uses it, before this it was some super terrible Hughsnet or if you are lucky crappy DSL.

[u/choicetomake → u/-spartacus-]

Ugh Hughesnet. I knew a family that was missing cable internet by a half-mile. Their only option was Hughesnet. The atrocious speed, latency, AND bandwidth. Criminal in my mind.

[u/X4roth → u/choicetomake]

They also have monthly data caps, after which you get throttled to practically dialup speed… really low data caps. Might as well not have internet at all, honestly.

[u/reddit_pug → u/X4roth]

"throttled to practically dialup speed"

So just a little bit slower than their normal speed, eh?

[u/popejupiter → u/X4roth]

I worked in a call center a decade ago that also housed a Hughesnet competitor. I forget which one, but it doesn't matter. This was in the infancy of Netflix streaming, so we asked one of our coworkers on the net account what the caps were. IIRC, you could watch maybe a couple of movies before you hit your data cap for the month.

Me, who would go on to stream YouTube on my phone for upwards of 7 hours a day without looking at the screen even once: lmao.

[u/Narrow-Key365 → u/popejupiter]

Viasat, maybe?

[u/popejupiter → u/Narrow-Key365]

Sounds right. I seem to recall they were either Viasat then they got bought out by someone, or they became Viasat after the buy out.

[u/rubytook → u/popejupiter]

WildBlue?

[u/HumanPea1140 → u/X4roth]

It's been a decade, but had a family member that had Hughes Net and their data cap was the highest available, but it was still only like 50GB for the entire month. Once you hit 50GB, throttled to dial up speeds and basically nothing would load. Blew my mind.

[u/-spartacus- → u/choicetomake]

They are now bankrupt.

[u/natecoin23 → u/-spartacus-]

https://giphy.com/gifs/J8FZIm9VoBU6Q

[u/ksheep → u/choicetomake]

My spouse’s grandparents had a small ranch out in the middle of nowhere, and they were stuck with Hughesnet for ages. They finally got a faster option without data caps when the local ISP put up a microwave internet tower… but they were barely in range (there was a single spot on their property where the receiver could actually see the tower, and only when the receiver was at its absolute highest mounting point).

[u/Balogne → u/choicetomake]

My girlfriend’s mom can see her local cable company’s line on the pole across the street from her house. They won’t cross the road, at least not without forcing her to pay a ton of money. They had DSL until my girlfriend bought the starlink kit for them. Night and day.

[u/sabotthehawk → u/choicetomake]

Had hughesnet for 8 years. Was absolute garbage. Had high speed att two power poles away from house. They wanted 15k to connect us up (said we live on border of interconnect area and they had to run it 5 miles from other direction instead of pulling it 100 yards). Finally had fiber ran by our power company.

[u/-spartacus- → u/[deleted]]

Not a lot of business running fibre to displaced houses in the mountains, man, or it would already be done. I would love to have it.

[u/Computermaster → u/-spartacus-]

Do you have phone lines and electricity up there?

Yeah you do.

Do you know why?

Because the government decided decades ago it's better for people to be connected no matter how remote and subsidized you to get hooked up, like they were trying to do with fiber.

EDIT: OH, you're a flaired /r/conservative poster and a Musk stan. Now it makes sense why you love Starlink and hated the idea of Biden giving you fast, reliable terrestrial internet.

[u/Fastr77 → u/Computermaster]

Bet they also get the mail because again.. the government decided a long time ago every American mattered. We know the current government doesn't' believe that tho.

[u/monkeyhitman → u/Computermaster]

Don't stop them from enjoying the free market

[u/jar36 → u/Computermaster]

Biden was able to get fiber out to my home 7 miles across flat land to the nearest town, but now they want an arm and a leg for the service $100/500MB no lower tier available.
I'm actually surprised the RP doesn't give them more money to expand this lucrative business
Another ISP nearby (5G) demands we put their wifi router in bc the govt gave them money to ensure they stay connected and it costs $15/month for the customer. I'm like so the gov't gave you money for this and now you're charging me money for this? Nah

[u/ITaggie → u/jar36]

but now they want an arm and a leg for the service $100/500MB no lower tier available.

That does suck, but at least it's still cheaper than Satellite internet.

[u/EnergyDrinkStroke → u/-spartacus-]

It's quite literally the best option for those who have no other viable option, as soon as a viable option appears it massively changes the viability of starlink especially with the cost.

