Measuring Broadband America Report Released

AzTechGuy writes "Early this year I received one of the 'Whitebox' routers to test the speed of my ISP and compare it to the advertised speed. Today I received an email that they have released the first report with another report due at the end of the year. My results do not correspond with the results reflected in the report." It appears that most ISPs are within 80% of their advertised speeds during peak hours with Verizon leading the pack mostly exceeding their advertised rates. Cablevision users, on the other hand, shouldn't expect more than half of the promised bandwidth (youch!).

Comments

So, clearly...

[Anonymous Coward]

FIOS is awesome, and everything else is less than awesome. Pretty good advertising material for Verizon.

Re:So, clearly...

[MischaNix]

Could Verizon have 'bought' these results by identifying the MAC's of these routers the FCC provided? Not that I don't trust the validity of the data, but it's a possibility that should be investigated.

Re:So, clearly...

[h4rr4r]

Considering everyone I know who has FIOS is damn happy with it, I doubt it.

The service really is great. I left TWC for them and now due to the competition TWC has started offering reasonable (above 20Mbps) speeds. Too bad the service is not available everywhere.

Re:So, clearly...

[jank1887]

I have Verizon DSL and even that came in right at the spec'd rate whenever I ran a speed test. Of course it wasn't a bit over the rate, but I get what I pay for and am content with that for the time being.

Re:So, clearly...

[tkrotchko]

No, this corresponds to my experience. Verizon FIOS is a premier service. Really nothing bad to say about them.

Errr what?

[OverlordQ]

My results do not correspond with the results reflected in the report.

You mean a single data point doesn't follow the trend? Throw the study out! It must be crap!

Re:Errr what?

[Nkwe]

My results do not correspond with the results reflected in the report.

I have one of the monitoring boxes at home and my results (or at least my perceived experience) do match the results in the report. I am a Verizon (now Frontier) fiber customer. The service rocks.

Re:Errr what?

[interkin3tic]

I don't think AzTechGuy was suggesting that. It would be pretty stupid to submit an article only to say it wasn't true.

"Read this report. Did you read it? IT'S CRAP! DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME READING IT!"

On the other hand, he -could- have submitted it, knowing full well that slashdotters never read TFA. Maybe he figured if he didn't submit it, we might read it...

Re:Errr what?

[AzTechGuy]

You are correct. I know others saw different results, I was just expressing that my results did not correspond. I never said the report was not accurate. I was actually a little surprised because of results but I didn't dismiss them. If I complain to Cox I am sure they will tell me to get a new modem, which I did last year. If others in my neighbor complain maybe they will discover the bottleneck affecting all of us.

Re:Errr what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was also in the study, and my speeds are usually 1 Mbps rather than the advertised 7. And most of the people I know in my area (Phoenix) have much slower than advertised speeds as well. Does this mean the report is incorrect? Not necessarily. Does this mean the DSL and cable companies bribed the FCC to change their data? Hope not.

False advertising

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I would say that any company that was listed that never reached an average of their advertised speed should be taken to task for false advertising. Maybe dragged in front of the FTC, and possible legal action since it looks like most providers are never able to deliver their advertised speed.

Re:False advertising

[OverlordQ]

They should make ISPs advertise minimum speeds, and not 'up to' speeds. So if you buy a 5mbit plan, you will definately get 5mbit at all times, if not more.

Of course I highly doubt many ISPs have the capacity to actually promise anything above dialup speeds at any given time.

Re:False advertising

[bws111]

The words 'up to' and 'average' do not mean the same thing.

Re:False advertising

[KiloByte]

Actually, it should be cap/time. If you have a "100mbit" connection with a 5GB monthly cap, a listed speed above 1.9kbps is false advertising.

The 100mbit number might be listed as "burst speed", since it's what it is.

Re:False advertising

[interkin3tic]

And most advertising agencies would be in a world of trouble if there were legal consequences for using "Up to" in deceptive contexts like that. "geShitty car insurance-co could save you 15% or more on car insurance" and whatnot.

I... I'm not really sure why I said it like it was a BAD thing. I'm e-mailing my congressman right now. No more using the words "up to" in ads, only real averages. Or else they behead you.

Re:False advertising

[Duradin]

Pay for a dedicated line and you'll get a dedicated line just don't expect it to be as cheap as the non-dedicated lines.

Re:False advertising

[rwa2]

Pretty much... from the FCC pdf, all of the cable ISPs pretty much delivered ~22mbps. But their marketing branded them as "20" , "25", or "30".

Interesting that the FiOS consistently delivered 110% - 115% of their marketed value. And that practically no one mentions latency, which is probably a bigger selling point, esp. with mobile networks.

Re:False advertising

[kwark]

How can anyone guarantee a minimum speed? An ISP may be able to have such guarantees in their own network (where most stuff isn't), if they have full control over EVERYTHING.

Re:False advertising

[prisoner-of-enigma]

I would say that any company that was listed that never reached an average of their advertised speed should be taken to task for false advertising. Maybe dragged in front of the FTC, and possible legal action since it looks like most providers are never able to deliver their advertised speed.

*sigh* The knee-jerk "call the lawyers!" response never fails to find a taker, does it? And precisely what "false advertising" could you charge them with? Look carefully at the advertising *and* the actual end-user contract. You'll find no promises of any bandwidth anywhere. Quite the contrary, you'll find lots of "speeds up to XX" and "actual speeds may vary" language liberally peppered everywhere. This means precisely what it says: you *may* get speeds "up to" the advertised amount, but you may not. In fact, a strict interpretation of the contract allows them to deliver exactly *zero* bandwidth to you should conditions allow. I know of no ISP that ever does this to anyone, but the contract language is clear.

Next someone will claim the advertising is "misleading" or "taking advantage of uninformed customers." There is no law against selling something to someone who is too stupid to take the time to understand what they're buying, nor should there be. Neither is it misleading to anyone who takes the time to read the fine print, which everyone *should* do before entering *any* contract. If not, you have no one to blame but yourself if you get less than what you *thought* you were bargaining for.

Re:False advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

yep a 5mbit dedicated line will cost you about $250/month.

Re:False advertising

[vijayiyer]

All of these sorts of terms are available as business connections. You will note that they cost considerably more, because their oversubscribe rate is lower.

Re:False advertising

[AzTechGuy]

Agreed, however if I am paying for a 12 mbps package and the ISP also has a 7 mbps package and I consistently have a 2 mbps download, never going over 7, then I am going to complain that I am not receiving what I pay for. Drop me down the the less expensive plan and I will settle for 2mbps This is the case in my situation and I do understand that everyone will have different results. I could have a neighbor that pays for the highest package and chews up all the bandwidth in the neighborhood, though unlikely.

Re:False advertising

[AzTechGuy]

The monthly reports we received included latency. They were pretty detailed. However in the report they broke down day and night speeds, which we did not receive in the monthly reports as far as I know.

Re:False advertising

[nabsltd]

Pay for a dedicated line and you'll get a dedicated line just don't expect it to be as cheap as the non-dedicated lines.

Why not? FiOS is often cheaper than other services.

Yes, technically FiOS is shared bandwidth, just like at some point any "dedicated line" becomes shared with other connections. But, from your house to Verizon's central network, you'll never share with enough other users to not get your full speed, even if FiOS gets 100% uptake in the areas in which it is available.

Re:False advertising

[hedwards]

The problem is that it's dishonest and misleading if you never receive the stated bandwidth. If they're going to play that game, then why not just have everybody advertising as having up to 100 kagillion gigabits per second? The reason is that up to requires that at some point during the month you're receiving that connection or have a reasonable chance of receiving it. If they can't provide the connection of that speed then they're not really providing a connection that's up to that speed.

On a side note, I'm not surprised that Qwest is more or less at the bottom of the pile. 80% seems a bit generous. But I do tolerate it because there are no data caps and the alternative would be Comcast. It is somewhat reassuring that Century Link actually does a better job so hopefully we'll get a better connection in the near future.

Re:False advertising

[nolife]

You can guarantee anything. If the guarantee is not met, you hand out some previously agreed on compensation. Without those checks and balances, the advertised rates are useless. For this scenario, Comcast and Verizon were able to maintain a certain speed to random sites that random users visited as a whole with their network but why couldn't Cablevision? The only two explanations are Cablevision users are going to vastly different sites online then Verizon and Comcast users OR Cablevision is grossly overrating and overselling their service cheating their customers.
That is the whole point of this FCC test.

Re:False advertising

[The Dawn Of Time]

Did you read the post you replied to? Your response was predicted, and prebutted.

Re:False advertising

[prisoner-of-enigma]

The problem is that it's dishonest and misleading if you never receive the stated bandwidth.

