r/pcmasterrace • • 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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u/X4roth Aug 20 '26

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.

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u/reddit_pug Aug 20 '26

"throttled to practically dialup speed"

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

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u/popejupiter PopeJupiter Aug 20 '26

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.

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u/Narrow-Key365 Aug 20 '26

Viasat, maybe?

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u/popejupiter PopeJupiter Aug 20 '26

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.

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u/rubytook Aug 22 '26

WildBlue?

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u/HumanPea1140 14700K | 5070 Ti | 64GB DDR5 6000 Aug 20 '26

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.