Microsoft says its data shows FCC reports overstate broadband adoption

https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/08/microsoft-says-its-data-shows-fcc-reports-massively-overstate-broadband-adoption/

by sethbannon • 7 years ago

341 101 7 years ago

jimrandomh• 7 years ago

This is comparing broadband "availability" (whether you could have >=25Mbps if you paid for it) with broadband "use" (whether your downloads actually go at >=25Mbps). The latter is a better metric, but there isn't any mystery why these numbers are different.

mjevans• 7 years ago

It's 2019. For a first world country even the BASIC package, within an actual city, should fulfill the "minimum broadband" definition of 25Mbit/sec down and 3-5Mbit/sec up; even during peek hours.

If it isn't being selected, then clearly there's insufficient competition to drive better prices and better packages.

rayiner7• 7 years ago

Akamai's speed test reports are getting a bit dated, but in Q1 2017, no country had more than 40% at 25 mbps+: https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-t.... The U.S. was #10 at 21%. The only European countries to make the list were Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway. Putatively first world countries like France and Italy were at 18% and 12% with 15mbps+.

Even today, I'd wager that for the vast majority of the EU (by population, so the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain), 25 mbps is closer to the median than the floor.

throwaway1901022• 7 years ago

If it isn't being selected, then clearly there's insufficient competition to drive better prices and better packages.

No, not everyone is going to have your use patterns or knowledge. Most ordinary folks are just price sensitive. "What's the lowest price thing I can get that's not dialup."

I agree there need's to be more competition, but so long as there exits cheaper packages bellow the "minimum broadband" definition there will be many normal people who buy them.

gnicholas• 7 years ago

Good point. I live in an area that has broadband availability, and I choose to be on Comcast’s cheapest tier (18/3) because I don’t need faster speed and it would cost $250/yr to be at a higher tier.

If there were more competition (Comcast has a monopoly in western SV), prices would likely be lower and I’d probably be at/above 25mbps for the same price I’m paying now.

sethbannon• 7 years ago

While 4B people don't have access globally, it's astounding to me that affordable broadband access is still an issue even in the United States.

Glad that new solutions like satellites [1] are coming online to solve this problem.

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2019/01/16/twenty-per...

Disclaimer: I'm an investor in Astranis, mentioned in the Forbes article.

jerrysievert3• 7 years ago

Glad that new solutions like satellites [1] are coming online to solve this problem.

i wouldn't call satellite service in geostationary orbits (which was the subject of the article, though they did mention LEO options as competition) something that really "solves" this problem. you end up with fairly low bandwidth with current providers (for instance, hughesnet maxes out at 25mbit, which is theoretical since busy hours mean much less), with enough latency to make anything interactive extremely painful ... connecting to a remote shell without something like mosh is worse than 300baud dialup due to the latency - first hop to the satellite typically runs 800-900ms, and the next hop to a terrestrial gateway is 1200-1300ms.

streaming isn't exactly feasible either, given the latency and that a typical plan is measured in gigabytes per month (before you are throttled to an average speed of 1.5mbit).

but it works where there are no other providers and cell service doesn't reach.

killjoywashere• 7 years ago

Satellites will never fix the broadband penetration problem. There are fundamental laws of physics in the way. If you can change those, let me know.

If you want to solve broadband adoption, you have to get Congress to stop allowing broadband companies to lie through their teeth.

mehrdadn2• 7 years ago

For anyone else curious... geostationary orbits run at an altitude of 22,236 miles or 120ms. Double that for round-trip and bump it by a bit more for the angle and I'd expect pings >= 300ms on top of the delays in the electronics.

s_y_n_t_a_x• 7 years ago

What about low orbit satellites?

C1sc0cat3• 7 years ago

Local Loop Unbundling is the way to go

anonoholic• 7 years ago

it's astounding to me that affordable broadband access is still an issue even in the United States

Not sure how to respond to this, other than to point out that by most metrics, the US is largely a 3rd world country:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-a-third-world...

https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/study-by-...

https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/poverty-in...

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/six-ways...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-develop...

etc., etc.

rayiner7• 7 years ago

Except when it comes to broadband! The US is top 10 for average connection speeds in both Akamai’s and Ookla’s global surveys. This is the mind boggling thing to me. By objective metrics, our infrastructure is shit compared to other first world countries, except when it comes to broadband. Roads, schools, transit, etc. Broadband is like the single infrastructure thing we do better than say Germany. But for some reason broadband is the thing folks on HN complain about.

zanny3• 7 years ago

The only solution is fiber optics. To the home everywhere its not cost prohibitive, and then via 5G everywhere it is (ie, anywhere there is insufficient development to congest wireless networks).