Whew! That's a relief! Then the ISP's have nothing to fear because there is no "stated bandwidth" listed *anywhere* in their contracts or their advertising. It always says "speeds up to" and "actual speeds may vary."

Go ahead. Look closely. I dare you to find any instance where the ISP's are guaranteeing a stated bandwidth larger than zero in any residential ISP contract.

Now that *that's* out of the way...what was the basis of your complaint again?

Re:False advertising

[houghi]

The words 'up to' and 'average' do not mean the same thing.

They could be used together in advertising: You get up to the average in speed with ISP-R-us.

Re:False advertising

[datapharmer]

who are you getting a symmetric 5mbps for $250/month from? We are paying almost twice that. Is there any sort of SLA at that price?

Re:False advertising

[datapharmer]

available bandwidth, not available speed. In other words if the connection on the other end is slow then I can also download other things simultaneously and use my total available bandwidth.

Re:False advertising

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Why not? FiOS is often cheaper than other services.

Yes, technically FiOS is shared bandwidth...

And thus Captain Obvious answers his own question. If you're on a shared circuit and nobody else is using it then it's effectively acting dedicated. And it will remain acting a such until it's not, at which point you're back to the original situation of the ISP selling oversubcribed bandwidth in order to make it affordable in the first place.

Gee, why does the square peg fit in the square hold instead of the round hole? Perhaps because it's (drum roll please)...SQUARE?

Re:False advertising

[prisoner-of-enigma]

They could be used together in advertising: You get up to the average in speed with ISP-R-us.

Aha! And with that thinking, your business plan looks something like this:

1. Offer guaranteed average speed SLA to your customer.
2. Customers buy service.
3. Customers try to access site that has uplink on *some other network* which is slower than the average speed your guarantee on *your* network.
4. Customers sue you for a problem that is beyond your control and publicly ruin your image to the point where you start losing customers and can't find new ones.
5. You go out of business due to legal costs.
6. ???
7. PROFIT!!! (for the lawyers...you end up in the poor house)

There's a reason a residential 25Mbit/sec line costs $79.99/month and a *business line* which guarantees a minimum bandwidth cost 10x-20x that same amount. And it's not a conspiracy.

Re:False advertising

[drsmithy]

They should make ISPs advertise minimum speeds, and not 'up to' speeds. So if you buy a 5mbit plan, you will definately get 5mbit at all times, if not more.

What if the limiting factor is something outside of the ISP's control ? Like, say, distance from the exchange or quality of internal wiring for ADSL ?

Re:False advertising

[drsmithy]

Actually, it should be cap/time. If you have a "100mbit" connection with a 5GB monthly cap, a listed speed above 1.9kbps is false advertising.

Indeed. As are fuel consumption figures for cars with the throttle anything less than wide open.

Re:False advertising

[nabsltd]

And thus Captain Obvious answers his own question. If you're on a shared circuit and nobody else is using it then it's effectively acting dedicated.

OK, I know it's hard to understand, but all bandwidth is shared at some point.

For example, if ISP A peers to ISP B at 10Gbps, then even if a line is "dedicated", the fastest a customer of ISP A can get data from ISP B is 10Gbps. If there are 200 ISP A users with "dedicated" 100Mbps lines and all of them try to pull content from servers on ISP B, then they will not be able to do it at their "dedicated" speed. But, ISP A never said their "dedicated" 100Mbps line would get you that speed to every site...just to the inside of their network.

FiOS is exactly like that. Although the sharing is closer to you, Verizon still makes sure you have full bandwidth to their internal network. You share bandwidth with other users in your neighborhood, and if every home in your neighborhood subscribes to FiOS at 100Mbps, you won't all be able to get it right now, as not all of their network is upgraded...the concentrators would limit you to 80Mbps. In the future, that limit will be about 300Mbps.

Since Verizon does not oversell FiOS in any way (i.e., they limit the speed they sell in an area to what would be available if they had 100% uptake), you don't have a "dedicated" line, but you have exactly the same result.

And, if you pay for business FiOS, you do get guaranteed bandwidth in the agreement. It does cost more, but at $85/month for 25/25, it's down in the same range with "standard" connections from everybody else, and certainly not the several thousand dollars a month I suspect you think is required to get "dedicated" bandwidth.

Re:False advertising

[kwark]

As soon as the data leaves the providers own network, all guarantees are gone. The ISPs own uplink might be sufficient, but towards the endpoint there might be some congestion. It might just be that Comcast and Verizon have much better peering partners (with respect to the targets of the tests) than Cablevision. For example I live in a neighborhood where EVERYBODY (approx 4000 houses) has access to FttH (with only 1 plan: 100Mbps up and down), this provider (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edutel) has to have an uplink and downlink of 400Gbps to absolutely guarantee full throughput for everybody at the same time. That would be about 1/3 of the total data traveling trough the Netherlands at the largest exchange at peaktimes: http://www.ams-ix.net/statistics/ . Luckily for the ISP not everyone has an subscription with them since the only appear to have 2 20GE port at the exchange. Also not everybody is using their capacity to the max, the net result is that I can get the full 100Mbps up and down at nearly any moment when using a well seeded torrent. Accessing random individual sites is usually a lot slower.

Re:False advertising

[nabsltd]

who are you getting a symmetric 5mbps for $250/month from? We are paying almost twice that. Is there any sort of SLA at that price?

He's getting it from somewhere that FiOS isn't available.

Seriously, if it wasn't for Verizon's decision to get into TV delivery (which has caused them no end of regulatory issues with local governments who have been bribed by cable companies), FiOS would now be so widespread that the days of paying more than $200/month for a business Internet connection would almost be at an end (unless you want something faster than 150/35).

Re:False advertising

[prisoner-of-enigma]

They should make ISPs advertise minimum speeds, and not 'up to' speeds.

They *already* to this, and you'd know this if you ever bothered to read the contract. The advertised minimum is *zero*. The advertised maximum is the "up to" speed. Always has been and they've never claimed otherwise.

Re:False advertising

[prisoner-of-enigma]

OK, I know it's hard to understand, but all bandwidth is shared at some point.

If it's so hard to understand then I excuse you for not understanding it the first time around. My post was an attempt to clue you in to this basic fact but I apparently failed. I am so ashamed.
First you say:

Since Verizon does not oversell FiOS in any way...

But then you say:

You share bandwidth with other users in your neighborhood, and if every home in your neighborhood subscribes to FiOS at 100Mbps, you won't all be able to get it right now, as not all of their network is upgraded...the concentrators would limit you to 80Mbps. In the future, that limit will be about 300Mbps.

The statements "Verizon does not oversell FiOS" and "you won't all be able to get it right now [due to everyone in the neighborhood using more than the concentrator will provide]" are mutually exclusive, just in case you didn't realize that when you were typing it.

So, if Verizon FiOS sells you (and 30 other people in your neighborhood) a 100Mbit/sec link from their concentrator to your home but limits their concentrator uplink to, say, 1Gbit/sec, they're oversold by 3:1. So long as no more than a third of the subscribers are maxing out their links, you'll never know it's not dedicated. But as soon as they do (and they eventually will...count on it) then your worse case is getting 33Mbit/sec from your "promised" 100Mbit/sec. Which is exactly the same scenario as any cable or DSL user is currently experience and which this discussion is based on. Just because you haven't hit a congestion situation doesn't mean your scenario is somehow immune to it. The only way it could be is if your ISP sold all its bandwidth in a 1:1 ratio for everyone everywhere, and such an offering is not financially viable at the pricing levels available to residential customers.

Re:False advertising

[omnichad]

Getting what's advertised AND getting more isn't false advertising.

Re:False advertising

[Ichijo]

Of course I highly doubt many ISPs have the capacity to actually promise anything above dialup speeds at any given time.

Oh, they have the capacity. They just don't have the right pricing model. If there's a shortage of available bandwidth to your house, it's because the price is set below the going rate determined by supply and demand.

So all they have to do is raise the price during periods of high demand, until demand falls enough so that whoever's using the bandwidth is getting their full allotment.

Re:False advertising

[Ichijo]

How can anyone guarantee a minimum speed?

By varying the price.

Re:False advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

the way dedicated lines work is a series of interconnecting lines, that switch between user need...so a dedicated line is not dedicated (CCNA)

Re:False advertising

[AK Marc]

There is no law against selling something to someone who is too stupid to take the time to understand what they're buying, nor should there be.

