Working or learning from home: Telecoms give boost in bandwidth to keep us online
As Americans hunker down at home while schools and offices shutter in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, many of them will lack something besides human companionship: sufficient bandwidth for full-time telework or remote learning.
In some cases, the problem is a data cap that once seemed painless but which now seems uncomfortably close. Thursday, AT&T said it would suspend overage fees for broadband subscribers if they exceed caps starting at 150 gigabytes on its slowest plans. Friday, Comcast, the largest internet provider, said it would suspend its 1 terabyte cap for 60 days, and the smaller telecom firm CenturyLink also suspended its 1 TB limit.
Cable giant Cox also said Friday it will upgrade internet speeds for select residential packages for folks working at home and extending support services for loading applications like online classroom support and web conferencing services.
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Still, a lot of other Americans don’t have home broadband in the first place. A survey released last year by the Pew Research Center found that 27% of Americans reported no wired broadband service. And while a smartphone can suffice for many everyday activities, telecommuting and distance education usually aren’t among them.
Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai challenged internet providers Friday to keep Americans online by not terminating the service of people behind on their bills – and by opening Wi-Fi hotspots normally reserved for their subscribers to the public.
By that afternoon, 69 such firms had signed on, including all of the major internet providers and wireless carriers. Many also pledged to increase the speeds of their cheapest service plans and cut the discounted rates offered to lower-income customers to zero for the next 60 days.
In terms of Wi-Fi availability, the most important among these firms are the four large cable operators that already make their cable Wi-Fi hotspots available to one another's customers: Altice USA (which does business as Optimum and Suddenlink), Comcast (which sells service under the Xfinity brand), Cox and Spectrum.
These Wi-Fi networks cover enough ground that Altice, Comcast and Spectrum now rely on them to backstop resold coverage of wireless carriers for their own smartphone service. Outsiders should soon be able to connect for free to these networks, available under the names “CoxWiFi,” “optimumwifi,” “SpectrumWiFi” or “xfinitywifi.”
You can also use your smartphone as a mobile hot spot, but wireless plans sold as “unlimited” still cap the amount of data you can devote to that function. The cheapest plans at AT&T and Verizon don’t allow any mobile-hot spot use, while Sprint’s lowest-priced plan only includes 500 MB of use.
An advocate for better broadband access commended FCC chair Pai for his efforts but pointed to mobile hot spot as another area where telecom companies could do more.
“Carriers should also permit tethering mobile service to devices if they don’t already do so,” said Gigi Sohn, a fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy and an adviser to Pai’s predecessor Tom Wheeler, in an emailed statement Friday afternoon.
Later Friday, Sprint said it would add 20 GB of mobile-hot spot data a month for 60 days starting Thursday. T-Mobile, the company set to acquire Sprint, said it would add 20 GB of mobile-hotspot use over 60 days, starting “soon.”
And the Dish Network said it would provide its entire portfolio of 600 MHz spectrum to T-Mobile at no cost for 60 days.
Sohn also advised that the FCC let schools and libraries use “E-Rate” subsidies to pay for mobile hot spots they can loan to involuntarily home-schooled students. Said Sohn: “The FCC also needs to look at what it can do in the short term to ensure that Americans who need to work, learn or get medical advice from home can do so.”
(Disclosure: Rob Pegoraro has written for Yahoo Finance, a media property of Verizon.)
Rob Pegoraro is a tech writer based out of Washington, D.C. To submit a tech question, e-mail Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com. Follow him on Twitter at @robpegoraro.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Work from home: How the telecoms are supporting America online
