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

Re:ISP's want your money...

[Morth]

Even the lawmakers have managed to catch up to this one in Sweden. ISPs now have to say 5-10 Mbps or similar.

Re:ISP's want your money...

[Hognoxious]

News at up to 12

FTFY.

Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite.

[Rary]

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%.

"Up to" doesn't mean "median" or "mean". "Up to" means "up to", as in "maximum".

That being said, it is rather sneaky to advertise a product by focusing on a theoretical maximum that you may (or may not) experience on the rarest of occasions. It's kind of like selling a limited service as "unlimited". But no one would ever do that, right?

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:Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite.

[sjames]

It would be a lot more honest to advertise the "at least" speed, but they don't want to do that because according to the fine print they are actually offering at least zero Mbps.

I wonder how they would feel if their customers offered to pay them up to $40/month.

Re:Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite.

[Anaerin]

No, typically the "Up to" is the maximum possible raw bandwidth, before any kind of packetization is performed. So if the line is capable of carrying 10,000,000 raw bits of data per second, they'll advertise it as "Up to 10Mb/s". Despite the fact that, even in a perfect situation the most you would get is 7.15Mb/s (That's 10,000,000/1,048,576 (or 1024*1024)*0.75 (To allow for packet framing overhead)), or a transfer speed of 915.5KByte/sec from the ISP's servers. That's without any packet losses, signal attenuation issues, or noisy transfer media. And probably even less than that, even in a perfect situation, as their outgoing bandwidth is likely to be highly contested.

Re:Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite.

[DeadPixels]

I actually like the parent's Doritos analogy - it's true when you think of it that way; there would be all sorts of uproar if physical goods were advertised and sold the way broadband is.
"Up to" a dozen bagels in your order, or "up to" two patties on your burger would never fly. And who would work for pay on an "up to" scale? I'm sure companies would be happy to pay someone "up to" four hundred dollars an hour.

Part of the problem, in my opinion, is the fact that a sizable portion of the population is not terribly computer-literate or technically savvy. They want "an Internet" or "a Google" or (my new favorite) "the Facebook" and don't really care much about how they get it.
The average end user, in my experience, has difficulty distinguishing between a slow computer and a slow connection. To many, they might as well be one and the same. I get asked for help all the time with people saying "my computer is slow" and it turns out they actually have connectivity problems. ISPs not only take advantage of that mentality, they count on it. I'm sure many of you have seen the commercials for those sites like "FinallyFast" or "MaxMySpeed" or whatever they're called, where they advertise a "free scan" to tell if you're "infected" or "experiencing registry errors", and by purchasing their product, you can avoid having to buy a new computer. That is basically the same demographic ISPs are targeting; the population that knows they want a computer and an internet connection but doesn't know much beyond that. I would honestly describe it as predatory.

I know I'll probably get modded down for not taking a more pro-capitalistic stance, but in my opinion this is a case where consumers are being taken advantage of - and there simply are no better options. It's very easy to say "vote with your dollar and don't buy their services", but an internet connection is critical for many people nowadays. I know several people who run businesses out of their homes using websites, VOIP lines, etc. For them, canceling their internet connection is just not an option. If there were an ISP that actually provided good service and had consumer-friendly policies, I would be more than happy to switch to their service and recommend all of my friends. The problem is that my options right now are "bad", "worse", and "even worse yet". Comcast blocks all torrent upload data in my area (disclaimer: I don't pirate content, but I do use torrents for FOSS/Linux downloads and similar uses); Verizon has declared that they plan to test a 150GB (if I remember correctly) monthly cap on FIOS in this area; and there's basically no one else around because they've been driven out of business or out of the area. Again, with the nature of the internet and the role it plays in communication and commerce, I would almost consider supporting it being regulated like a public utility, or at least with more oversight. It's all well and good to say "don't give them your money", but when I need the internet to obtain that money, I don't have many options.

Re:Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite.

[poetmatt]

only if they weren't the ones who built it up in the first place. If it's hops along an ISP's own backbone you better believe they can control the speeds. It's one more reason for packet inspection (whether deep or otherwise), one of the few legitimate reasons even.

Meanwhile, I guess it depends on population in a given area. I pretty much see the speeds as promised by comcrap in my area, as much as I hate them. I am also but a few miles outside of a major metro city.