Sure there is. If you state things like "this tonic may cure cancer *note, there is no evidence it does, and no proof it doesn't" then you likely broke the law. If you say "this can can get 1000 mpg if you leave it in idle in neutral while coasting down Pikes Peak (actual measured results)" then you are possibly breaking the law. Factually true statements given to mislead are lies. Lies to separate others from money is fraud. Factual statements given with the sole purpose of misleading don't make a lie not a lie. Yes, I'm stating that a 100% truthful statement can be a lie. Go read 10 different definitions of "lie" and tell me if they all agree that I'm wrong. I've read the definition 100+ times from 100+ sources and have yet to find one that indicates someone telling a truth (or half-truth) with the intention of deception is not a lie. And I've yet to see "the truth" be a defense to fraud explicitly stated in any fraud laws. It's illegal whether the lie is true or false. Feel free to prove me wrong. It's easy. Quote one and only one law that indicates that "fraud" is using a falsehood to deceive for profit. If I'm wrong, it should be easy to prove. Please do so. I don't mind being wrong, and if I were, then I wouldn't feel the need to correct everyone that doesn't know what the laws actually say, or what the simple definitions of words like "lie" are. If I'm wrong I can stop wasting time trying to educate the uneducatable, willfully ignorant masses of the Internet. http://xkcd.com/386/

Re:False advertising

[hedwards]

I did, and it's still bullshit. They're advertising a service which they have no intention of providing.

Re:False advertising

[hedwards]

False advertisement.

Re:False advertising

[drinkypoo]

Fuel consumption figures are theoretically intended to give an idea of performance under typical use. Bandwidth numbers are just lies.

Re:False advertising

[nolife]

It might just be that Comcast and Verizon have much better peering partners (with respect to the targets of the tests) than Cablevision.

The uplink is part of the whole internet package that its customers are paying for and the service they expect. If their peering sucks and they have slow uplinks, maybe they should upgrade them or stop advertising 20mbps service when they absolutely know they can barely support 50% of that for many hours every day of the week. What stops Cablevision from offering a 40mbps service for more money knowing they can't support that either? It is unfair for the customers.

Re:False advertising

[nabsltd]

The statements "Verizon does not oversell FiOS" and "you won't all be able to get it right now [due to everyone in the neighborhood using more than the concentrator will provide]" are mutually exclusive, just in case you didn't realize that when you were typing it.

The point is that Verizon won't oversell. You can't get higher than 80Mbps in areas where they have not upgraded their hardware because they won't sell it to you. They won't sell it to you because it could cause contention, and they will not do that. In areas where the hardware is upgraded, they will sell higher speeds, but still only up to the speed that will not cause contention.

In other words, FiOS bandwith is guaranteed because Verizon won't sell you a higher speed than they can guarantee, and they base their guarantee on the assumption that they will have 100% uptake. This means they have a lot of spare bandwidth, since they will never get 100% uptake. This is why current customers often get more than their rated speed (sometimes much more...I was getting 30Mbps while paying for 25Mbps).

This is what I meant by "you won't all be able to get it right now". You won't be able to buy a 100Mbps plan in a neighborhood where the concentrator doesn't support 100Mbps x (# of homes in neighborhood), regardless of the number of subscribers.

Promised bandwidth?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Cablevision users, on the other hand, shouldn't expect more than half of the promised bandwidth (youch!).

"Promised bandwidth"? I'm sure if you read the fine print on *any* residential broadband SLA, you'll find the ISP "promises" exactly *zero* bandwidth. Every contract I've ever seen says they promise speeds "up to" a certain amount but there is no lower limit to what they actually deliver. This is akin to the good old days of zero CIR frame relay where the provider had the right to discard up to 100% of your packets if network congestion became an issue. In return, you got rock-bottom pricing. I never saw any ISP ever drop 100% of packets due to a zero CIR, so you were essentially gambling (and winning) that the ISP would always have some spare bandwidth.

I'm sure people who opt for the 22Mbit/sec package expect they should get 22Mbit/sec or something close to it on a regular basis, and if the ISP is only regularly providing, say, 2Mbit/sec then the customer has a reason to be upset. However, to say the ISP is "promising" bandwidth is a complete fabrication. The OP should read up and understand the different between "up to" and "no less than."

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[LinksAwakener]

I agree that expecting 100% of advertised speeds--since the advertisement claims "up to"--is entirely unrealistic. However, there certainly has to be a threshold where a user could claim false advertisement. IMHO, getting 70% of the speed is barely acceptable, 50% is downright atrocious.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[MBCook]

They protect bandwidth. AT&T protects bandwidth on U-Verse for phone calls and television signals. FIOS protects space on the line for the same reasons. I wouldn't be surprised if Comcast/TWC do it for their phone service.

"You are getting a 22 mbps line, we're just using 21.937 mbps for our stuff" - Your ISP

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

How about being able to actually get it at all, or even get close to it. Some of the companies (AT&T, Frontier, and Qwest) never came close (stuck around 80% the whole time). Now for a car analogy, this is like saying my 88 Ford Bronco II with a worn out engine is capable of speeds of up to 100 MPH. If I told you that when selling it to you wouldn't you want your money back since there is no way in hell it could actually go that fast (I am lucky if I can reach 70 in it and have gotten it up to 85 or so once with a nice tail wind). Sadly this comparison is fairly close numbers wise.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

However, there certainly has to be a threshold where a user could claim false advertisement.

Really? Why? How? They're advertising "speeds up to" and the voiceover at the end usually includes an "actual speeds may vary" disclaimer. This isn't false advertising by any possible, logical definition. You may *wish* it were, and it might be *nice for the consumer* if it were, but that does not make it so.

I agree that offering a 25Mbit/sec plan and delivering only 50% of that on a regular basis is atrocious but it's not illegal. The proper thing to do in this situation, however, is *not* to call a lawyer or pull the old "there ought to be a law" nonsense. The *proper* thing to do is to roast then in the in the court of public opinion. Call your local news station and speak to their consumer advocate reporter. Most major stations have them and the love jumping on stuff like this. If the ISP starts losing customers, they *will* alter their policies. If they don't, they go out of business and a superior ISP takes their place.

If they don't, feel free to go and start one on your own that offers guaranteed speeds for similar prices. You'll find it impossible to do so, however, because it's completely impossible to sell 25Mbit/sec guaranteed circuits to mass residential customers for $79.99/month with a 1:1 bandwidth oversubscription rate. Bandwidth costs more than that. The only way it's affordable to sell a 25Mbit/sec circuit to anyone for $79.99/month is to sell the same 25Mbit/sec to, say, 30 customers and statistically plan that all 30 won't demand maximum bandwidth all at the same time, thus violating your SLA. If they do demand it and don't get it, then *you* get sued for false advertising, breach of contract, and all the other lovely legal stuff that comes along with not living up to your end of the bargain. Ain't being the boss of business grand? The fun never stops!

See? There's a reason stuff is the way it is. It's not some grand conspiracy unless there's some kind of protected monopoly involved, and in those cases, the law is being actively manipulated (i.e. politically) to protect the monopoly by some well-paid lobbying group somewhere.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[LinksAwakener]

Are you purposely trolling, or just stuck in a rage? Not only did I say expecting 100% of advertised speeds unrealistic, but I also said getting 70% of said speeds is acceptable, albeit barely. Furthermore, I never once claimed there WAS a law stating a consumer has the right to take ISPs to court if they don't hit their "up to" speed. All I was saying is that there has to be some threshold (read: less than 100%) where consumers could ARGUE false advertisement. One is expecting intervention from the government, the other is claiming only an arguable case for, as an example, a breach of contract. There's a subtle but distinct difference.

I think maybe you should cool down a bit instead of arguing with people who literally agreed with your point.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[nabsltd]

AT&T protects bandwidth on U-Verse for phone calls and television signals. FIOS protects space on the line for the same reasons.

On FiOS, the TV and phone are carried on an entirely different part of the laser spectrum from the Internet, so if that's what you mean by "protects space", then you are correct.

But, it is physically impossible for Internet bandwidth to be reduced because of TV or phone use on FiOS, although they do "share" the overall fiber bandwidth. Since the total fiber bandwidth is on the order of gigabits per second, it's not like you'll ever be close to running out, even with 100Mbps Internet and watching 10 TV channels (each about 20Mbps).

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check your modem's connection rating.
Whatever it's connected at *is* your speed of record.

Connected at 2333Kb downrate, 683Kb uprate then that's what you should expect +/- 15%.

less than that and they aren't meeting their configured (ie guaranteed) speed.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[zombie_striptease]

Every contract I've ever seen says they promise speeds "up to" a certain amount

Obligatory Penny Arcade: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/5/1/

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

And why are people like you so ready to bend over and take it up the ass for the corporations?