To make that happen will require substantial federal legislation that will need to overcome the lobbying and influence of a 500 billion dollars worth of big telecom parasites and near total change of leadership at the FCC.

It should be publicly funded, publicly owned, and done akin to the Eisenhower Interstate System of the 50s, because it is about as important as those highways were to the future prosperity of the country.

jedberg3• 7 years ago

The FCC says that I have seven possible ISPs at my home. Never mind that three of those are just different levels of service from AT&T. And one of those is Sonic that just resells AT&T for more money at lower speeds (not their fault, they have to ride on AT&Ts lines because AT&T won't let Sonic into their cabinets).

And two of those are wireless broadband providers who don't actually service my house (although they do service within a mile of me). So really I have two choices -- AT&T and Comcast. And I'm one of the lucky ones that has two choices. And even luckier that one of those is Gigabit.

So even for my house, with Gigabit service, the FCC report is still grossly overstated. I can't imagine how bad their data in rural areas is.

woodruffw• 7 years ago

Same for me in Manhattan: the FCC reports that I have 6 options, including Gigabit fiber.

In reality, I have two: Charter (a/k/a Spectrum, a/k/a TWC) at 200/20, and Verizon ADSL at 5/1. Confusingly, the 5/1 hookup is actually more expensive than 200/20.

jedberg3• 7 years ago

And that ADSL doesn't even count as broadband anymore!

mehrdadn2• 7 years ago

Sonic is more expensive for just internet? Or are you bundling with TV etc.?

Groxx2• 7 years ago

Sonic is a fair bit more expensive for me, and I can only get DSL so I have terrible upload speeds.

Worth it. Calling support has been fast and pleasant, and I'd prefer to not give that money to comcast.

jedberg3• 7 years ago

Yeah just bare internet is more with Sonic. I love Sonic (had them in the reddit office in SF) so I talked with the rep for a while. Eventually we figured out that for my house, they would literally just be renting a line from AT&T. So I'd be paying extra each month for access to Sonic's support instead of AT&T. I almost did it anyway, but then I found out that AT&T had faster options available to me that they won't let Sonic resell.

js2• 7 years ago

Well as an additional datapoint, it lists my two broadband ISPs (AT&T Fiber, Charter Cable) correctly here in suburbia Cary, NC. It also lists three satellite providers which I have no idea if that’s correct or not.

w-ll• 7 years ago

These look ups mostly use Zip. A better test is to call and ask if you can get said Premium service at your street address and then see report back.

jjeaff• 7 years ago

Pretty much anyone with a view of the sky can use the satellite providers. But they are terribly limited, expensive, and laggy.

fxfan• 7 years ago

In fcc's defense that's how govt counting works formally. Whether or not they are doing anything informally is a different issue.

Razengan• 7 years ago

So even for my house, with Gigabit service, the FCC report is still grossly overstated. I can't imagine how bad their data in rural areas is.

Is that corruption, incompetence or apathy?

cannonedhamster2• 7 years ago

Pretty sure the answer to all of those is yes.

ToFab123• 7 years ago

In America corruption is not labeled "corruption" . It is labeled "lobbyism" . It is a legal mean to purchase your politicians. Now it happens to be the telecom industry that historically has been the biggest spenders across industries until Google came along. If you want to fix the sad state of the American political system this is very you should start. Make all contributions over, let say, 100 usd illegal and all contributions should go on public record. I believe it really would be that simple.

da_chicken• 7 years ago

I'm willing to bet that their reports are entirely based on annual reports submitted by the telecom industry. The FCC probably doesn't have the manpower to do the surveying on it's own (or the funding to create such a task force), so they just ask ISPs to tell them what services are offered and where on an annual basis.

Unfortunately, they probably also lacks the funding to provide an auditor for those reports, and I bet there's no regulation requiring the industry to have an FCC auditor for them.

In other words, Congress doesn't care how accurate the report actually is.

beauzero• 7 years ago

ATT took a formal complaint to the FCC to get DSL hooked up...DSL. Charter is shown in our rural area. I live 20 yards from a two lane paved "Highway"...literally it's name...in rural Georgia (~45 miles as the crow flies from downtown Atlanta). Comcast actually has the rights. A Verizon hotspot (excellent 4G speeds) off my phone is actually the fastest, most reliable download speed we have. I have a large state university 15 minutes from me.

