New York Sues Charter Over Slow Internet Speeds (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: New York filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing Charter Communications Inc of short-changing customers who were promised faster internet speeds than it could deliver. The lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Manhattan accused Charter's Spectrum unit, until recently known as Time Warner Cable, of systematically defrauding customers since 2012 by promising and charging for services it knew it could not offer. At least 640,000 subscribers signed up for high-speed plans but got slower speeds, and many subscribers were unable to access promised online content such as Facebook, Netflix, YouTube and various gaming platforms, the complaint said. The lawsuit seeks "full restitution" for customers, as well as hefty civil fines. Among the allegations in the complaint was an accusation that Time Warner Cable leased older-generation modems to 900,000 subscribers knowing that the modems could not achieve faster internet speeds.

Comments

Justice Boner

[nobuddy]

I would love to see them nailed hard for this, prompting cities in their little mini-monopolies to follow suit all across the country. They won't, bribes will be paid and it will go away. But man, wouldn't it be sweet if it did happen.

Better Summary for Nerds

[bengoerz]

We're nerds. Lets summarize like it:

Charter customers with 100+Mbps plans were leased old-spec modems that couldn't support those speeds. Charter promised the FCC that it would swap the modems, and the FCC excluded speedtest results from these users from national averages. Fast forward: Charter didn't switch the modems. Now NY State is suing it for defrauding customers.

Re:Better Summary for Nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

Is California having a similar lawsuit? I just signed up for their Spectrum service, was promised to receive 100 Mbps, but have consistently gotten less than 40 Mbps since day one. The alternative is Frontier at the same price for a tenth the speed, but obviously, we consumers should be getting what we're paying for, right?

Re: Better Summary for Nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

I had that issue with Charter as well.
To resolve it just required a call and they changed the provisioning on their end.

Have had 100-150 Mb/s down since that call.

Also make sure your modem is a newer docsis supported modem.

If you are leading it you can just go to the local Charter location or have them send a tech to swap it.

Re:Better Summary for Nerds

[alvinrod]

I recently found myself in a similar situation where I was on a plan where I couldn't get the maximum speed because I had and old cable modem (DOCSIS 2.0, yeah it's old) that couldn't support the speed that I was getting. I didn't realize this until I had called in about an unrelated issue and the tech (bog bless him for being a decent lad, despite working in the whore pits at the local cable monopoly) noted that irregularity. Not that it really mattered because I had signed up for the 500 GB plan years ago (at the time it seemed like an unlimited amount) and despite the speed being increased tenfold over the years since I first started service with the company, my bandwidth cap hasn't budged at all. I upgraded to a newer modem, but really it's like driving a faster car down the same toll road with a brick wall at the end. I can't go any further, but I can hit the wall a lot faster.

Re:Better Summary for Nerds

[omnichad]

If you're talking Frontier that was former Verizon FiOS territory, avoid it like the plague. The constant outages that I've heard about there since the switchover has been worse than anything Charter is doing.

Re:Better Summary for Nerds

[Highdude702]

Yes ive noticed that alot of the people commenting on this apparently don't know the difference between DOCSIS 2.0 and 3.0 and the speeds they bring... oops.

Dear City of New York.

[Lumpy]

You did this to your self. Community internet was BANNED by your corrupt city in favor of these scumbag companies.
This kind of scumbag bullshit has been going on in cities by so called leaders for years because you prefer to get your palms greased by the big cable companies.

Re:speeds "up to"....

[jxander]

Yeah, but "up to" implies that the possibility exists, even if you'll never actually see it.

An old DOCISS 2.0 modem has a hard cap of 38 Mbps down, 27 Mbps up. That's simply the spec. Giving someone that modem and promising speeds "up to 100 Mbit/s" is flatly incorrect and false advertising.

Or, to take things to their hyperbolic ends, imaging promoting a 56k dialup service with "speeds up to 10 Gbit/s." All the semantic loopholes wouldn't let that fly.

If this is a technical issue please press three

[mmell]

And prepare to wait for a lo-o-ong time . . .

Re:speeds "up to"....

[sjames]

Up to isn't get out of jail free. The "up to" speed needs to be at least theoretically possible given the equipment in use even if it would require perfect conditions never seen in nature.

That is not the case here since the modems they're providing cannot provide the up to speed under any conditions.

Re:Buffer bloat

[Highdude702]

Absolutely 0.

Docsis 2.0 cap 42.88 (38) Mbit/s limited to 1 channel.

Docsis 3.0 cap m × 42.88 (m × 38) Mbit/s m=minimum of 4 channels theoretically unlimited ammount of channels.

Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Required cable co modem

[Spamalope]

Comcast in Houston makes using their box mandatory if you have a fixed IP. They told me I could use my own box, advertise that on the website and only mentioned the restriction once I wanted to install the replacement (picked from their recommended list!).

Re:speeds "up to"....

[The-Ixian]

I remember when I was with Frontier they told me "sure, you can have your own modem, but you still have to pay the rental fee". This is even when I offered to return my modem to them.