And why are people like you ignorant enough to assume I'm doing this out of some desire to defend the ISP's? I'm not. If I pay for 25Mbit/sec and get 1Mbit/sec, I'm unhappy about it. I'd dump that ISP and find another one. If that's not possible due to local monopolies, I'd go to the local news station's consumer advocate reporter and get them interested in a story that would embarass the hell out of the ISP, either forcing them to change their policies or scaring the local politicians away from covering for them in the first place.

But I will *not* stand by and allow such idiotic leaps of illogic to stand unchallenged on a site *supposedly* frequented by users who claim to be more intelligent than the average consumer. Claiming that you can sue a company for failing to meet a requirement they never agreed to in the first place (i.e. "promised bandwidth") is ridiculous. How would you feel if your employer could fire you and sue you for damages for failing to work weekends when your employment contract never obligated you to work weekends in the first place? No doubt you'd change your tune if the shoe were on the other foot. That only proves your premise is illogical.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[antdude]

If it is zero, then you have a problem. During the downtimes, I check with my ISPs for the problems. Usually, they say it is known issues and give me credits for them.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

All I was saying is that there has to be some threshold (read: less than 100%) where consumers could ARGUE false advertisement.

And your point, while certainly noble and well-intentioned, is still completely unworkable. Who gets to decide what that threshold is? You? Me? The ISP? Some elected politician who is usually beholden to some lobbyist somewhere that may or may not be on your side? You're arguing "there has to be some threshold" when such a thing is completely subjective. And as with all things subjective, no matter where you draw the imaginary threshold line, there will *always* be someone somewhere that will claim it's unfair, biased against them, etc.

This is why we have things called "contracts" where a "service level agreement" is agreed upon by the seller and the buyer. If the seller fails to live up the obligations clearly spelled out in the contract, the buyer may sue for breach of contract and win. If not, the buyer has no case. Ignorance of the contract terms is no defense, nor should it be. To offer such a thing destroys the very basis on which contracts rest in the first place.

Logic. Try to use it and apply it in all situations. ESPECIALLY in ones you disagree with.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[Anonymous Coward]

unless there's some kind of protected monopoly involved

You haven't been paying attention to most of the US over the last 10 years or so, have you?

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

I have. The monopoly issue is a political problem, not a the-ISP-is-lying-to-me-about-bandwidth problem. The former is affected by the ballot box, not a breach-of-contract or false-advertising lawsuit.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[LinksAwakener]

Who gets to decide what that threshold is?

This is not something I really had interest in answering, since everything said is completely hypothetical, but to answer you; it's not unfathomable to create a "best business practices" entity akin to the FCC (but nothing like the useless BBB). An independent agency of the Government, separated from financial/political interests, and authoritative enough to guide the industry to ethical paths. Don't read into this too much--I would never claim the FCC as an imperfect entity, only more good than bad.

Honestly, all I'm trying to say is the service providers should be forced to write a clause in their contracts that explicitly say at what speed they fail to live up to their end of the deal. This shouldn't HAVE to be forced upon them, but it seems they lack the ethics to do so on their own accord. And the consumer lacks the ability to submit an amended contract.

Ignorance of the contract terms is no defense, nor should it be.

Your first point is false (as evidenced by a multitude of businessmen and government officials claiming ignorance to paperwork that they signed--and getting away with it), but I fully agree with your second point.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

This is not something I really had interest in answering

I kind of gathered that from the obvious amount of thought you put into your original argument.

it's not unfathomable to create a "best business practices" entity akin to the FCC (but nothing like the useless BBB)

The BBB is only useless if consumers ignore it. The FCC has the power of law, which gives it actual teeth where the BBB has none. However, if people used the BBB as the end-all, be-all of information about a company before choosing to do business with them, the BBB would effectively have more power than any FCC ever could. For example, see how sales (usually) plunge at a company when Consumer Reports pans their products. See the old "Suzuki Samurai" review from the late 80's for a concrete example. The Samurai was hugely popular with younger drivers back then until CR did a "tip over" study and found the thing tended to roll over during sharp cornering. Suzuki complained bitterly -- even going so far as to do its own tests "proving" CR's tests were biased -- but sales tanked. Rightly or wrongly, CR effectively killed the product and Suzuku introduced a shorter, wider vehicle to replace it shortly thereafter.

An independent agency of the Government, separated from financial/political interests, and authoritative enough to guide the industry to ethical paths.

HAHAHA! OMG, I just fell out of my chair laughing! You put forth a scenario presuming a government agency can be separated from financial/political interests and trusted to make decisions on purely ethical grounds. Jeez! How old are you? Can you even vote? Because I swear you act like you were born yesterday...and I mean that in the kindest way possible. Now, let me tell you about my idea for pollution-free, unlimited-range, totally-free automobiles, made out of fairy dust and powered by unicorn tears. Big investment opportunity! Get in on the ground floor!

It scares me that you might actually trust in government enough that you could believe that such an institution could actually exist.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[Ichijo]

Not only did I say expecting 100% of advertised speeds unrealistic...

False.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[AK Marc]

What the contract promises and what the advertising indicates should be the expected experience don't agree, thus all the advertising is fraud an should be prosecuted criminally, getting the corporate charter revoked and the CEOs of the ISP and advertising agency in jail for 10+ years each.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[AK Marc]

It's illegal to make such claims in some regulate space. Medicine cures cancer in up to 80 years would be true in that nobody would ever die of cancer after that becaue they'd die of old age first. So 80 years after starting the treatment, there will be no live cancer within the patient. That they all have to die for that to be true is fine print. They will, so it is true. But still illegal to advertise as such. Same as advertising the highway mileage for a car as an "up to" number without mentioning that it is highway mileage and YMMV (literally). Giving screen shots and mentinoing services that work over the service are claims of performance. If it doesn't work as it does in the advertisements, no inaccurate language will save them from the fraud they committed.

It is all a conspiracy. The conspiracy is to oversell the network without the average person figuring it out and to make sure the government does nothing to stop it. And they are winning and the libertarians are sitting on the sidelines cheerin corporate abuse while pretending that the inviible hand will fix the problem and they've been wrong every time they've waited for the invisible hand. It never comes. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I must be George Bush.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[the eric conspiracy]

There is no question that cable companies oversell their capacity. However it's been my experience that a lot of users don't know what speed they are getting and because anything above 1mbps is fine for browsing and email they aren't sensitive to it. These users don't tweek their systems, nor do they call the cable company when they have dropped packets or other issues that could be addressed with a simple service call.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[LinksAwakener]

I kind of gathered that from the obvious amount of thought you put into your original argument.

In stark contrast to the vast amount of thought you've put in? Not quite...

The BBB is only useless if consumers ignore it.

That's correct and precisely my point, they are useless because there's no solid reason for the companies to pay attention to it other than if the consumer pays attention to it--and we both know how fickle consumers are. You even made an example of how this DOESN'T work--CR's tests were false, Suzuki had evidence of this, yet consumers didn't listen.

All the BBB has are empty threats. Establishing an independent agency of the government will back it up with the necessary authority so that it wouldn't be ignored. Relying on your CR scenario to curb the industry would be worthless: there's no telling what the consumer will and won't ignore regarding the empty threats that come out of baseless committees. To ensure the industry would listen, one needs sufficient negative reinforcement when they don't listen.

You put forth a scenario presuming a government agency can be separated from financial/political interests and trusted to make decisions on purely ethical grounds.

Apparently you're unaware of how these agencies of the government work. I can't blame you--nothing you've said so far lacks ignorance. The President of the United States (a person whom was directly elected by the people) sends a list of candidates for the board to be approved by the Senate (100 people voted into their position by--you guessed it--the general population). This ensures that the people elected to the board of whatever agency are elected by a hodgepodge of people with differing political agendas WHO EACH IN TURN WAS DIRECTLY ELECTED TO THEIR POSITION BY THE GENERAL POPULATION. Now, the possibility of the board being corrupt is certainly there, the potential is zero. You would have to have voted a president and all 100 members of the senate into office having the exact same political position which has never and will never happen.

And before you put forth your best effort to blow holes in this statement, the above has been proven to work quite well. There have been sufficiently few instances of politically corrupt independent agencies to believe that system works--for what it's worth anyway. When was the last time you've heard the FCC using it's power for political gain? Never, and the commission's goals were in stark contrast to the right-dominated government (80% of the last decade).

How old are you? Can you even vote?

Seriously? Grow up, and take a break from the Internet please. Nobody likes talking to an asshole.

It scares me that you might actually trust in government enough that you could believe that such an institution could actually exist.