[u/eagle6705 → u/-spartacus-]

OMG worked in an MSP and one of our clients had hughsnet....horrible. A friend of mine got starlink. hated the man behind it but he said it was his best choice for his road trip

[u/serious_sarcasm → u/-spartacus-]

Yeah, Montana is a developing nation.

Do you also not have an electrical grid?

[u/rubytook → u/serious_sarcasm]

tbf I live in a small town in Montana and we have fiber now, so there is a difference between even small population centers and the people dotted about the landscape. But indeed, the electrical grid does extend to them, and in most cases, traditional phone lines as well, so you are still 100% on point.

[u/SlinkyJoe → u/-spartacus-]

Also great for people on a road trip with campers and such. Say what you want about Elon or whatever but Starlink really is a game changer for a ton of use cases. Running fiber is just not always going to be feasible or the right answer for everything and the speeds are just fine for the purpose Starlink fulfills. Yes it's certainly preferable to have a fiber line, but it's not always going to make sense in every situation.

[u/serious_sarcasm → u/SlinkyJoe]

You’re really missing the point.

We ran electricity to basically every house in the country.

We can do the same with fiber optics.

By bringing up travelers you are just shifting the goalpost.

[u/SlinkyJoe → u/serious_sarcasm]

I'm not shifting any goalposts I'm just commenting that there are a bunch of really useful cases for Starlink. I agree that fiber is preferable that's why I literally said that. But yeah just throw darts at anyone that tries to have any nuanced discussion outside of "Elon bad". Clearly running fiber along telephone poles is the solution to every problem. There's never any situation in which the poles are already too crowded to add additional lines, or local regulations prevent it, or the fact that fiber is less resilient to bending, tree branches falling on it, weather, etc is part of the reason it's usually run underground. Nothing to discuss here because everyone is an idiot except for you and you know everything there is to know about deploying fiber lines in every environment. I didn't realize I had encountered the fiber wizard. My apologies.

[u/serious_sarcasm → u/SlinkyJoe]

The thread started with someone claiming we can’t lay fiber in Montana.

You moved the goalpost to “well, some people travel in campers.”

That’s textbook goal shifting.

[u/qtx → u/samcuu]

And people who live in deep mountain areas.

Norway is more mountainous than most countries in the world and they manage just fine with fixed broadband, https://i.imgur.com/zfHLL4f.jpeg

https://nordregio.org/maps/access-to-fixed-broadband-at-minimum-download-speed-100-mpbs/

Pretty much everyone has access to at least 100Mbps.

[u/RenKrios → u/qtx]

Norway is also smaller than the State of Montana, has 5x the population, and an economy 7x larger.

[u/serious_sarcasm → u/RenKrios]

Montana has an electrical grid, so your argument is moot.

[u/RenKrios → u/serious_sarcasm]

You're assuming Norway doesn't?

Norway possesses one of the highest per-capita electricity consumption rates in the world due to the near-total adoption of electric heating and widespread passenger EV adoption, supported by targeted domestic grid distribution upgrades. Norway achieved universal domestic electrification in the mid-20th century. For primary homes (year-round residential dwellings) 100% of the permanent population has access to grid electricity, and all standard residential areas are tied directly to the regional distribution network. There are roughly 455,000 recreational cabins wholly or partially offgrid, that are not taken into account as primary dwellings.

​Montanas power grid is antiquated in comparison.

[u/rubytook → u/RenKrios]

I would like to put in that as antiquated as our power grid is, it's actually far better than a large portion of the rest of the U.S. Just think about that and be sad, lol.

[u/serious_sarcasm → u/RenKrios]

What a weird red herring.

You’re just proving the point that if Norway can have modern infrastructure, then so can Montana.

[u/RenKrios → u/serious_sarcasm]

Not really a red herring. Might've been a misunderstanding in what each of us was trying to convey.

Montana could and should have modern infrastructure, but won't. At least not to the levels previously being mandated.

Montana's most expensive portion of their BEAD program funding for underserved areas was mostly revised and allotted to satellite providers vs. end-to-end last year. Their expected expenditure was reduced from 630 million to 310 million give or take. With the reduction in pressure on 1gb speed via the FCC's "neutral" stance, it'll be Musk/Bezos unopposed as the path of least resistance for completion compliance, but inferior performance. It also means roughly half of the 40 billion earmarked for full national BEAD funds will go unspent, leaving a cool 20 billion potentially available for Trump appropriations elsewhere.

