r/pcmasterrace • u/FreeHugs23 • Aug 20 '26

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

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/fcc-abolishes-gigabit-speed-goal-suggesting-it-is-unfair-to-slower-technologies/
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183

u/superbelt Aug 20 '26

Because Elon's satellites can't hit the requirements. That's why.

73

u/kitty_cat_man_00 Aug 20 '26

Ding ding ding. He was left out of BEAD funding and the welfare queen threw a bitch fit to get his inferior starlink product included. Litter the sky for slow ass internet

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u/jadedflux Aug 20 '26

What's sad is that out here in the middle of rural America, Starlink is leaps and bounds better than the other options

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u/BananaPalmer PC Master Race Aug 20 '26

Which really only highlights how absolutely comically bad the options are, because Starlink is complete garbage, too.

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u/m0_n0n_0n0_0m 5800X3D | 5070 Ti | 32GB Aug 20 '26

I had the displeasure of downloading a game on Starlink. Nominally it was getting like 150-200M down, but after 15 hours I had downloaded like half a gig out of ~25.

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u/BananaPalmer PC Master Race Aug 20 '26

I have a couple of remote team members who are on Starlink and it's nearly impossible to have a Teams call with either of them, as the latency and shit bandwidth just cause buggy robot voice for 90% of the call

Trash

3

u/Metallibus Aug 20 '26

People complain about Starlink speed a lot, but the latency is a much much bigger issue. If you're watching Netflix, it doesn't really matter because things get buffered anyway, but it makes real time activities like gaming and video calling absolutely miserable.

Bandwidth/speed might improve over time. Latency will always stay just about the same.

Its great for having a way to make any connection at all when you're in the woods, but using it as home internet is silly.

The whole point of these regulations is to make it such that these terrible stop gaps aren't necessary to people because they don't have any reasonable options.

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u/BananaPalmer PC Master Race Aug 20 '26

Yeah, see my other comment

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u/m0_n0n_0n0_0m 5800X3D | 5070 Ti | 32GB Aug 20 '26

It's neat when I can get texts in the wilderness, but yeah, it's not reliable for professional use. 

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u/Past_Top3704 Aug 20 '26

This is great to know. Wife works remote and wanted to work from the cabin / get starlink. She is on teams all day long.

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u/BananaPalmer PC Master Race Aug 20 '26

Teams doesn't require that much speed, but all real-time voice/video are extremely sensitive to latency and packet loss, and Starlink has that in spades. It can be fine if there's only a handful of people linked to your nearest satellite, but if it's saturated it's gonna be horrendous.

Especially because Starlink base stations switch between fast-moving satellites every 15 seconds, which drops packets and causes sudden latency spikes. Imagine trying to have a Teams call while your computer connects to a new WiFi network every 15 seconds. Now imagine 300 other people also are doing the same thing at the same time.

The technology is inherently flawed. There's no way to fix it without replacing all the satellites and everyone's base stations.

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u/thenamesweird Aug 20 '26

I mean that's a bit of an exaggeration. Starlink is invaluable to anyone in northern Canada. Even with latency issues it meant that anyone could have decent internet and not get Giga fucked by old world satellite internet providers.

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u/BananaPalmer PC Master Race Aug 20 '26

Sure, but it's not broadband. It's useful when your only other option is HughesNet. Compared to even mediocre terrestrial broadband, it's objectively garbage.

Real-time communication and anything requiring reasonable latency is going to be spotty at best.

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u/thenamesweird Aug 20 '26

I have no idea what hughesnet is but starlink is broadband. Idk what you guys got down there but starlink is still game changing for us, especially in remote mining areas.

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u/BananaPalmer PC Master Race Aug 20 '26

I mean it literally isn't. Who do you think got the FCC to do the shit in this very article? Starlink got left out of subsidies because it's not capable of providing the speed or latency they're targeting to classify a service as broadband.

HughesNet is one of the "old world satellite Internet providers" you were referring to. Assumed you'd know, considering.

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u/Ensaru4 R5 5600G | 32GB DDR4 | RX6800 | MSI B550 PRO VDH Aug 20 '26

Starlink is Satellite broadband internet. This isn’t debatable. It works best in rural areas mostly because they don’t have many options and less people in the vicinity means more bandwidth.

Wired connections are better in other places, especially if there is fiber.

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u/BananaPalmer PC Master Race Aug 20 '26

It isn't, because it can't reliably comply with this part of the FCC standard:

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u/RyujiCM Mac mini M4 24/512GB Aug 21 '26

But some thai’s people want Starlink to investment in Thailand 100% because starlink vietnam are invested but Thailand are legitimate , Because, by law, foreigners investing in Thailand must register in Thailand and invest a 49% stake. But Elon Musk refuses to accept this and wants to invest 100%. Some Thais who are extremely devoted to Elon also support him, but the Thai government is not cooperating.