I would like to point out that if there were a way of curbing the industry without government intervention, I'm all for that. I just don't see that happening whatsoever since the government has set up a system to protect the companies which inadvertently put them in control of the industry instead of the consumer. Since you obviously believe you're superior to me, please tell me your suggestion. After all, you must have one since you're trying so hard to blow holes in mine. And for future reference, this is how conversations "in the real world" usually go. If you disagree, you make recommendations instead of attempting to sound superior but giving no real contribution to the conversation.

Re:Promised bandwidth?

[TexNex]

Sorry to whomever he was replying to but, I'm going to dig the hole a tad deeper...currently (going on about 10 years now) the US govenment has issued multiple grants for a Bandwidth study with "purpose" of extending reach into rural areas and improving overall speed (links to the posted FCC stuff). One of the largest "non-profit" organizations taking advantage of this grant provides data for around 20 states and is so closely tied to the telecom industry a circle jerk isn't possible.
My town paper http://www.statesman.com/business/survey-texas-companies-with-broadband-internet-outperform-those-1686241.html was nice enough to give them some coverage. See if you can spot the errors.

Bandwidth is not "promised", it's "up to"

[redstar427]

Most consumer Internet does not promise any guaranteed rate or speed, only that it can peak "up to" a certain speed.
If you want guaranteed performance, you will probably have to pay for a business line, which is far more expensive.

Re:Bandwidth is not "promised", it's "up to"

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Business lines are far more expensive, but worth it if you actually want to get what is advertised. The only issue I have is the up to part of their advertising as I would expect that I should at some point actually see the type of performance they are advertising but in looking at the charts and graphs it looks like a number of don't even get close.

Re:Bandwidth is not "promised", it's "up to"

[Anonymous Coward]

Business lines are far more expensive, but worth it for home use if your OCD is bad enough that you keep doing speed benchmarks every spare hour of the day just to make sure your speed hasn't dropped by 50k/sec.

Fixed that for you. Happy to help.

Re:Bandwidth is not "promised", it's "up to"

[nabsltd]

Business lines are far more expensive, but worth it if you actually want to get what is advertised.

Verizon generally only charges about 15-20% more for business service, but for the highest speeds it's even less (about 7%).

Re:Bandwidth is not "promised", it's "up to"

[bjurke]

This is not entirely true, at least not globally. At least in Germany the broadband connections like VDSL 25 or VDSL 50 provided by T-Com have guaranteed minimal speeds of 50% the advertised download speed (i.e. 25 or 50 MBit/s with 12,5 or 25 MBit/s being the minimum). If this cannot be reliably provided you will be automatically downgraded and charged less which is kind of fair. Besides, I have to say that my VDSL 50 was virtually always fully available - I often syncronized data with my own webserver and downloaded large data packages from our institute servers and I virtually always maxed out at the advertised 5 MB/s. I think when people are complaining about slow download speeds its much more often the upload of the server they're downloading from... just think about it: Only 20 users sucking with 50 MBit/s already max out a 1 GBit/s upload connection from a webserver, which - aside from the network connection - also requires the server to continuously provide a 125 MB/s stream of data. So, in the defense of ISPs, I would much rather say that the target server cannot hold up with the ever-growing download speeds of end users. BTW: I recently moved to Boston, MA. Apparently my soon-to-be-taken apartment has its internet wiring from Comcast. Any thoughts on that? Good? Bad?

Ugh PDF

[jimmerz28]

You know FCC could you please add hyperlinks to your PDF so I can easily go to the desired section?

Verizon Rates vs. Caps

[XERQ]

TFA - Verizon: Sure, you can burst above our advertised rates, but enjoy that bandwidth cap!

Re:Verizon Rates vs. Caps

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon Fios doesn't have caps.

Re:Verizon Rates vs. Caps

[h4rr4r]

Verizon FIOS has no caps.

Only Verizon Wireless has caps.

Re:Verizon Rates vs. Caps

[schnikies79]

Nor does their DSL.

Re:Verizon Rates vs. Caps

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon FIOS has no caps.

Only Verizon Wireless has caps.

No, wait: FIOS consists of only caps.

Verizon Wireless has some (two) caps.

Re:Verizon Rates vs. Caps

[MoldySpore]

They have no set cap written in stone. But if you use enough bandwidth in an area where your usage stands out, they come after you just like the others. If you haven't been called by them, it just means you aren't using enough bandwidth to merit the time to get someone to call. I know people who were downloading just over 250 Gigs a month and got calls about "excessive usage", while others have downloaded almost double that and haven't been bothered. They generate reports of "excessive bandwidth usage" based on the average usage for a particular network segment. If you are near the average for your area you won't be bothered. This of course may change in the future.

Re:Verizon Rates vs. Caps

[amnesia_tc]

Touché

good faith?

[Nyall]

I wonder how long this will last until a class action suit.

I think the ISPs are hiding behind the variables like distance to the tap and peak hours to not make a good faith effort to provide what they are advertising.

In many cases people pay for 3mbs but get 2mbs, then upgrade to the 6mbs plan and get 4mbs, which demonstrates the ISPs capability to have delivered the full 3mbs in the first place.

Re:good faith?

[Anonymous Coward]

There may be some truth to your inference...

Back when we switched over to an Ambit (now Ubee?) modem, I was getting *solid* 8Mbps when grabbing updates from MS. Well, for about a week, that is. It then throttled down to 3Mbps, with spurts up to 5Mbps during the evenings/early morning hours. We've got the "gold plan", which means we pay for whatever they can send us. Again, back in the day, I was seeing bursts of 12Mbps, but now I'm lucky to see anything over 3Mbps.

The lines are good, the modem okay, and it WAS working fine. A distant family member that works for said company noted that the particular modem we have can hit up to 32Mbps or so.

And don't get me started on what they did with the cable programming, either (it seems that most of the stuff I want to watch gets shoved to yet another "pay tier", and the monthly bill is already up to $120/mo!).

Verizon is clearly misleading customers!

[Ichoran]

FIOS is dramatically outperforming even its impressive advertised speeds. This means that teenagers can infringe content and be lured by online predators that much faster! Quick, parents, sue Verizon for false advertising! You are getting too much (dangerous) bandwidth!

Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[MoldySpore]

Cablevision users, on the other hand, shouldn't expect more than half of the promised bandwidth

Hmm...Perhaps you may not hit the max advertised rate on Cablevision's Optimum service, but I can tell from experience that it is much faster than most other services. I have Time Warner Road Runner Turbo and I am paying $66/mo for it in Western NY. I MAX out @ 1.7 MBps sustained, with bursts up to 2.0 MBps (Yes, Mega BYTES, bot bits). But when I visit my friends who live in Eastern NY where Time Warner doesn't have a death gripping monopoly on the broadband market, they are paying far less per month for speeds that always exceed 2.0 MBps on STANDARD level service. Optimum Online Boost, which some do have, get in excess of 3.0 MBps.

So in my personal experience, Optimum wipes to floor with other ISPs. Especially because they have no enforced cap like Comcast or FIOS, and are faster than Time Warner and Cox based connections. Benchmarks and speed tests are fine, but my real world use will decide what ISP I look for when it comes time to buy a house somewhere else. I don't care if they only give me 1/10th of their advertised speed. As long as that speed is still faster than the competition for an equal or lesser price, which so far they have been delivering in my experience.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[h4rr4r]

Where in WNY are you?
I live in West Seneca and have 25/25 FIOS. It fucking rocks. FIOS does not have a cap either.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's Rochester, then there is no FiOS or anything close to equivalent. Rochester can suck it though. If lack of decent broadband was the only thing wrong with that shithole, I might have stayed a bit longer.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[Anonymous Coward]

In North Buffalo (14216) I get 16.22 Down/ 1.78 up, paying for 15 Down and 2 up. Even when I lived on the boarder of Cheektowaga/West Seneca(14227) I got 15.02 Down and 1.48 up.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[Targon]

Out here in Eastern Suffolk County(Eastern Long island, NY), customers get between 7 and 13 megabit/second out of the 15 megabit/second cap for regular Optimum Online. Customers that see less than that are having problems, and it is normally a routine service call to solve the problem. These speeds are based on speedtest.net.

In general, unless there is an excess of capacity(meaning few customers), people should not expect to see 100 percent of the advertised speed. Initial service offerings will have excess capacity, but as the number of customers increases, there WILL be capacity limitations. FIOS at this point is probably running at a loss while trying to get more customers if there is that much extra capacity on that network.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[characterZer0]

There is too much wrong with Rochester to list. Lack of decent broadband is the second biggest local problem in the eastern suburbs though, behind only the upstate-wide property tax problem.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[MoldySpore]

Correct. It is in the Rochester general area. The only other options are Earthlink cable, but that runs over Time Warner copper anyway, and Frontier. And frontier is garbage in terms of support and overall speed (but so is all DSL). FIOS wanted to come into the area, but they were denied because Time Warner owns all the polls their copper is run on and won't rent the space out to anyone else. Basically Time Warner owns the broadband market up here for end user and business class connections. Frontier owns the high-end corporate side of things because of the Frontier Cyber Center and is in downtown Rochester. All of our high-bandwidth links go through the cyber center.

