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/nuked24]

A lot of people call ADSL lines dialup, because they're so slow they may as well be. My house only has ADSL line service, max 10Mb/s down and 1 up. Said service is $140 a month with a paired phone line. It is unusable for more than one person in 2026.

We've been using starlink since it was available, because what the actual fuck.

[u/roundtwentythree → u/nuked24]

Yeah that's what I'm saying, I seriously doubt you, or any of the 300-500k people in the US in your position are sitting there bitching about how slow and shitty your starlink connections are. You probably don't give two shits if it can't compete with a cable or fiber connection and reach a goal of 1+ gig d/l speeds, because you are perfectly aware of what your alternative is.

[u/necrophcodr → u/nuked24]

Meanwhile they're currently terminating internet over coax and getting rid of all old school analog TV, moving instead to IPTV which is what most providers have delivered for ages anyway, even on coax.

Phone lines will be soon disconnected entirely too, since there's no need. We've cut them in our house too, to get rid of the unnecessary ports. Running cool old networking cables in proper runs works better, and can easily be replaced down the line by 25G or 100G connectivity when the time comes.

Seeing phone line service using technologies from the 80s (ISDN then, then ADSL in the late 90s), is honestly crazy. What happened? Did the US just stop doing anything inventive back then?

[u/nuked24 → u/necrophcodr]

Regulatory capture by megacorps, which is a vicious cycle of lax rules and poor enforcement, and it just gets worse over time.