ISPs Lie About Broadband "Up To" Speeds

Haffner writes "Ars Technica has an article detailing the difference between ISP advertised 'up to x Mbps' speeds and the actual speeds, in addition to some possible solutions. They find that on average, the advertised speeds were 'up to 6.7 Mbps' while the real median was 3 Mbps and the mean was 4 Mbps. This implies that ISPs were falsely advertising by at least 50%."

Comments

ISP's want your money...

[Anonymous Coward]

News at 11

Technically correct

[fluffy99]

Yes, some customers are getting "up to" the advertised speed. Since all the advertising says "up to" this isn't lying. Where's the story in this?

Re:Technically correct

[MBCook]

If I sold toilet bowl cleaner tablets that hang in the tank, and say they are good for "up to 1000 flushes", would it be OK if they worked for only 500 flushes for the majority of people, and the rated amount for less than 5%? No one would accept that.

When other industries advertise something (the weight in a bag of food, or of some raw material) they are advertising mean, and they have a lot of quality control to keep close to that number. Too much and they lose money, too little and people stop buying or they get sued for false advertising.

But that doesn't happen in broadband. They think it's OK for the speed to be way less than the rated, but it is almost never higher (let alone by 50%). But I have two choices right now. I have DSL that maxes out at 6mbps, and cable that is supposed to go to 24mbps. But if the top cable tier delivers 8, what am I supposed to do? It's the fastest available.

When bags of concrete mix turn out to be light, contractors stop buying because they are being ripped off and can buy another brand. The free market works there. Broadband has so little competition in most places (the majority of americans only have 2 choices, many only have one) that the options are usually "pay and suck up the false advertising" or "have no broadband at all".

They aren't selling 24 and delivering 21, they are selling 24 and delivering 12. That's not a "not always quite there", that's "complete exaggeration."

Re:Technically..

[jc42]

I learned long ago that whenever an advertiser says "up to", you should always translate it as "less than" in your mind. That's what they're really saying; they're just saying it in a way that's misleading but legal.

Re:Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite.

[MBCook]

Do you think Doritos would be allowed to sell bags as "up to a pound" when they averaged 9oz and some had quite a bit less? The big problem is it's one way. When you are promised Xmbps, you get some number, Y, where Y<= X. I would be amazed if more than 1% of the broadband population got higher than their rated speed. If it was a real normal distribution, or when you called to sign up they told you "you can expect to get X most of the time".

But my parents have 12 or 15mbps cable internet. During normal hours (even early afternoon) it is almost never faster than about 8mbps, and that's with multiple downloads coming from what I assume to be a CDN, because most sites aren't anywhere near that. Over the last 5-6 years, the top speed you could reach on their cable line has dropped as more people have signed on, but the advertised speed (and the price) have both increased. They have a medium package since there is no point trying to get more on an oversubscribed line.

I, on the other hand, pay for 6mbps DSL, and get almost exactly 6. I like getting what I pay for, and if I could only get 3, I'd pay for that service level.

If your "up to" only applies to 5% of your customers, you're scamming them. If it was 30%, I think we'd all be a lot more forgiving.

Re:Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite.

[gzipped_tar]

It is not clear from TFA whether the histogram displayed there was drawn from the sample of experimentally measured _maximum_ speeds or just the "daily usage" speeds.

If it was the former, then it gives us a snapshot of the underlying distribution of the maximum speed, and we can estimate the probability of "ISP lying about the speed", along with the variance of this estimator, directly from it.

If it was the latter, the distribution of the maximum can still be estimated. However, this is usually difficult to be done in a model-independent way.

Re:I'm running at 100 Percent

[phantomcircuit]

Clearly they need more MBAs.

Mean, median, mode, lame

[Gothmolly]

The mean is not the maximum. Remember grade school math?

its a story because

[Rivalz]

Not everyone realizes that other people are getting substantially better internet for the same amount from the same company based on the same agreement.
I think its high time corporate America fully embraces the "Up to" mentality.
Here are some suggestions
1) Restaurants / Groceries (Up to meals) Only give half the people half the portions of food.
2) Gas Stations (Up to 1 gallon for $2.80) Some days we dont have to give any gas but if you go 24hrs without getting any gas we will give you a minor refund of what you paid.
3) Cell phone minutes (up to 2100 family minutes during peak hours) But really only give 50% of the minutes to half the clients and charge them more for the rest.
4) Warranty (We warranty all our services up to 2 years ( meaning we can deny your service before or after 2 years, but after 2 we will always deny it.)
5) Intrest rates ( up to 2% fixed interest rate for the life of the CD ) Up to meaning we dont have to pay anything but at most we will pay 2%.

Can anyone think of any others?

It's not a lie

[Weaselmancer]

"Up To" means "Less Than or Equal To".

What are all the numbers you can name from zero "up to" 6.7? Would you expect to encounter 3 and 4 on your way up to 6.7?

It's misleading maybe, but it's not a lie. They are publishing their maximum possible speed. YMMV.

Re:It's not a lie

[beh]

Indeed, if it's speed limited, then it would be a lie.

With your broadband modem, if it's configured for 6.7MBit/s, then that is your speed limitation. Whether the network behind it can serve it is another matter.

The article itself, on the other hand, is doubly bogus - for one thing, they don't seem to get the wording 'up to', the other thing is that the compare the MEDIAN speed to the 'up to' speed.

Picture this: Your sports car can go UP TO 300km/h. There is no speed limit on the motorway (in Germany, at least) - yet traffic moves at a median speed of around 130km/h.

Does this mean the 'UP TO 300km/h' on your sports car brochure is wrong?
No... The median speed has nothing to do with what the car would be capable of.

Same thing here - if they were to say 'up to 6.7MBit/s' in the brochure, but their observed TOP speed over half a year would never go past 4MBit/s, they might have a case. Saying the median is lower than the top speed - only one word springs to mind: Duh!

Well, there is a solution of sorts:

[Penguinisto]

...what if I, in return, promise to pay the ISP "up to" $45/mo for their service?

Oh, that's right - they'd cut me off. :/

/P

Re:Well, there is a solution of sorts:

[cynyr]

did your contract with the ISP come with a SLA? no? right, so you agreed to pay $45 a month for what ever they give you... hmm oddly i'm not sure a contract like that would hold up in court though.

Re:Well, there is a solution of sorts:

[Shakrai]

If everybody switched away from ISPs that pulled this crap they would stop doing it in short order. Just switch to another local provider and this will all go away. It's not like your local government cut a deal with them giving them monopoly status in exchange for bribes^Wfranchise fees or anything.......