Slashdot Mirror
NY To Probe Broadband Providers Over Internet Speeds (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes with a report from The Stack that New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman has begun a probe into the state's three dominant ISPs to assess whether they are actually delivering the service they advertise at the levels promised. From the article: According to leaked documents, sent to Verizon Communications, Cablevision Systems and Time Warner Cable, the New York attorney general asked each firm to hand over copies of the advertising and copy they have provided to consumers regarding internet speeds, along with any testing documents which studied the speed of their service. ... The probe plans to focus on the exchange of data through contractual partnerships between the ISPs and other networks. The AG office suspects that customers who are paying a premium fee for higher internet speeds could be experiencing a disruption to their service due to technical issues brought about by business disputes in these interconnection deals.
* please note that the actual award may be less, depending on congestion and other factors
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It sounds like the New York Attorney General's Netflix keeps getting the loading notification and his HD videos don't play back. This, plus Verizon has reneged on its FiOS rollout to all neighborhoods as contractually required. They only installed in the neighborhoods they wanted and told the state to fuck off on the rest.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
More likely the AG's Netflix doesn't work smoothly.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
It's not that I mind your dishonesty so much, it's that you think I'm stupid -Charlie Brown , It's the Great Pumpkin. .. After careful reconsideration, I do mind the dishonesty
Oh hush.
Everyone knows that government regulators are above suspicion.
I have no clue, and without competition or regs, I'll likely never know.
Possibilities:
A: That the access speed was the advertised rate when nobody else was using it and the phase of the planets was just right. (Sure)
B: The ability to talk to anybody, anywhere on the Internet at their access speed. (No way is this even possible.)
C: That any content delivered to their ISP would be accepted gratis and delivered to their customer subject to the access speed limitation. (Should be this way.)
D: That the ISP would give their customer a fair share of any congested links proportional to their access rate, and that the ISP would publish the percentage of packets making it through this congestion maze. (And that there would be competitive pressure to keep this percentage high.)
Government shakedown?
Whatever. And Good!
We have local monopolies and oligarchies, horrible service, and obscene prices. My only choice is to just not to subscribe to any internet service. WTF? Why is that every other industrialized country has service that is better AND cheaper than ours? Or when Google moves into a market, all of a sudden, the local ISPs start acting decently?
Please, the ISPs lobbied for their cushy markets and when they got them, decided to abuse their power and get even more money out of us. They deserve everything they get.
Right. It must something nefarious like a "government shakedown". It would be totally unacceptable for "the government" to look out for the interests of it's citizens.
Like where you pay a premium for a higher speed tier and the net result is your local modem's speed is upgraded, but it's basically worthless because of congestion from your node all the way up to the interchange is congested and oversubscribed?
I see this all the time -- customer buys into some ridiculous Comcast business class speed tier of 100/50 or whatever and never sees the throughput. Sure, all the internet speed tests (which I am sure are gamed) show the speed but real-world tests from a local data center with real connectivity can't come close, yet local testing with a laptop connected to a firewall outside port shows the on-premise hardware has no problems either.
I get that not every location in the world can keep up with 100Mbit local connectivity -- some don't have the throughput, some are managed to cap individual streams, etc, but Comcast, et al seem to get away with selling fantasy connection speeds that amount to little more than cable modem configs.
I couldn't find the word "promise" anywhere.
Here's reality: residential consumers are not paying for guaranteed bandwidth. Want guaranteed speeds? Get a dedicated circuit.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
All who aren't aware of it: 1st post fools = forums sliders. They do it for burying later posts they don't like by paid trolls/shills whose agenda's adversely affected by truth from those who post truth or fact they can't handle and it is why it is done since most here browse below the +1 default view they know that even though most here browse below the +1 default moderation threshold view. Don't respond to these pricks or immediately down moderate them (as was done to the one I replied to). Yes, I shouldn't have replied but it's for people who don't understand the mechanics at work here and why it's done. Yes, there are actually paid shills and trolls that do these things on forums structured like slashdot in a tree fashion.