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u/BananaPalmer PC Master Race Aug 21 '26

Maybe Elon should follow the law

1

u/devshore Aug 21 '26

They should get rid of the starlink option and just leave the worse options because otherwise starlink is a good thing, and that conflicts with our plebbit morality.

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u/bafben10 Aug 20 '26

You don't know what slow ass internet is if you haven't lived where HughesNet was the only option.

Make sure you download that 100MB game overnight, otherwise you'll get charged extra for peak usage. And that'll take you 4 hours to download btw.

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u/One_Peanut_4002 Aug 20 '26

Is it meant to compete with wireline isp? The entire point of starlink is to have fast internet in locations that don't make sense to build a network infrastructure

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u/F9-0021 285K | 4090 | A370m Aug 20 '26

1) fiber has been expanding into those harder to get to areas

2) billionaires and corporations always lie. They will happily sabotage a superior option if it means they're able to sell their subpar service in a wider market.

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u/DJMixwell Peasant Tears and Magic Smoke Aug 20 '26

They also charge fiber prices for fucking copper lines anywhere they don’t offer fiber, around here anyways.

Hell we even have an ISP here that does fiber to the node, copper to the house, and while you can get 1GB+ down, upload is limited to like 50mbs. It’s useable for some stuff, honestly fine for most people.

Mind you, especially in a PC subreddit, surely we can find ways to easily saturate that connection that most families streaming Netflix and watching TikTok’s won’t ever run up against. That’s certainly the case for me. Making my plex server available externally means I’d chew up that upload easily.

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u/F9-0021 285K | 4090 | A370m Aug 20 '26

I mean, a large family all streaming YouTube or Netflix at 4k simultaneously can get the download usage pretty far up. Most people don't have much of a use for huge upload speeds, I'll admit that, but download speeds are very important.

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u/DJMixwell Peasant Tears and Magic Smoke Aug 20 '26

4K streaming is actually surprisingly low-bandwidth (well, if you have Gigabit, or close to it). Mostly because it’s compressed as fuck. Usually ~25-50Mbps is all that’s required. So you’d need like 20-40 simultaneous streams to saturate a gigabit connection.

Downloads are really the biggest reason anyone wants/needs higher speeds. Especially if you game at all, and want to be able to play games readily without waiting hours for updates.

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u/Ensaru4 R5 5600G | 32GB DDR4 | RX6800 | MSI B550 PRO VDH Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

I can help explain this, since I work for an internet company and have been in a situation like this before. The price is due to a few factors. Copper DSL lines are old and archaic and costs a lot to have to frequently maintain.

One of the biggest problems is that they are frequently stolen for their copper. This is a huge issue and is usually the #1 reason people end up leaving our company. Granted, this is not the consumer’s fault, but the only solution is a switch to fiber. Sometimes, an upcoming competitor may deliberately cut our lines when they debut. It’s unknown whether this is by instruction or some staff or contractors taking it upon themselves to do the deed.

Some DSL lines are not owned by a company but leased, and when it comes to traditional landline service, there’s the issue with having to cover those costs, depending on the state and county. It’s why some companies have traditional landline service with a bunch of surcharges involved or is more expensive in comparison to another company.

Another issue is operation costs when most of your services have pivoted to fiber. Suddenly it becomes more expensive to maintain Copper DSL/Broadband services.

And finally: to appease shareholders. If you ever saw a company presenting multiple price increases in less than a two or three year period, it’s because the shareholders are angry and want to see “growth”, so suddenly there’s a small price increase with some bullshit excuse.

There’s more I want to say about the latter point, but believe me, the worst part about publicly traded companies are the shareholders and the CEO. And the worst part about large companies are its size. Effective communication and operations break down quickly that it takes forever to get meaningful feedback to the top.

1

u/HeavyVoid8 Aug 20 '26

I don’t remember them marketing it as “kind of less shit than your current options”

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u/devshore Aug 21 '26

Reddit thinks the government should pass a law that every location in America should have 1gb up/down fiber optic insfrastructure installed.

1

u/One_Peanut_4002 Aug 22 '26

They don't realize how massive and empty rural US is

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u/rubytook Aug 22 '26

That's why the government subsidies telecoms companies, including ISPs, to be able to add infrastructure in non-profitable areas. This rule change allows them to not utilize those subsidies for that reason and keep the money instead. Honestly, I think the government should have even more say in how the subsidy money is spent.

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u/rubytook Aug 22 '26

You must be reading a different Reddit than I am.

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u/F9-0021 285K | 4090 | A370m Aug 20 '26

To be more blunt, his satellites can't compete with fiber in a free market, so he had the free market restricted so his overpriced rural and emergency services ISP can remain competitive in semi-rural and suburban environments.

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u/hpfred Aug 20 '26

Theoretically the V3 starlink constellation being deployed with Starship should allow for gigabit connections

1

u/rubytook Aug 22 '26

Oh, I didn't think of this angle. Hah. Things become clearer.