...this is the state of broadband for semi-rural America.

[EDIT] Oh and the ATT easement stops next to my driveway. There is an old T1? (as thick as my wrist) of copper entirely unterminated next to my driveway as well.

rconti• 7 years ago

I get excited every time I hear the name Sonic now. A month ago they announced expanding gigabit fiber into my neighborhood. I'm all pre-ordered and ready to go. Saw AT&T running the lines a few weeks back. Refreshing the ATT service checker to see when it goes live. Multiple times a day. Looks like, at least for Gigabit FTTH, Sonic is vastly cheaper, even riding on AT&T's lines, and no caps.

yellowapple2• 7 years ago

Same in Daly City. It's a complete mindfuck that I live immediately south of what claims to be the technology capital of the world and yet my only two viable options are "pay through the nose for Comcast" or "pay for AT&T DSL or some reseller thereof" (even the wireless broadband providers don't serve Daly City, or only the northernmost parts of it if they do; nothing around Colma where I'm at).

I ended up going with Sonic.

WillPostForFood• 7 years ago

Microsoft is basing the data on users of their services, which is largely a self selected group. Would it be surprising if people using Bing instead of Google or Duck Duck Go were the kind of people who use Windows, default to using Bing, and don't see the value of a high speed internet connection? I have older family members who fit this profile.

bgdnyxbjx• 7 years ago

Bing isn’t the only service Microsoft has. Update, office, Xbox, Windows itself, etc

Bhilai• 7 years ago

Last I checked Windows was still the second most used OS. I am sure Microsoft collects a lot of telemetry through Windows even when the user is not using Bing (or Edge.)

pbhjpbhj• 7 years ago

It's the primary domestic OS isn't it?

chungleong• 7 years ago

I strongly suspect that the data comes from Microsoft's MSN page. Video downloads is really the only usage scenario broad enough to generate such a data set. MSN serves loads of them and is the default page on Windows. Since their contents target the audience favored by advertisers (i.e. young urban folks with money), the data could have a strong selection bias. Rural Americans simply aren't viewing the pop-culture-centric materials on MSN.

mdturnerphys• 7 years ago

How about Windows Update, Xbox, OneDrive . . . There are plenty of services Microsoft runs that could help provide this information.

hermitdev3• 7 years ago

MS's findings largely lineup with my parent's experience in rural Montana. Their only non dialup (yes, dialup) was an experimental microwave connection that was expensive, line of sight and peeked at about 5 Mbps down, and far less up. It was also very tempermental, subject to weather outages in snow or rain.

The local cable internet provider wouldn't run cable, as it wasnt cost effective. They'd have had to run around 5 miles of cable to serve less than 50 households.

The cable TV provider did run some cable, and made it obvious they didnt care or plan to really service it. Personally, dont know why they bother other than to possibly meet a regulatory requirement as they didnt run it until 2000-2001 and anyone that wanted "cable" already had Directv or Dish by that point.

After every rain storm or snow melt, a different section of cable became exposed (they ran the cable in the ditch alongside a dirt road on the side of a mountain with less than a foot of top soil on average before you hit bedrock, so cant complain too much they didnt go deeper).

rayiner7• 7 years ago

Running five miles of cable would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars: https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/7mp9gz/comment/....

Then, if you’ve got 50 houses, how many will subscribe? Hint: not many, since folks who buy houses in places without broadband probably don’t prioritize broadband. Say you get 20 houses though, with $200,000 invested. That’s $10,000 per house. That’s an optimistic figure. Will you ever make that money back? No. Charter has a market cap of $5,000 per subscriber. If you blow double that on capital costs alone per subscriber, you’ll never come close to making it back. (Especially in a scenario like the above with high maintenance costs.)

hermitdev3• 7 years ago

Oh, I am well aware of the costs involved. Hence why I stated they likely only ran the cable to fulfill a regulatory check box and appeared to have done it as cheap as possible where you could see dozens of yards of cable exposed in a ditch, or even exposed to vehicles driving over it. But that's also why Congress has passed acts to compel providers to provide service.

