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FCC Admits Mistakes In Measuring Broadband Competition
techdirtfeed writes "For years, plenty of folks (including the Government Accountability Office) have been pointing out that the way the FCC measures broadband competition is very flawed. It simply assumes that if a single household in a zip code is offered broadband by provider A, then every household in that zip code can get broadband from provider A. See the problem? For some reason the FCC still hasn't changed its ways, but at least they're starting to realize the problem. They're now saying they need to change the way they measure competition. Commissioner Michael Copps points out: 'Our statistical methodology seems almost calculated to obscure just how far our country is falling behind many other industrialized nations in broadband availability, adoption, speed and price.'"
So, that would make them the most naive member of the FCC they had? or is she just good at acting surprised...
I look forward to the restructuring of the FCC after this where they purge the evil and the misguided statistics....because i'm absolutely sure that will happen.
and no, i'm definitely not being sarcastic. at all.
Ice Cream has no bones.
Switch to Area Code
If they handle broadband internet monopolies like they do Microsoft it won't matter if their methods are flawed.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all."
To answer your question, your agency does suck donkey balls...
In my parents postal code (in scotland) there are 11 homes, the exchange is less than a thousand feet from any of them so they all qualify for roughly the same speed of DSL.
My zip code in colorado probably has several thousand homes. I have three broadband options (DSL, Cable, Wireless) but I wouldn't be surprised to know there were people in my zip who couldn't get any.
If the FCC switched to using ZIP+4 then it would probably be a much more accurate and comparable method.
There should be a service provider olympics. Winner is the one who does best in most events, subject to drug testing.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
The FCC should definitely be restructured and be given a refresher course of its mission... it was originally created to govern communication frequency allocation, and that's where it should stay. It should not be acting like an unofficial censorship bureau and/or advocate to the MPAA; it should be neutral on those issues.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Until recently 26.4 K dial-up was all that was available where I live. Neither broadband cable or DSL was available and even 56K dial-up was not available (just 26.4K). Then a few months ago DSL finally became available and I now can download at 1.5 MBs and upload at about 800 K. The 26.4K was such a pain when I was taking several college classes that had lots of graphics intensive online study material. Security updates for Windows and Linux sometimes took hours to download.
I live in a small city in Arizona, but am not in a rural area. Most people in my Zip code did have cable and in some also had DSL available, but not where I live.
I'm from a medium-to-large sized agricultural city in California. While people within the city limits can get broadband fairly easily, it took several years of prodding to even get a technician/installer out to my parent's house. Their house, in the county, is about 50-60 feet off the street. They finally got a guy to come out, but the service is absolutely horrible. Someone mentioned doing it by area codes I think. I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but here area codes cover a larger area than zip codes. Then you'd have worse problems trying to get an accurate sampling.
I'm always amazed at just how much broadband costs in the U.S. No wonder the FCC thinks nobody wants it!
I get ADSL from the phone company for $CDN 34.95 a month. They sent me a new DSL modem that's supposed to go twice as fast (the usual residential ADSL offering is 1.5 MBPS), but I haven't found any sites with big enough pipes to see the difference. I'm close enough to the central office to go a lot faster if I wanted to pay for it.
I have family who live out in the country. Until recently they suffered through 56k dialup that rarely connected above 28.8. Now they have satellite broadband, and pay about what I do, per person (my Mum and my sister share a connection).
...laura, well-connected Canadian Linux and Mac user
Nice troll.
I worked on an advisory board regarding cable regulation. Here are the facts (Ohio-centric):
Any cable company can come in and negotiate with the city to use their rights-of-way. You would expect the cable company would have to pay to use the government property right? Or are you in the habit of just giving large businesses whatever they want? Part of the agreement to use this property is customer service standards as well as other quality assurance issues. In fact, if you have an unresolved problem that the cable company won't do anything about, go to your next cable advisory board meeting; they'll be glad to help. Your cable company will get on the ball because they don't want to lose that contract.
That being said, most cities have a natural monopoly with respect to cable. Most cities only have 1 provider because a second provider would take a loss if they put in the infrastructure. Think of it this way: would you like to be the only widget salesman in the area or would you like to compete with lots of widget salesmen?
Don't take my word for it. Go to your next city council meeting and find out what one would have to do to offer alternative cable service in your area.
I blame RIAA, it members, MPAA, Disney as much for the collapse of WorldCom (all that *dark* fiber) and the re-emergence of the "baby" Bells and the other roads hogs. Some baby Bells, etc made state level agreements ~10 years ago that should have put them more on track for capacity and last mile if they had not reneged on the provisions of such agreements.
Yes, like Clinton, the third George's reign has helped make the world, er, country safe for our brand of state capitalism.
Our kids are falling behind in math. Well, what do you expect if there is such low broadband? Lets start "No kid left on dial up"!
If US had huge broadband uptake, it would be bandied about to show that current policies are working.
The facts are unimportant. They are just anchors for the spin.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Cable access is pretty simple. Either the provider offers it or they do not. For the most part, it is system-wide today and not a lot of areas have cable but no Internet connectivity through it.