Honestly I wouldn't want FIOS either, though, because it's Verizon and since they deployed 4G in Rochester their network has SUCKED. I drop at least 2 calls a day. Add that together with everyone else dropping at least 2 calls a day and it makes for a very frustrating experience. Also, they have an enforced cap on their network, and I just can't have an ISP with a cap. The only reason TW doesn't have one right now is because the entire tri-county area threatened to drop their service if they imposed a cap on us.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[Moridineas]

Wow, if that's all you're getting than why not downgrade to Road Runner basic? Couldn't be worse, right? Is your performance typical of others in the area?

I'm in a part of NC where the DSL options are awful (like MAX of 1mbps down 768kbps up), no Uverse, no FIOS, and Time Warner is the only show in town. I get solid ~9.5+mbps down/.9mbps up on a 10/1 connection (the cheapest RR tier).

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[MoldySpore]

I think you are talking Mbps (Megabits), my figures are real-world figures, listed in MBps (Megabytes). 1 megabit = 0.125 megabytes

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[the eric conspiracy]

I have Cablevison Boost Plus which gives me 52/8 Mbps. It is quite amazing actually.

You do have to keep an eye on Cablevision though. They don't spend a lot of time handholding customers so I believe that many are have various issues that prevent them from getting full speed on the service. Run speedtests and visit Broadband Reports support forums to find out how to get the most of your service.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[LearnToSpell]

So in my personal experience, Optimum wipes to floor with other ISPs. Especially because they have no enforced cap like Comcast or FIOS

The what now? FiOS doesn't have a cap. Either that or it's insanely high (believe me, I'd know). I got fed up with Optimum Offline silently capping in the first place, which is why I switched.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect to get the speeds I am paying for. One reason I have ADSL and not cable. My cable advertises speeds I'll never get. ADSL I have always gotten the speeds I've paid for during prime time or otherwise.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[MoldySpore]

That most likely has more to do with there being less subscribers on an ADSL line than cable. Also, if you are hitting your max down speed advertised, you are most likely very close to a DSLAM, where people who are a few more kilometers out would not reach that maximum. Also, even if you are on the most current ADSL standard, your maximum theoretical downstream bandwidth still can't excceed 24 Mbit/s (w/ ADSL2+) which I doubt you even have since there are very few ADSL2+ services, especially in the US. And @ 24 Mbits/s, you are still in the realm of standard-tier cable services, especially "boost" or "turbo" cable, which have a far superior upload speed as well.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[Moridineas]

Ah, usually I see megabytes per second abbreviated mb/s rather than MBps, thus the confusion

I did miss that. So let me get this straight--you're complaining about ~16mbps connection? That's pretty fast...admittedly $66/month isn't that great, but pretty good compared to a lot of the country. I'm paying $35 for 10/1.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[MoldySpore]

Not complaining. Just comparing. @ 1.7 MB/s that is about 13.6 Megabits/s. Also remember I am paying for a TURBO connection. Meaning I am paying extra for more speed. Standard Time Warner connections max out around 1.0 MB/s (8 Megabits/s) but still cost around $50/month. For less money than TW, you can get a STANDARD tier connection on Optimum and exceed 2.0 MB/s down stream, in my experience, and for still less than my Turbo connection, Optimum Boost gets you over 3.0 MB/s (24 Megabits/s), usually bursting up past 4.0 MB/s. The Optimum bandwidth has been 50-150% faster in my experiences. And remember, I'm not trying to just arbitrarily talk-up Optimum's service. I can't even get it where I am located! But I wish I could.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[Moridineas]

Can you get Earthlink in your area? It runs on the same modem, same lines, etc. You even pay the bills to TWC still. By switching back and forth between Earthlink and TWC every 6 months to 1 year I have not had to pay more than $40 for cable in a long time. I am in an area with virtually no broadband competition either.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[MoldySpore]

I thought about doing that but to be honest it was too much trouble. Time Warner is the only cable broadband in the area because they own all the telephone poles and cable in the whole county. And they aren't willing to let other companies come in and rent space on their poles because they'd rather have a monopoly on the market. Probably make more $ that way.

Re:Cablevision/Optimum is Fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar experiences here .. The trick is you need to have the newer docis 3 modem , which is only given to complainers .. and or boost customers.

Why are these graphs not symmetric?

[mc_barron]

If these speeds are averages over several days, and we are looking at 24 hours of data, then why in the world does the right side of the graph not mirror the left side of the graph? Surely the speeds don't suddenly change at midnight?

Re:Why are these graphs not symmetric?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps people are scheduling torrents to startup at full speed at midnight.

Re:Why are these graphs not symmetric?

[Anonymous Coward]

could it be that for whatever reason a bunch of their routers have degrading service throughout the day (memory leaks? too many requests for their buffers?) and everyone reboots their network at midnight? It's weird that ALL of the graphs seem to have this problem, but maybe everyone buys the same hardware to run their networks on?

Re:Why are these graphs not symmetric?

[nine-times]

Does it say it's an average in the article? I was looking for details that might answer your question. Maybe they're averaging many users on the same day, or maybe they aren't averaging consecutive days.

Re:Why are these graphs not symmetric?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the graph is not saying that is the speed at midnight. The beginning of the graph shows the average speed between midnight and 2 am. This is a two hour window after midnight, while the end of the graph is the average speed for the two hours leading up to midnight.

It is very reasonable then to expect the average speed to increase for the two hours after midnight seeing as average load would drop on the networks. Also leading to midnight you'll see higher loads as you are coming to the end of prime time usage

Thus the speeds don't change at midnight because that is not how the graph works.

Re:Why are these graphs not symmetric?

[Sqr(twg)]

In the full report (linked as pdf) the same graph has one more data point. The low point is then 8pm-10pm, and the next point starts an upwards trend so that it seems feasible that the curve is continuous across midnight.

Re:Why are these graphs not symmetric?

[RivenAleem]

People with a dynamic IP address usually have it refresh at around midnight (unless you have it set so that your modem resets at a specific time). Until everyone's computers realise the new IP, it will interrupt downloads. Those on a static IP or who's IP doesn't refresh around midnight, will see increased speeds as contention decreases.

Remember USA Broadband is a low bar

[Anonymous Coward]

For most countries with good broadband 100MBS up AND down is fairly standard.

Re:Remember USA Broadband is a low bar

[Targon]

And in those countries, the government subsidizes the network. Here in the USA, the government is all about helping big oil and energy companies, and politicians are generally anti-technology, except for military technology.

Re:Remember USA Broadband is a low bar

[The Dawn Of Time]

Yeah? "Most" countries? Are you sure you aren't just talking about "your" country and you really have no idea?

Re:Remember USA Broadband is a low bar

[The Dawn Of Time]

Quick lesson in reality for you - the government doesn't subsidize anything. Taxpayers do. The government owns nothing, has no money of its own, and fortunately here in America, is not (yet) the all powerful daddy who gets to tell us how we can live.

Re:Remember USA Broadband is a low bar

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Are you in Canada or Mexico? Because you sure as shit aren't in the USA. The local, state, and federal governments regulate most everything I do all fucking day long. Including fucking for shit's sake!

Re:Remember USA Broadband is a low bar

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Really? Are you in Canada or Mexico? Because you sure as shit aren't in the USA. The local, state, and federal governments regulate most everything I do all fucking day long.

The education system in whatever-country-you're-from must suck because you somehow believe the word "subsidize" means the same thing as "regulate." The OP's point remains true despite your error: governments don't subsidize *anything* because governments -- despite their printing presses -- don't produce any money. People produce money, are taxed on it, and those taxes fund government activities and subsidies. This is just basic economics and government principles...which probably means you were educated in the U.S. public education system, since that would explain your ignorance of it.

Re:Remember USA Broadband is a low bar

[Anubis IV]

I HATE apples to oranges comparisons. Comparing the US to an unnamed —presumably small and high density — country is as silly as comparing a LAN connection to the one you get from your ISP and suggesting that the ISP is slow. Of course it is. They'd have to spend exponentially more to have it equal to your LAN, but they also have a lot more to overcome.