Hell, I currently live in an affluent Chicago suburb, and I have exposed wires from both Comcast and AT&T just inches from the sidewalk out my back door. My dog literally takes dumps on the internet/TV cables to the townhouses I live in.

Haven't had AT&T service since they sold AT&T BI to comcast, but Comcast has the balls to tell me when I complain about an outage I should upgrade to business class if I want fewer outages (lower speeds, more money, supposedly service guarantees).

opportune• 7 years ago

You could charge $60/month and assuming there are no marginal costs to providing service and everybody subscribes (two big assumptions) that would be >7% yearly yield. Not bad at all, actually, in ideal circumstances.

zanny3• 7 years ago

In rural areas at least it is not going to cost 40k a mile to run coax. Those kinds of areas are almost always serviced by overhead utility lines that already exist, and just running a new line on those poles just requires township permit. It would be probably an order of magnitude cheaper than the buried lines or new lines building required in other circumstances.

shreyansj• 7 years ago

The investment on 50 loss making houses can be subsidized by the investment on 50 profit making houses.

jlarocco• 7 years ago

Will you ever make that money back? No.

They almost certainly would make it back over a long enough time period. Broadband is going to get more important over time. Even if just a few people sign up now, future residents may prioritize it higher.

dalbasal• 7 years ago

Estimates aside (I imagine these vary a lot by area anyway.. city vs rural, etc.), aren't these the same considerations as phone lines?

the_mitsuhiko2• 7 years ago

Running five miles of cable would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars

There are more modern laying techniques for rural areas that don't require you to dig up that much. A five person team can lay 3 kilometers of fiber a day in rural areas with modern microtrenching solutions. (looks like this for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bfbh3ILLD0)

swarnie_• 7 years ago

Isn't this the EXACT scenario government grants and subsidies are supposed to resolve?

seshagiric• 7 years ago

Asking this as a foreigner - how is the mobile internet connectivity in such areas? (3G, 4G). I wonder if 5G will help such areas where it is too costly to provide cable internet.

hermitdev3• 7 years ago

My experience visiting two years ago, it was spotty. If you're in town or along an interstate, it's usually good coverage, but maybe not great speeds. E.g. my phone would show 5 bars coverages, but the speeds were noticibly far slower than what I get in Chicago.

I was able to get serviceable, if albeit slow 4G LTE coverage at my parents' home about 7 miles out of town and about 1000 feet on the side of a mountain, but sitting in town at a brewery with a cell tower in sight out of the window, I couldn't get any signal at all. I presume the tower I could see was from an incompatible network.

In Montana, I've been able to get surprisingly strong signals in places I'd least expect it. E.g. I was hiking in the Bitterroot National Forest up Lolo peak, and I had near perfect coverage for nearly my entire hike as far back as 2006. But, if you head out into north eastern Montana, you may well find yourself in a dead zone for quite a while. I dont know if it is still the case, but used to be cells were useless anywhere near an ICBM silo (of which there are quite a few along route 200 east of Great Falls, MT - I attended a boy scout camp a few times out that way in the late 90s).

Regarding 5G, not sure it would help much in my parent's situation as I understand it is even more reliant upon line of site and more susceptible to interference from weather. There are decently sized mountains blocking them between the closest decently sized city and them. There would probably need to be a series of relay towers to overcome that.

AngryData• 7 years ago

It is getting better, but a big part of the problem is that it is the only thing getting better. They run fiber lines to cell towers, but the people around still can't even get DSL. More people are relying on mobile data and a few others have gotten mobile data to a home router for internet since the only other option is dialup or slow and expensive as fuck satellite. It is enough for a single person to watch a video at 480 or maybe 720, but that is about it and slightly temperamental.

C1sc0cat3• 7 years ago

5g is shorter ranged so you would need more masts and still need backhaul

sethammons3• 7 years ago

I'm in Montana (pretty close to the middle of nowhere, but am close to a highway and a small city). The 4G is dramatically faster than my home internet, but my data is capped for tethering. After I hit the cap, the speed is barely able to load HN in a reasonable time. My internet is DSL and I get about half the advertised rate of 25mb down, 5mb up. Cable internet is available literally across the street, and so I've paid a copay of about $5k to get it run under the highway and be able to be run to my house. I ordered it last October and they estimate they will start in the next few months, weather allowing. The long wait aside, I'm so excited. Supposed to get 400mb down and I think 20mb up.