Re:Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite.

[daveime]

If by very little control, you mean oversubscribing the line by a factor of N, then okay, whatever.

The days of people only using the DSL in bursts to checkmail or grab a webpage are gone. In my house, we've got 3 towers and 2 laptops running off a wifi'd 3MB DSL.

At any moment, one or more of us will be streaming video or running torrents etc, so we're usually running at capacity 24/7 - which I have no qualms about whatsoever, as we were sold a 3MB package, not one of those silly "up to 3MB packages" - and for the most part we DO get what we paid for.

I guess my point is, they cannot oversubscribe the lines anymore, because it will mean an instant slowdown for everyone else.

Re:Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite.

[Newander]

You're not promised Xmbps. You're promised up to Xmbps. I would expect exactly 0% of customers to get above their rated speed.

As far as your DSL goes, I wouldn't be at all surprised that you get better service from a phone company than a cable company.

Re:Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite.

[mjwx]

I actually like the parent's Doritos analogy - it's true when you think of it that way

If the weight of a packet of crisps diminished the further away you got from the shop, it would not only be perfectly legal, but prudent to advertise as "up to 200 grams". So the Analogy is terrible

With DSL your speed is entirely dependent on environmental conditions. With Cable it's entirely dependent on load. With Fibre, then you have a point as it should sync at whatever speed your paying for but with 2 Mbit Fibre coming in at A$500 a month, forget that. This is how Australian ISP's market their broadband offerings (ADSL2+). Some are quite unscrupulous but still legal whilst some actually publish information on expected speeds and at what rate they drop. So there is nothing wrong or misleading about the "Up To" advertising because they cannot physically guarantee a certain speed at any one time (thus expecting them to is unreasonable).

Re:Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite.

[HereIAmJH]

Most people, even most hardcore nerds, don't download anywhere near that much.

Yet.

I launched my first BBS at 1200 bps and at the time it was a pretty good speed. A year later the big boards were installing 9600s. And a couple years later it was 56k. Early BBSs were text based message boards and didn't need a lot of speed. I had friends that were perfectly happy at 300 bps because that was as fast as they read. (no need for paging) As modems got faster BBSs added file downloads and graphics.

With ISPs we are working from the other side of equation. Speed has outpaced the providers ability to send content because we've gone to a shared medium. (modems provided a dedicated link from provider to consumer) But just like with BBSs, as speed increases so does content demand. Content demand will just continue to increase as new services are created. On a 1200 bps link you were happy with your 100k gifs of nekkid women. With broadband you want 100m mpgs. When you get into streaming video you're looking at 1-2g per hour for standard def TV. If you switched from broadcast TV to entirely online providers you would be looking at 75-150 hours of TV per month, assuming you don't degrade picture quality. That won't be acceptable in a year or two when everyone wants Netflix to send them 3 or 4 HD movies a week and HD content from the networks. So 150g per month is quickly going to limit your average couch potato consumer. Hardcore nerds sharing their Ubuntu DVDs are the lightweights in this environment.

Look at it another way. AT&T and Verizon have limited their data plans to 2g and 5g per month, respectively, saying that it is more than sufficient for their current definition of the service's intended use. The 2g is kind of tight if you're a regular internet user tethering your laptop, 5g isn't much of a problem if you also have occasional wifi access for large downloads and software updates. Neither limit is a problem for a regular user who is only consuming with their smart phone. My average session is about 10m reading all my news sites, unless I get into articles with linked photo essays and videos. And then it's pretty easy to hit 150m in a session. But I know people who frequent youtube that are going to have problems with 5g monthly limits.

Re:Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite.

[taucross]

In my case, the packet of crisps most certainly diminishes the further away I get from the shop.

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 correct

[fermion]

It is not lying,but it may be deceptive,and deceptive advertising is an actionable offense. Two examples of not lying that got retailers in trouble.

Many years a US discount retailer would make up prices and discount off these prices. The ad copy basically said they were made up, but in such a way that the consumer would think there were based in fact. This enabled the retailer to offer 50% savings on almost everything, though the prices were comparable with any other discount retailer. The company, whose name slips my mind, is out of business.