But don't you remember? Government bad, money-grubbing multinational monolithic sociopathic monopolistic corporations good!
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
The FCC already requires broadband providers to do this. Most providers have or are implementing a product set called SamKnows to comply. You can read the FCC's 2014 report here or have a look at the FCC's Measuring Broadband America for more info about the program. No, I don't work for the FCC.
Sounds like the NY Attorney General's office is just making more work for ISPs when they could just ask the FCC for the info. Probably just bullying.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
How long ago did you move out?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
>We have local monopolies and oligarchies, horrible service, and obscene prices.
Yep. Why? Section 622 of the Cable Communications Act of 1984 allows local governments to collect 5% of cable company revenue to the city (plus campaign contributions) in exchange for granting an exclusive monopoly in an area, disallowing competition. This is known as a franchise.
In some cases, such as New York (where this investigation is occurring), the franchise is carved up neighborhood by neighborhood. Time Warner pays a bribe^H^H^H^H^H fee to local politicians for their monopoly north of 86th street, Cablevision owns the Bronx via political decree. Here's the map from NYC.gov:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/...
Given the fact that the New York government created the monopolies and enforces them, I'm not holding my breath waiting for them to fix it. I don't expect that will happen until the CCA is amended to prevent state and local governments from granting monopolies in exchange for kickbacks^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H fees.
Found the ISP shill ...
What? Try that again, you're making no sense.
I can attest to these problems. In upstate NY on Time Warner, anytime the net fails I do an mtr to Google and get 50% drops. This only happens when xo.net shows up in the path.
Definitely some peering problems there.
In other news internet service providers opened a probe to see whether it is worth their effort to continue operating in NY without charging obscene prices.
In other news NY continues to lose its population and brain capital to other states, especially in the South.
Chapter 3, section 2(A), paragraph 6, subparagraph 2, clearly states that the consumer is to be provided with "up to" the indicated bandwidth. I submit, your honor, that no evidence will be shown to prove we have delivered bandwidth in excess of our claims.
Every single time I've called an ISP, their representatives claimed the speeds were in megabytes rather than megabits. Which means they're advertising speeds 8 times faster than what they really provide. I've noticed this with Verizon and Comcast, and attempts to explain the mistake to their reps never go anywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if these companies turn a blind eye to this particular error, since many consumers wouldn't notice it and they could always claim it was an honest mistake.
no...cronyism bad, free-market corporations good.
But don't you remember? Government bad, money-grubbing multinational monolithic sociopathic monopolistic corporations good!
All I remember is Napster Bad.
burying the parent has no effect on its children. The only effect it has is to deplete one moderator of one mod point, unless the account is a sock puppet, then two points from two mods.
From what I hear from someone who lives in New York City, Time Warner Cable's copper system was tarnishing/degrading so performance began to suck. People were jumping ship to FiOS for that reason alone.
He did say that TWC was finally starting to replace it.
The Volkswagen debacle reminds me of a question that's been bothering me for a while now.
I wonder if, when you go to one of those bandwidth test sites and perform a speed test, your ISP notices what you are doing and prioritizes your traffic, to make you think you have more bandwidth than you actually do.
If this is true, do you think people will get as upset with their ISPs as they are getting with Volkswagen, for engineering methods to lie on tests?
When you find me a free market that can possibly exist somewhere other than a libertarian's wet dream, you let me know.
Please live in the real world.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
I hope the "probe" envisaged here is of the same type those aliens keep using on hapless rural humans...
Can you get them to investigate here as well, I am reasonably certain that a similar investigation here in New Zealand would do wonders for our internet speeds.
Just to interject, very few Libertarians are laissez faire capitalists. Unfortunately, they're the vocal minority. Sorry about that and I can understand the confusion.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
No worries. The thing that I think really kills the whole concept of the free market in the world we live in is that it requires educated consumers to put enough pressure on businesses to act ethically and fairly. Consumers have proven over and over that they don't want to know the information that would be needed for that to work. People don't care if a business is using sweatshop labor or dumping toxic waste into the water supply; they want their cheap shit from Walmart.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.