_AzMoo• 7 years ago

Don't they have access to any satellite services?

ghaff• 7 years ago

Yes, but people who can't imagine living without Netflix don't consider that an option although I do know people who work remotely in rural areas for tech companies who make do with just satellite.

In all fairness, it's not a great option. My dad is at the very end of a DSL line in Maine and Internet is pretty bad. Neighbors who are a bit further out use a combination of satellite and wireless hot spots (on marginal cellular) and no one is very happy.

sethammons3• 7 years ago

Satellite for internet is pretty terrible. Last I was on that, the ping was over 2 seconds (sometimes 5 seconds). Practically impossible for video conferencing and real-time gaming is impossible. However! You can download well enough.

dingus• 7 years ago

I work remotely on a satellite connection. Been doing it for a couple of years.

The minimum connection latency is 800-1000 ms, and the maximum download speed is 1-3 Mbps. That's with a 10 GB bandwidth cap though, so my actual download speed is 10-100 kbps for 90% of the month.

Any live video/audio/screen sharing is not possible. I have to schedule transfers for large files (1-5 GB) overnight, which are not bandwidth constrained during early morning hours.

I can get away with it because all of my work communication is through text channels.

It's not for everyone, but it's possible. For me, getting out of the city and living in the mountains with nature is well worth the trade-off of giving up some modern conveniences.

jmspring• 7 years ago

Hmm. I am paying more than I should for fiber through a rural coop, but I have fiber. It’s been way more stable than any broadband (including a local line of site WiFi) and my prior abode in the Bay Area.

nickreese• 7 years ago

Microsoft is right. 477 data is notoriously inaccurate and there are few things stopping companies from not exaggerating their coverage.

Basically companies need to reasonably be able to service any address within a census block without a major effort to be able to report that block as covered.

Then if a block is considered to have enough competition providers can’t get funding from various government sources to support their build outs.

To further exasperate the problem it appears the FCC is essentially doing very little validation on the data they are given and subsequently release.

We encountered all of these factors over the past ~5 years building BroadbandNow.com and lobbying the FCC to start collecting better address level data... or to at least minimally validate what they release.

On iur end, with each 477 data release it takes a team of 5 almost 2 weeks to process and merge the data properly. In that process we do a ton of geospatial and some statistical validation to make sure the data actually makes sense. (A CA provider also covers 400 people in Maine??)

We also compare it to historical data sets and a few propritary ones to make our data as accurate as possible. (We’ve also got some other tricks up our sleeve but can’t disclose those).

The only real long term solution is for the FCC to collect and release address level availability data from providers. The providers will rant and rave that this is a regulatory burden but the reality is that most of them already have this data and make it publicaly available if you go through the right channels... this is why we built businessinternet.com. We could easily get our hands on “lit building lists” and even fiber routes for business customers but when you ask ANY major ISP if they have address level coverage for residential customers they’ll tell you their systems aren’t advanced enough to have that data.

It’s crazy.

When we started BroadbandNow in 2014 we did so because we realized there were millions of Americans who we considered “underserved” meaning that they didn’t have more than 2 wires providers that offered 10/4 mbps.

Today we measure that metric at 25/3 but it is sad to say the number of underserved Americans has barely improved. As a team we believe better data improves competition. Hopefully Microsoft bringing attention to the issues around 477 data will create enough political leverage to help fix the issues.

tzs• 7 years ago

Here's a map from the FCC that will let you look up a location and see what service the FCC thinks is available there [1].

[1] https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/#/

o10449366• 7 years ago

Echoing the top comment in this thread, FCC lists 6 providers for my neighborhood; in reality there's only two and Comcast is the only one who provides cable.

This means if I have an issue with them, there's no competitor I can join instead and they take full advantage of this. I got it resolved recently after many years of issues, but it turns out that Comcast installed my cables wrong. They

1) Used television grade cables that weren't properly shielded so every time my neighbor ran their microwave my ping would spike to 800-2,000 and

2) Didn't hook up the cables right so my other neighbor and I have been splitting connections for the past five years

Every time I bugged them about this they would send out a tech that would poke around in the attic for a bit, but ultimately just shrug their shoulders and be on their way. I was finally able to get it resolved, but only because I happen to know a local Comcast executive that was able to escalate the issue for me.

If I provided such a negligent service and charged my customers full-price as an individual I would be arrested and charged with theft and fraud.