A department store, maybe Foley's, also got in trouble due to a tactic that many would think was legitimate. They would offer clothing at a rather high price,then advertise a sale discounting off the high price. Now, these products were actually offer for sale, so the retail price was legitimate, but it was still seen as deceptive as there was no intention by the retailer to actually make a sale at this price, just to set a price for advertising a discount. There might have been some sales at the high price, but that was not an issue. This practice is not illegal, but one will see ad copy that states no sales may have occurred at the advertised high price.

So really, on one hand this is not a big deal. The 'up to' might be enough. But given these two cases, and the fact that so few people get the 'up to' amount(much les than 10%), I would say additional ad copy would be required to make this legit. At minimum I would think a note saying that nearly no one achieves this speed. Ideally I would like to see a listing of the speed that the second and third quartile gets, in this case 0.5-2 mb. This would be most useful for the consumer as it would at least help the consumer know the kind of speeds they are likely to get. The fact that this is not done clearly indicate the 'up to' numbers are meant to be deceptive.

Re:Technically correct

[c6gunner]

It's dishonest and intended to rip off the customer. They don't promise to give you "up to 500 TV channels" - they structure it so that you pay for what you want. Bandwidth should be held to the same standards.

And I want their bandwidth...

[SanityInAnarchy]

You'd think that'd be a mutually beneficial arrangement of the sort that would make Adam Smith proud...

But no, it seems they want to keep my money and their bandwidth, so fuck 'em.

Re:And I want their bandwidth...

[commodore64_love]

Maybe as part of net neutrality, Congress will require cmpanies to alter their plans from "upto XXX" to "minimum XXX".

You would be guaranteed that level of speed (or get a pro-rated refund). But most times it would be faster.

I'm running at 100 Percent

[amiga3D]

I have a small local ISP here. Comsouth.net they consistently run at 100 percent of advertised speed. I'm amazed sometimes how fast it is. No lag, no drop in speed after the kiddies get home from school. I don't know what's wrong with them.

Re:I'm running at 100 Percent

[phantomcircuit]

Clearly they need more MBAs.

Re:I'm running at 100 Percent

[Ironhandx]

I'm beginning to subscribe more and more to a friends theory that all that is wrong in first world nations can be blamed on an MBA.

You don't say!

[fudoniten]

This is unbelievable! Next you're going to tell me that "3.9G wireless" doesn't mean anything, or that 9 out of 10 doctors don't recommend Crest, or that most items in an "up to 90% off!" sale are not in fact 90% off!

Sounds pretty paranoid to me. If we can't trust company advertisements for unbiased information, what can we trust?

So just what am I paying for?

[SanityInAnarchy]

And how do we compare plans? If one ISP has "up to" 10 mbits, and another has "up to" 20 mbits, which one is faster?

Not lying, but not in any way honest.

Re:So just what am I paying for?

[jrumney]

Sometimes the "lying" goes both ways. My connection was advertised as up to 2Mbps. During peak times I'm lucky to get 200k, but offpeak I've seen it running at 9Mbps.

Re:So just what am I paying for?

[Sycraft-fu]

Well you can't really compare ISPs based on a single number no matter what. I mean even if both were willing to offer you a CIR (which you need to pay more for) there are still different in terms of latency, peering, uptime, etc.

I see nothing wrong with advertising maximum rates, as that is a consideration. Yes it is putting their best foot forward but if you aren't used to that in advertising you are being willfully blind.

RCN in Chicago

[cspankne]

I have RCN (Cable and Internet) in Chicago. I have spoken candidly with technicians who come out to do installations and I have verified through several phone calls with customer representatives that they "aim" for 60% of advertised speeds. I perform speedtests, using their preferred site and have found that I am almost ALWAYS at 60% of advertised speeds. In order to get over 10 mbit/sec down, I have to pay for the "20mbit/sec" rate, and am typically around 12 mbit/sec down. If I was a normal customer, I'd easily compare the 20mbit/sec advertise rate against competition and opt for RCN's as it is the cheapest price for that advertised speed. Complete garbage and misleading to consumers. How is this legal?

ISP Welcome Kits

[Korbeau]

Up to 7Mbps! Improved flavor, now without trans fat!

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.

The story is..

[prakslash]

They set up false expectations. Unfortunately everyone does it. I have bitten by this more than a few times.

