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A comment on FCC to propose a minimum 100mbps to qualify as broadband, future goal of 1gbps [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:FCC to propose a minimum 100mbps to qualify as broadband,... by arp242 on Wednesday November 01, 2023 @04:44PM (#38104896)
> The costs for your ISP are fixed whether they serve you 1MB or 1TB.

I cannot believe how anyone with a straight face can claim that the infrastructure and maintenance required to serve "n times 1MB" is exactly the same as the costs for "n times 1TB". This is so obviously not the case that I genuinely don't even know how to explain it.

You can serve your thousand subscribers on a dingy Pentium 1 if they're using 1MB, because it adds up to just 1,000MB. You wouldn't be able to serve just a single customer with the same hardware. Never mind the cabling etc.

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Re:FCC to propose a minimum 100mbps to qualify as broadband,... by callalex on Wednesday November 01, 2023 @05:09PM (#38105307)
There is some truth to what you say but Comcast charges me around $1 per gigabyte over my cap. It absolutely does not cost them that much more money to serve me.
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Re:FCC to propose a minimum 100mbps to qualify as broadband,... by arp242 on Wednesday November 01, 2023 @06:03PM (#38105959)
Almost certainly not, no. That it's overpriced is of course a different thing. I suspect part of the reason these costs are so high is that they really don't want you to use more data, so they won't have to upgrade the network.
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