When you have population densities that are significantly higher, you make it significantly easier to provide higher quality service to more people, since you have to lay less high-priced cable to reach most of them and you're able to spread the costs out more because there are simply more people per unit of land area. It's not really a fair comparison when you can connect 3x, 5x, or 10x more people in one country than another with the same trunk line. For a fairer comparison, pick countries that have comparable population densities in urban areas, such as Australia, New Zealand, or Canada, and compare the service in them to the US. If the US is slower, fine. If it's faster, fine. But at least it's a fair comparison, and since we're all /.ers here, I should hope that we care about getting to the facts.

To provide some quick numbers on population densities, here's a list of sovereign states sorted by population density. The United States is far closer to the bottom of the list than the top in terms of population density, but that list considers the entire land area occupied by the state, which may give a false impression of success in countries that appear lower than the US on the list if they're able to have networks that are comparable to that of the US. The reason is that they may be able to circumvent the negative effects of a large land mass by concentrating more people into urban areas. For that, we need to check urban population densities.

in fact, we do see that many of the countries have more of their population in urban centers than the US does. If you look at the population densities of urban areas, we can see that countries which had a lower population density than the US on the first list end up having a higher urban population density. In particular, Australia and Russia stand out. Russia's urban population density is roughly 648x higher than its nationwide average, and Australia's is 474x higher than its nationwide average, while the US' is a mere 35x in comparison, suggesting that the first two countries have the vast majority of their people in a few urban pockets, while a large number of US citizens are spread out away from urban areas.

None of this is meant to suggest that America gets a free pass in having bad service, because they don't. But I hate when people try to compare apples and oranges to suggest someone or something is coming up short. That's just shoddy, and you need to compare countries that have similar hurdles to overcome when you want to compare service.

Re:Remember USA Broadband is a low bar

[AK Marc]

The government writes the check. The elected memebers of the government decide who can receive those checks. "the government" does it for all reasonable definitions of "the government."

Re:Remember USA Broadband is a low bar

[AK Marc]

The government in the US uses subsidies to regulate. It's illegal for the feds to set speed limits. But they did. How? Subsidies only for people who did what they wanted but couldn't actually regulate. Look up the NMSL. It's a case study into the difference between subsidize and regulate as exercised in the US.

Re:Remember USA Broadband is a low bar

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfair? How is it unfair when OUR GOVERMENT defines broadband as a lower number then other countries? How is it comparing apples to oranges when our densely populated cities have sub-standard broadband? I understand there are issue with getting high speed access to remote areas of the country, however we have problems getting moderate speed access to poor parts of our big cities. The duo-lopy steps in when municipalities want to provide service to under-served parts of the city as unfair competition, yet they refuse to provide service as it is not profitable.

The lack of competition here is the reason we have sub-standard service. They know people will pay for whatever they offer because they have no choice and before some one steps in, two over-priced carriers is NOT a choice. In the US Internet services is a cash cow. Instead of upgrading to meet an increased future demand, we get bandwidth caps. Our infrastructure is falling way behind.

If you compare our urban centers to other countries, we are still way behind.

Cablevision customer here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Over the past year or so, I've noticed that my Steam downloads - which would usually cap out at 1.2MB/sec - have been topping out at around 330K/sec after I get home from work. Other people I know have had problems with video streams constantly buffering when watching live video. I've considered upgrading to their "Boost" service, to see if that would help, but if this graph is any indication, it won't matter one bit. I priced out Fios a few years ago, when they first rolled out in my area, but I think it may be time to compare the pricing again.

Makes me wonder what the increased prices in the cable bill are going towards, if they're not building out any network capacity at all.

Re:Cablevision customer here...

[Targon]

Go to speedtest.net and test your line, if you see less than 7Mbps down, call customer service to get your problem fixed. Any company WILL have problems with areas or individual customers, but if people don't call to report the problems, how is Cablevision supposed to know and test to find the source of the problem?

Re:Cablevision customer here...

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Go to speedtest.net and test your line, if you see less than 7Mbps down, call customer service to get your problem fixed. Any company WILL have problems with areas or individual customers, but if people don't call to report the problems, how is Cablevision supposed to know and test to find the source of the problem?

And as soon as you call customer service, a kindly representative will happily inform you that, if you'd bother to read the contract, you'd already know there is no guaranteed minimum bandwidth, so there's nothing to fix in the first place. Thank you for calling, and try back next time when you have a legitimate complaint.

Re:Cablevision customer here...

[AK Marc]

When I had speed issues that weren't fixed, I documented the advertisement on the web site, called customer service and documented the calls. Then bundled up my complaint in a letter to the FCC copying the company in question. The problem that I had informed them that I had that they stated was "impossible" to fix was fixed in the manner I had asked for 6 months and 20 calls ago and was done within 24 hours of receipt of that letter. The FCC followed up with a case number that I didn't follow up on.

Yes, customer service of the bells is trained to lie. It had to be training. I was lied to consistently for almost a year until someone above customer service didn't want any trouble with the FCC and their lies and fixed the problem within 24 hours, proving they could have done it at any time. Just because customer service blows you off doesn't prove your complaint isn't legitimate. And customer service professionals aren't lawyers. Anything they say about the contract is worth as much as if you trained your dog to say "yes" and "no" and asked your dog if he liked the contract. The advertising sets an expectation of a non-zero speed, so a guarantee of 0 in the contract is an invalid clause (or proof of fraudulent advertising).

And yet FIOS is not available in most areas....

[Anonymous Coward]

FIOS is soo good because not a lot of people are on it!

Once FIOS expands, I'm sure the network will get bogged down and speeds will drop to below advertising speed.

FIOS is not available in my area. Managed to talk to a Verizon sales person and said that penetration is slow because of regulation and dominance of the larger cable companies.

I would kill for FIOS!!!

Re:And yet FIOS is not available in most areas....

[Anonymous Coward]

FIOS has electrolytes!

Re:And yet FIOS is not available in most areas....

[Nanosphere]

We have FIOS at my job, 25mbps. My home 2 miles up the same road is 768kbps DSL, FIOS not available there. Tried upgrading to 3mbps DSL and the connection kept dropping, after two weeks going back and forth with tech support they determined I was too far away from the "office" for anything over 800kbps. Fuuuuuuuuu.......

Re:And yet FIOS is not available in most areas....

[Anonymous Coward]

Managed to talk to a Verizon sales person and said that penetration has slowed because they already milked out the high density areas where they know they could make money with their last mile monopolies they negotiated with local governments. A nice side effect is no other private or government initiatives will ever attempt to move in and attempt to compete with us because of those last mile contracts and and because we already took the low hanging customer fruit high density areas and they would never get a ROI, LOL sucker!

FTFY.

Re:And yet FIOS is not available in most areas....

[nabsltd]

Once FIOS expands, I'm sure the network will get bogged down and speeds will drop to below advertising speed.

Even with 100% uptake, FiOS can provide 80/80 service to every customer. The limiting factor is the neighborhood concentrators, which are slowly being upgraded to move the limit to somewhere near 300Mbps per customer.

Re:And yet FIOS is not available in most areas....

[Moridineas]

My office had a DSL connection for years from Speakeasy that had been rock solid. we even upgraded it several years ago to 6mbps down/1.5mbps up. All of a sudden, about 10-12 months ago, the connection went to hell. After some VERY painful technical support calls, missed appointments etc, someone finally told us the distance from the CO was like 12,000 feet. Funny, it used to be 6,000 feet. They also claimed that 75ms pings to google/other internet sites were normal and 10% packet loss in pings wasn't that bad.

Mostly I was disappointed with Speakeasy. They used to be such a great ISP, but through mergers and buyouts they're awful now.

Highs and Lows

[Anonymous Coward]

Averaging hides highs and lows. I'm more interested in percentage of the time that I am receiving the advertised rate. It's relevant for connectivity in certain apps. For downloads total % of advertised bandwidth is relevant, but if apps are timing me out and at other points in time I'm getting 300% of the advertised speed, that doesn't correspond to good performance.

Easy for an ISP to game

[PetiePooo]

This system would be easy for any ISP to game. QOS routing is already in place in all ISP networks. All any one of them would need is an example whitebox (eg. one of their employees or their friends), and they could ensure all packets destined for the target host are treated with the highest priority. All we can tell from that graph is CableVision doesn't do that...

Remeber too that ISPs route packets differently depending on the destination provider among other things. Anyone remember the debacle about Comcast refusing to peer Level 3? They thought the traffic was lopsided, and as a result, all Netflix customers on their network were routed over a congested transit link which they refused to embiggen.

I get more than what is advertised.

[Anonymous Coward]

I signed up for Comcast 20mbps then my modem died and bought a docsis 3.0 modem and now I get 62mbps. The maximum I get from a given site is usually 20mbps there is the rare sites where I can download at 50+, but is awesome for doing multiple things. I set the USENET download at 20mbps and I can still play online and make voip calls at the same time.