Weight loss ad told me I could lose UP TO 50 lbs. I still need to request a seat-belt extender on airplanes
My employer said I could make UP TO a million dollars a year if the company does well. I am still driving a beat up Kia
And, worse of all, that nice email ad said I could increase my length UP TO 9 inches. My wife still has trouble finding it

Meh..

Re:Loophole

[phillymjs]

Yeah, I don't get the point of this article. The ISPs have the weasel words right in front of you, they're not hiding anything.

Now with that "unlimited" connection promise, on the other hand...

~Philly

Why, send them a nice letter...

[zogger]

...tell them you will pay them "up to" the agreed on price for their service, but you will determine what the real sums involved will be.

Re:Why, send them a nice letter...

[MojoStan]

Someone has to post the oblig. link: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/5/01/

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?

The incentives are all wrong

[Ichijo]

With unlimited plans, the ISP's incentive is to prevent you from using up all your bandwidth, because infrastructure costs money, so if you used up all your neighborhood's bandwidth, they'd have to upgrade their network.

With a per-megabyte plan, the company's incentive is to provide you with more bandwidth than you could ever possibly need so that nothing will prevent you from downloading as much as possible.

If we want fast pipes, we should be asking for pay as you go data plans.

Re:The incentives are all wrong

[T Murphy]

If they switch to usage-based billing, they'll just target the numbers so they get the same or more money if customers don't change their habits, and they'll have less incentive to upgrade their system as customers won't be using that extra bandwidth once they learn how much it costs them.

I think the best model for fair use of the neighborhood pipe is to have a moving window (say 72 hours), and your speed is a base (say 128 kpbs) plus a fraction of the available bandwidth determined by your usage compared to your neighbors who are currently using the pipe. That way you only get penalized for being a "bandwidth hog" at times when others want to use that bandwidth, but you can still check the weather, email, etc no matter what without a problem.

Sure, the above system does nothing to encourage ISPs to upgrade their systems, but I'm convinced the only thing that will is true competition or strong government regulation, both of which are doubtful to happen soon. Therefore I'll settle for a fair system to manage what bandwidth we can get.

Re:The incentives are all wrong

[mysidia]

Pay as you go data plans are unfair. The more data you transfer, the more you pay on average for the same network resources.

We should be asking for 95th-percentile network utilization-based billing

With price breaks for off-peak hours and a premium for prime time utilization.

The guy who downloads a few GB of Linux ISOs from 2am to 6am, or over several days at a trickle... (i.e. rate-limited on their end)

Should not pay as much as the guy who maxes out his connection at prime time when the network is at peak utilization.

The ISP should also allow you to apply QoS markers to your packets and honor them to reduce priority of traffic, and low-priority packets should be less expensive, since you were essentially marking your traffic as specifically drop-eligible in case of any congestion.

Re:Loophole

[Sancho]

No, "up to" means that the connection, including provisioning, is capable of transmitting data at that rate. If it's impossible to transmit data up to that rate, then that would be false advertising.

Re:median and the mean

[Haeleth]

Come on, did you fail maths or something? If the median is 3 and the mean is 4, then the average is 3.5.

"Up to" means "less than"

[Clovert Agent]

It's standard marketing bullshit. Every time you see "up to" in an ad, replace it with "less than". "Up to 10mbps", "up to 80% shinier hair", "up to whatever". If one out of the entire sample/customer base experienced an anomalous outlier result, they will claim "up to" that. You're statistically unlikely to be the anomalous outlier, therefore you will experience less than what they're claiming.

"Less than" is more accurate anyway. What you experience may be anything in a wide range of values below that, but you KNOW you won't experience more. So do the mental substitution, and I promise your perception of advertising will change as a result.

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

[DimmO]

Would you expect to encounter 3 and 4 on your way up to 6.7?

Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to six point seven.

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!

Re:Only 98% lies.

[green1]

I'm curious... do these speed issues pertain only to certain countries? or certain technologies?
The reason I ask, is that my ADSL connection is advertised as "up to 15 Mbps"... the speed I get? 15 Mbps. now that doesn't mean 15 Mbps from any site, (you loose a fair amount just by virtue of the fact that you aren't always the only one going to a specific site, and there are often busy routers in between) but it DOES mean that I have 15 Mbps available, this is usually easy to see by downloading several things from different places and seeing a total of 15 Mbps.

