On 2022-06-06 11:32 a.m., Casey Russell via NANOG wrote:
But my point was only that if we keep arguing against change and
against pushing barriers, then we are what customers (or members) say
we are. obstinate, greedy, uncooperative, and unsupportive of their
goals. I don't think you're any of those things, I just think we need
to stop setting limits FOR customers and be open to a conversation
about how to get to (insert wild and crazy, super cool goal here).
All the time being as realistic as we can about how to do that.
After years and years of being told why it's not feasible to build out
infrastructure upgrades to provide internet service, once I started to
work in the industry it was pretty shocking to see how customers are
actually treated. It's tough to gather context from the replies but I
feel like most of the industry still sees internet service as a luxury,
and not something potentially life-changing.
It seems like a lot of people are still missing the mark on how people
actually use the bandwidth. The biggest complaints I hear are from
people who are learning, teaching, or working remotely, that struggle to
do basic tasks like move files back and forth from a corporate share.
You can tell them to "just go to the office", but why should they? WFH
has become such a life-changing thing for a lot of people, why not
enable that kind of productivity? Then there's a growing industry of
content creation; uploading to YouTube, live streaming, online gaming,
online collaboration. All of that stuff is impossible without sufficient
bandwidth, especially in the upstream.
When I think about the WISPs that pop up to provide coverage to
under-served areas and then just collecting the money from customers,
with no plans to develop any infrastructure. Makes me think of that meme
... "I want internet" then being told "we have internet at home" but
it's a 5/1 WISP connection with 600ms pings and 40% uptime.
I don't think the regs need to mandate more speed, because of course
MOST people will be totally satisfied with a basic connection, but I
feel like providers have historically used that as an excuse to NOT
provide a better service to customers that want or need it, where "good
enough" just isn't good enough.
K