gallois wrote:
if we ever get 1MB download speed or more than 0.5MB for more than a minute for upload we break out the champagne
This is a perfect expression.
I know this feeling oh so well…
Peter wrote:
I would argue copper, say 10-20mbps, is good enough for the vast majority of people, so “fibre everywhere” is largely a symbolic national-politic chest-beating thing
To get copper at 10-20Mbps you have to be very close to the exchange (i.e. living in an area where fibre will be rolled out anyway). Many rural or semi-rural areas just won’t get that speed out of copper – generally you have to be a mile or less from the exchange to get those speeds. Also if you’ve got 10-20Mbps on copper that’s just your downstream – your upstream might be less than 1 meg. As the COVID situation has shown, good internet = good economic resilience for a fair portion of the economy, and upstream is important too.
Higher speed copper also causes a lot of radio frequency interference (VDSL2 is particularly bad for RFI)
Reading this thread I decided to run a speed test at my line and the results are
down: 197.1 Mbps
up: 7.3 Mbps
Setup is fiber (I think ) on the street, then cable (TV) into the complex, then WiFi to my computer.
Is 5G happening in the US? 200mbps down is damn good (and frankly I am amazed you get that over wifi) but 7mbps up is poor (for the 200mbps down speed). In Europe you won’t get 200mbps down over any cellular connection AFAIK but 7mbps up is probably achieved all the time on 4G.
Yes, 5G is happening, although the operators are in various buildout stages. According to their map, ATT have almost all of greater L.A. covered, for instance, whereas Verizon have only a couple of areas.
Agree wrt to the upload speed – a bit surprised myself, as this is usually faster, albeit not by much (around 10Mbps).