8ytecoder• 7 years ago

Same here. As if the issues aren't enough, Comcast is also the "preferred" provider at my building and they are citing "safety reasons" to not let another provider who is willing to extend to my place.

zanny3• 7 years ago

Apparently some company called Pencor has gigabit symmetrical fiber where I live, but I can't find any reference they even provide ISP services, and the mentioned subsidiary only advertises DSL. Considering I live in a rural town of 3k I doubt it.

OrgNet• 7 years ago

For my address, they list two cable providers and of course one of them is not available... Are there any areas in the US where two different cable providers are allowed to service customers in the same area?

everdrive• 7 years ago

These criteria are nuts. Since when are satellite, DSL, and "fixed wireless" broadband?

yellowapple2• 7 years ago

Per Wikipedia [1]: "In the context of Internet access, broadband is used to mean any high-speed Internet access that is always on and faster than dial-up access over traditional analog or ISDN PSTN services."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband

sethammons3• 7 years ago

bwahahahaha. 6?! I have exactly three. One is satellite, another is point-to-point who do not take any new customers, and the other is DSL with max speed of 25mb down (of which I get half). It says I have 100mb down service available.

kevin_thibedeau• 7 years ago

I have a Fios modem in my apartment but with Verizon's extortionate pricing I couldn't ever consider them an option.

theandrewbailey• 7 years ago

I'm paying about $60 for 100/100 FiOS in Pittsburgh. I'm actually more pissed about not having IPv6, despite claims of it coming for years.

m0zg• 7 years ago

None of this is gonna matter, worldwide, when Musk launches his constellation. And he will launch it eventually. I, for one, will sign up even if I don't need it, provided there's a plan for under $50/mo, just to show my outstretched middle finger to Comcast.

oneowl• 7 years ago

I'm not really aware of how FCC collected this data and how the analysis were done. I'm also not aware of the policies that are set by the US government to provide rural connectivity. But I have a few general thoughts on the issue.

Estimating the broadband adoption is a tricky issue because of number of stakeholders involved. First there are the companies that provide the physical connectivity. Their job is done as soon as the lines are laid to the base station or the satellite is sent into the space, etc [1] According to them anywhere the physical layer has reached there is internet connectivity (which is true...to an extent)

But this does not actually get the internet in to your home. Local distribution is a very big challenge. A similar thing happened in India with Bharat net [2]. While the government successfully laid down the fiber optic cables the last mile connectivity was overlooked. So of course the broadband is inadequate when the capacity is not being used.

I agree with the article that internet is connected to a higher economic growth and overall prosperity. The same sentiment is also echoed by the WEF report [3]. However these reports miss one very crucial point. Internet is not a service provider. Internet is a transport. You need to have people provide service on the internet if it is to be used. Local internet economy is almost non existent.

Many of the faults in FCC's report can be explained if you look at the internet provider business as a marketplace.

- Big companies own the platform and assert that the platform can reach anywhere. Which might very well be true.

- Local internet service providers use this platform to provide services to the customers.

- Customers pay for the internet service according to usage.

Why should a customer pay heavy charge for the broadband usage? Why should the local internet service provider invest into last mile connectivity?

On a global scale internet rapidly reached new levels of adoption when the application layer succeeded. Something similar needs to happen on a local level, I think. And this is what microsoft is also trying to do with their airband platform [4].

[1] If you do a bit of digging into physical layer distribution there are many exotic ways to provide network connectivity including sending weather balloons up in the air! Very interesting area of research if you're into this sort of thing.

[2] https://www.prsindia.org/parliamenttrack-policy/report-summa...

[3] https://www.weforum.org/projects/internet-for-all

[4] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/airband

danaris• 7 years ago

Except that for most of the country, there aren't actually local ISPs. There are enormous regional/national ISPs—Charter, Comcast, AT&T, etc. If there really were local providers, they might have more of an incentive to invest in last-mile connectivity.

(Of course, the really effective way to do that would be local loop unbundling and requiring a certain level of physical connectivity for everyone.)

eecc• 7 years ago

In Italian we say “chiedere all’oste se il vino è buono” which translates to “ask the inn-keeper if the wine is good”. The meaning is clear

nfriedly• 7 years ago

Here's the link to the actual Microsoft report: https://news.microsoft.com/rural-broadband/

_pmf_• 7 years ago

But Google will roll out Fiber nationwide in the US and via balloons in Africa!

Microsoft says its data shows FCC reports overstate broadband adoption

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