DSL is not so simple. You need an unbroken copper pair from the CO to the house. Most newer subdivisions in Illinois use a fiber connection to a vault and then copper from the vault to the houses. There is no room in the vault for a DSLAM, so no DSL. Especially there is no room in the vault for multiple DSLAM's so there could be at most one or two providers. This was a clear violation of the rules a few years back and the only way out was "No DSLAM period." So that is how it works in newer areas.
Older areas are generally copper to the CO without any interruptions but you do have the maximum distance limit. Many homes have fine telephone service out past 17,000 feet from the CO - no DSL for them. Past around 12,000 you aren't going to get much beyond 512K anyway, at least without quite a bit of searching for a good pair.
So cable is simple and DSL is complicated. To determine if a given address can get DSL you need to know both the distance to the CO, the facilities in the CO and the type of connectivity to the house. This is not easy outside of major metropolitan areas.
ZIP code is about as close as you could get for an approximation. Anything else would be either block-by-block or individual homes. Maybe they could get this information into the 2010 census because that would be about the only practical way to collect the volume of information that would be needed.
US broadband speeds, directional balance, and legal definitions have been dumbed down to serve the interests of the incumbent telecom and cable providers and the entertainment industry.
DSL and cable's directionally unbalanced bandwidths are legacy broadband and are technologically obsolescent. Real broadband is bi-directional and starts at about 1 GB to the home. That's what fiber is capable of providing and is what other countries are getting or building toward. A 1 GB fiber can provide telephone, Internet, and cable TV on a single connection, and should cost no more than about $50 a month for all three combined.
In such a system, any subscriber can become a content originator. To prevent discrimination, providers of content, applications, snd services should be legally separated from providers of bandwidth.
This dumbing down has a serious negative impact on US competitiveness. Innovators with real broadband can conceive of applications that US innovators wouldn't imagine because of dumbed-down broadband.
Congress and the FCC still think that broadband starts at 200 KB and that broadband is reasonably provided as a means of delivering proprietary content. They need to get up to date.
FCC Admits Mistakes In Measuring Broadband Competition
But I wish they'd admit to some more of their mistakes, and then do something about them. This one isn't even one of the most damning.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
How can sound communication policy be formed without adequate information?
That being said, most cities have a natural monopoly with respect to cable.
Last mile communications infrastructure is a natural monopoly.
The only reason many places (and this is hardly specific to the USA) have a duopoloy rather than a monopoly on last mile communications infrastruture is because of a combination of government regulation and the fact that in the pre-digital era TV had very different wiring needs from telephone.
The soloution is obvious but hard to force through with lots of lobbyists arround. The provision of last mile communication service needs to be decoupled from the provision of content service and long distance communication service. The provision of last mile service should be done by either government (preferablly as local governement as possible) or a highly regulated buisness. Provision of content and long distance communications service should be a competitive market.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Not only is their methodology on zip codes flawed but their whole definition of what is "high speed" is way off. The FCC needs to update its definition. The minimum high speed should be is 2 MPPS upstream and 1 MBPS downstream. For other countries that would still be slow but we need to start somewhere. Even when we pay for higher speeds there is no consumer protection that requires providers to give you what you pay for. The only way for these issues to be addressed is a serious public policy encouraging real high speed broadband, affordable for every American. It is not going to happen by itself. Other countries (like Japan) have 100 MBPS for the same as we are paying. We need to take steps now. There is some good information on the state of American broadband and proposals for change on http://www.speedmatters.org./
This is a ridiculous statement. First, what does Nielsen consider "broadband." Under current US regulations, anything with 256kbps down is "broadband," but that's almost unusable for anything other than faster web surfing or email. Video on demand and VoIP are unusable on such a system.
Second, our fastest residential broadband in the US is the minimum speeds for most of the rest of the world. For what I'm paying to Comcast right now for 6 Mbps down and 768 kbps up I could get a symmetrical 10Mbit connection in most other industrialized countries. So even if we're 6th in "broadband" penetration, we're still falling behind the rest of the world. (Though for a country who seems to enjoy an infant mortality rate on par with Botswana, falling behind the rest of the world might be seen as a compliment.)
Third, you can't rely on people going "to work" to get broadband. If people don't have broadband at home, what makes you think they'd have broadband at work? What makes you think they even sit in front of a computer at work? I'd imagine most of the places that don't have broadband at homes are rural areas, not upscale suburbs full of white collar folks.
Finally, folks on Slashdot care about these issues for a bunch of reasons. Most of us are technophiles. We want fast, reliable connections and the current system isn't giving them to us. Most of us also work in IT fields, so our livelihoods are dependent on people using the Internet and broadband. Most of us also see technologies around the corner, such as IPTV and VoIP, that will only become widespread once we meet a certain level of broadband speed and penetration, as well as changes in how the government handles things like patents and copyright issues. We want those technologies, so we're pushing for accurate metrics of true broadband penetration so that companies can make better decisions.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I live in Kansas City and I've moved around the metropolitan area about 5 times in the last 8 years. Some areas of the city must have some sort of exclusivity contracts since there's only one cable provider. Not coincidentally, these are the areas with the higher prices and unforgivably hideous customer service. I'd like to see some investigation into why cable providers are allowed to stake out exclusive territories in an otherwise homogenous metropolitan region.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!