It's all just money changing pockets and ways of making it happen at the expense of "X", "Y", or "Z" program meant for directly benefitting the American people.

[u/rubytook → u/RenKrios]

I am so glad in my small Montana town we got fiber put in before all this went down, but it's really infuriating that this will handicap a large portion of the rest of the state for decades to come.

[u/Ok_Cow9652 → u/RenKrios]

If the economy is larger... it should be easier. So kind of a shit point tbf

[u/oxidationpotential → u/Ok_Cow9652]

Read better

[u/densetsu23 → u/qtx]

In Alberta, my rural county is currently building a fibre network to hook up every house. Our current local ISPs are line-of-sight wireless, which is horribly inconsistent and badly overloaded. You might get at best 15Mbps in the evenings when everyone is streaming. Ping is over a second.

So the fact that I can get 300Mbps down and 20ms ping via Starlink is a sour blessing. I hate supporting him, but it gives us fast, reliable internet.

I can't wait until our fibre network is complete, and/or when the Canadian satellite ISP (Telesat) comes online. If I'm going to use satellite Internet, it may as well be Canadian.

[u/unwantedaccount56 → u/qtx]

Sure, but it required quite some investment into the infrastructure. If there is no infrastructure yet, starlink is significantly cheaper, at least for short term or medium term. Especially for singular customers. If the population density is high enough, so the investment can be split by a lot of customers, then building the ground based infrastructure might be cheaper again.

[u/serious_sarcasm → u/unwantedaccount56]

…. It’s almost like Musk deliberately undermined or public systems to maintain a captured market, and is is flooding the public discourse to justify it.

[u/unwantedaccount56 → u/serious_sarcasm]

flooding the public discourse to justify

I hope you are not implying that I'm a musk puppet.

I'm not denying Musks harmful political influence, but this is on a per country basis, while the investment of spacex into the constellation pays off globally (apart from some groundstations, but they don't even need to be in the same country as the customer). The investment of a singular customer at a remote location for starlink (one-time cost of the antenna) is quite low compared to building conventional infrastructure for that singular customer, even in countries completely outside of musks political influence. Whether conventional infrastructure can compete depends a lot on the remoteness and the number of customers that can share the costs. While the cost for starlink is independent of the location or number of neighbors.

[u/serious_sarcasm → u/unwantedaccount56]

I understand the benefits of satellite internet.

It doesn’t change the fact that the overall narrative is being led by pundits advocating for abandoning fiber infrastructure to rural Americans due to the availability of starlink.

[u/unwantedaccount56 → u/serious_sarcasm]

I wasn't talking specifically about Americans, since up the comment chain, Norway was given as an example, and Starlink is offered in many countries globally. But for the US, you are probably right.

[u/Cosmicswashbuckler → u/qtx]

Infrastructure costs increase with size, im not sure Norway is a great comparison to rural America.

[u/pkfighter343 → u/qtx]

I do wonder if the cost comparison would say that it was worth it, though? Creating and maintaining that network can’t be cheap

[u/decmcc → u/samcuu]

but they will be stuck with no alternatives, after getting addicted to cheap connection, and when the price jumps 100% they will have no option but be squeezed

[u/sociofobs → u/samcuu]

Cheaper in the short term, and it's far from cheap for the end customer. How much does that thing cost, $150 a month? In some developing countries, a monthly full-time paycheck can be less than that.

[u/longlivenewsomflesh → u/samcuu]

But this is fucking terrible for those countries because it disincentivizes political will to build infrastructure, while also locking them in to the whims of starlink...

It's basically the uber model -- even if you assume they won't just enshittify down the road (make service worse and raise prices to increase profit once there's no alternative), just the fact that this grinds to a halt any progress on infrastructure the same way cities stopped investing in public transit for a decade while uber was still taking a loss with cheap fares... doesn't bode well

[u/TotalChaosRush → u/samcuu]

Or people who just happen to be on the wrong side of the railroad tracks.

[u/OcotilloWells → u/samcuu]

Even then it can be ad. Apparently you need it to be visible to a very wide swath of sky. I knew someone that said it didn't work at their cabin due to all the tall trees around, and they couldn't put it on a pole high enough.

[u/Opi-Fex → u/samcuu]

"A whole lot cheaper" - Only for a short while, only if you don't plan on everyone having access to internet, and only if you're okay with all of your connectivity having a single shutdown button controlled by a psychopath.