Service improved after I hooked up my 'Whitebox'

[Anonymous Coward]

I was also a participant in the study. My DSL service before the study was very poor. About a week and half after I received and connected my 'Whitebox' router my service got significantly better. You can see the performance was better (fewer dropped packets and higher substained bandwidth) in the personal graphs I received from Samknows after the first week and half. I have a feeling the my provider detected I was in the survey and made sure my traffic was prioritized.

Poor presentation

[jmichaelg]

The graphs don't give enough information to evaluate the claims. To tell you the average speed isn't useful without giving some indication of the data spread. For example if one customer gets 300% over advertised but 3 customers get 33% of advertised then service averages out to 100% of advertised.

.
A box-whisker graph would give a much better sense of how customers are faring.

Moreover, the tests weren't run blind. The ISPs provided data to the people running the study to help them disambiguate whether bottlenecks were in the last mile or in delivery to the ISP. It wasn't clear to me why that was even needed as sluggishness from the cloud would be spread evenly across all ISPs unless an ISP was cramming 100,000 users onto a single T1 line.

Re:Poor presentation

[Spliffster]

The Report mentions that data was made available also, so everyone should be able to make their own charts. All I could find so far were a couple of xls files which are not very helpful: http://www.fcc.gov/measuring-broadband-america/charts

I like to bash Comcast as much as the next guy but

[Assmasher]

I have to admit since I finally bit the bullet and went to their cable modem 20MB service, the thing virtually always test out at 31MB/s for looong periods of transfer, I have been quite happy. It's a little expensive, but it is fast, and (so far) consistently 30Mbps/5Mbps down and up - not just in short bursts (I was worried about that.)

Re:I like to bash Comcast as much as the next guy

[hedwards]

Around here Comcast is basically the same speed as Qwest is, the main difference is that they have that boosting technology that lets them borrow bandwidth from the loop when congestion is low.

Unfortunately, neither company is particularly interested in doing anything about it and Qwest has flat out stated that they won't be upgrading capacity in several Seattle neighborhoods leaving them with a connection of 1.5mbps max or comcast.

Re:I like to bash Comcast as much as the next guy

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, in my opinion cable TV and customer service are extremely suspect, but I have the bargain Comcast service and can reach 15-20mb/s consistently.

Is the FCC unbiased in this whole process?

[spinninggears]

From the report: "The data in this Report is based on a statistically selected subsetof those consumers—approximately 6,800 individuals—and the measurements taken in their homes during March 2011."

Interestingly, after a year of complaining to my ISP, using the data from my SamKnows router, that I was not getting anywhere close to my advertised download speed, in March 2011 I suddenly started getting it ( an ~4x boost). I wonder if my speed will now start to degrade now that the report is out? Or is it just coincidence?

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

how do i switch from the comcast i have (that is nigh unusable most evenings) to the one they tested (which is nigh 100% all day)?

AT&T Uverse sucks in San Diego

[sdguero]

It sucks so bad... We now have the 18mbps (upgraded from 6 to 12, and now to 18) plan and I haven't gotten over 6mbps since upgrading. It is actually slower now than it was with the 6mbps plan. Usually during peak hours I'm seeing under 2mbps and can't even play games or watch youtube videos above 240p.

I ran/submitted Uverse to this FCC test almost a year ago, it was much faster then and we actually got speeds as advertised. Me thinks the ISPs might have a way to game these metrics. I mean, its the FCC, I would hope private industry could outsmart a bunch of federal bureaucrats if they can survive in business.

Re:AT&T Uverse sucks in San Diego

[bill_mcgonigle]

It sucks so bad... We now have the 18mbps (upgraded from 6 to 12, and now to 18) plan and I haven't gotten over 6mbps since upgrading. It is actually slower now than it was with the 6mbps plan.

If you're paying more for less, you're their dream customer. Why don't you switch back?

Re:AT&T Uverse sucks in San Diego

[sdguero]

I have a live in landlord that isn't tech savvy. Preaching to the choir dude...

Re:AT&T Uverse sucks in San Diego

[bill_mcgonigle]

Oh, bummer. Assuming you're sharing with other tenants, you've made sure they're not gumming up the works?

Re:AT&T Uverse sucks in San Diego

[sdguero]

Nah just two of us and I'm the only techy. I keep an eye on our network... The pipe is slow. Uverse sucks!

LUS Fiber

[Dr_Ish]

My broadband comes from the town utility system. We reliably get speeds 90% faster than we pay for, at any time of day, or night. So-called 'LUSFiber' (for' Lafayette Utility System Fiber') is the best there is. Their cable offerings are also excellent and beat the opposition (mostly Cox) hands down. What is really cool is that the LUSFiber system stays up, even during a power outage, which none of the opposition does. As we live in an area that gets hurricanes, this is an important advantage. I wish everyone could get their service, it would put the big players to shame.

Re:LUS Fiber

[Chibi Merrow]

Sadly LUS rolled out fiber just a few months after I left Lafayette. And the substation they picked for initial rollout was where my apartment had been. Ah well. So jealous now that I have to deal w/ Comcast up here... All I hear is good things from my friends/family that are using LUSFiber back home.

Interesting that you say that it stays up in a power outage, as that was BellSouth and Cox's talking point about why the LUS system would be bad (Our systems run on copper, so they carry their own power, and stay up in a power outage!).

The study seems to be fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a consumer as part of the study (and thats why I'm submitting as anonymous).

I'd agree with AzTechGuy, my rates for my west coast cable provider don't seem to be listed even though I'm part of the study.

The funny thing is that the report accredits all the "participating" broadband companies for their help in the study. Funny, cause when I sighed up they said the companies were not involved, and did not know I'd be participating, but funnier still just after I signed up my performance got better...

Hey I get to keep the white box when the study is done...

I wonder

[bored]

How long it took the ISP's to detect the boxes and set their throttle algorithms to ignore streams from them.

The Real Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that Baorakus Obamaus has vanquished his opponents the FCC (Communications Intellingincia) knocks on his Highest of Holies Door.

Short story. The FCC's numbers are Fraudlent as their methods as their "Appointed Knights" of the Relm.

Good to be NOT of their Relm. //--++

Re:I like to bash Comcast as much as the next guy

[WindBourne]

Just out of curiosity, what is your max bandwidth? You on a 12 or a 20 or a 40? The reason that I ask is that 12s are adsl , while the 20/40 are vdsl. We are switching from comcast to qwest due to the outrageous price by comcast and their outages. In addition, I had to fight for vdsl rather than the adsl.

Former TimeWarner customer & CableVision

[Anonymous Coward]

Employee here, & CableVision was way, Way, WAY FASTER than TimeWarner was in the time I was working for CableVision (decent enough shop too imo, decent bosses as well - surprising & refreshing) in my experience. This was in 2003 whilst I lived in NYC's Long Island area (only minutes from the NOC where I worked etc.). I was blown away in fact by the diff. in speed in TimeWarner "RoadRunner" in those days (which I thought was fast in fact) once I got on CableVision's network!

That's speaking as both a user, and an employee then (former) mind you... CableVision told me, when I left (suddenly, big family type crisis):

"Come back ANYTIME, & you'll have a job here!"

(Right after I solved a problem in DELL systems being set "too radically" in their NIC config not working with CableVision's routers/cablemodems - which DELL blamed US for, figures... so, that was nice to hear + know!)

* So IF I'm ever in NYC again? I probably will look them up once again! Good place to work too I have to say, again... others mileage MAY vary, but not mine... good shop!

APK

P.S.=> I liked what I read about Verizon though (DSL man here nowadays - for me, the "price is right" with the mixture of the speed I require: Nice to know I am truly getting my money's worth, & THEN some, per this article's summary above (wish I could get FIOS though here - I can't currently, as my location is a "wee bit odd" so-to-speak (I am in the inner city, but in a strangely isolated area in it, hard to explain)))...

... apk

P.S.=>

Business Internet and home TV

[tepples]

I've read reports of some ISPs not supplying business connections to customers on residentially zoned land. I've read other reports of ISP sales reps not knowing what to do when a customer wants TV service from the ISP's home division and Internet service from the ISP's business division.

What a constant Mbps per MHz ratio might mean

[tepples]

In many cases people pay for 3mbs but get 2mbs, then upgrade to the 6mbs plan and get 4mbs, which demonstrates the ISPs capability to have delivered the full 3mbs in the first place.

Then perhaps what customers are paying for is a slice of spectrum x MHz wide, and the Mbps per MHz ratio depends on line conditions such that people living farther away will need to pay more for the same last mile service because it costs the telco more to provide the same last mile service.