Further though, I'm not a rarity here, I am an ADSL tech, I go to people's houses when they complain that they aren't getting the full speed they were expecting. What I've found is that there are only a few reasons why they wouldn't get the maximum:
- They don't understand that they can't download at 15Mbps from a server hosted on a private ADSL line somewhere else in the world that only has a 600kbps upstream rate!
- Their computer is so laden down with garbage that IE takes 25 mins to even load, let alone transfer any data
- Their P2P program in the background is using 14.999999999999Mbps of their 15Mbps total leaving them with nothing.
- And lastly, and extremely rare, is someone stuck in an area that just can't do more than 1Mbps (long lines back to the DSLAM), This is quite rare at this point, but more than that, it means that they won't be paying for a 15Mbps connection because we won't sell them one if they don't qualify. they'll be paying for a much lower speed (and if they somehow DO get on to one of the higher plans, they get changed to a slower plan as soon as we realize we can't provide that speed)

Now that said, our largest competitor, a cable company, used to quote speeds that weren't even physically possible with the equipment they were offering... but even they are quoting much lower speeds than they used to (though I don't know if people actually get those speeds on the shared cable topology)

Re:Stop the "oversubscription" canard.

[Tanktalus]

Better than that - recently my ISP, Shaw (shaw.ca) increased all of its plans by 50% without changing rates. So I was getting 10Mbps, now it's 15Mbps. That should, in theory, get me up to about 1.9MB/s. However, they also apply a SpeedBoost "technology" (yeah, they just allow extra bursts at higher rates) such that I've seen 2-3MB/s speeds from some mirrors. And wherein the boost is supposed to be for brief durations, though they never really say how brief, I've had sustained 2-3MB/s speeds for 10-30 seconds before settling back down.

Their customer service sucks. But at least I almost never need to talk to them. And when I do, I generally ignore their questions about operating system. Works better that way. Especially since the only times I call are when the cable modem itself no longer has the upstream light on.

Oh blow it out your ass

[GrumblyStuff]

So on average, they're delivering 50% of their 'up to' speed and that's alright? What if it was 40%? 30%

How low would they have to go before you would say "Hey, this is a fucking rip!"?

Nobody likes pay as you go

[Sycraft-fu]

That's why we are where we are. Back in the day ISPs constantly tried to offer this. Particularly when the Internet was young and bandwidth was scarce, this was the best way to do it for high end connections. You buy a DS-1 or DS-3 and get the full transfer rate, but pay for what you use (or usually pay a flat fee for some and usage after that). It allowed for the ability to offer higher rates to more people for less money. They'd show businesses how it'd cost less. Didn't matter, people didn't like it because they could get hit with extra charges. They wanted unlimited.

You just can't have it all ways. You can't have cheap and fast and dedicated and so on.

Personally I think there needs to be less bitching, particularly if the complaint is with low end broadband service, which is (at least in my area) what 3mbps is. That is Cox's "value" tier. You pay very little for it. That's fine, but it is for people who really don't do much. It doesn't surprise me that it is slow. Pony up more cash if speed is important.

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:

[natehoy]

If I had mod points, I'd have given you you "up to" +4,000,000,000 Funny.

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.......

Look at Sweden

[rundgong]

Haven't you learned yet that when it comes to broadband you should always look to see what we socialist bastards in Sweden have done :-)

Here it is mandatory to advertise speed intervals that show what you can reasonably expect. One of the biggest DSL providers (Telia) currently sell three packages: 1.5-2 Mbit, 6-8 Mbit and 12-24 Mbit.

That being said, it is of course a problem to correctly advertise speeds that greatly depend on factors that are out of the ISPs control. If we are talking DSL the quality of the copper cable and also the length of the cable (the location of your house) are huge factors in determining the maximum speed you can get.
I also think a general increase in technology awareness has made most people aware that just because they advertise 12-24 Mbit, it does not mean you can actually buy that subscription. If your house is in a remote area maybe you can only get the 6-8 Mbit package.

Missing option...

[denzacar]

You DO get 6.7 MBit/s - connecting to your ISPs servers and network.

But from your ISP to wherever... well... they can't really vouch for that. So they don't.
And they put a clause saying exactly that in your contract.
Then again, most people don't read contracts.
Just think of all those EULAs you've OKayed over the years.

Obligatory Penny Arcade

[Maarx]

The Fivefold Mother