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Broadband Firms in UK Must Ditch 'Misleading' Speed Ads (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Broadband firms will no longer be able to advertise their fast net services based on the speeds just a few customers get, from May next year. Currently ISPs are allowed to use headline speeds that only 10% of customers will actually receive. In future, adverts must be based on what is available to at least half of customers at peak times. It follows research that suggested broadband advertising can be misleading for consumers. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) looked into consumers' understanding of broadband speed claims and found that many were confused by headline speeds that they would never actually get in their own homes. The concerns were passed on to the Committees of Advertising Practice (Cap) which consulted with ISPs, consumer groups and Ofcom to find a better way to advertise fast net services. Most argued that the fairest and clearest way would be to use the average speeds achieved at peak time by 50% of customers.
I make my ISP sign a contract specifying a minimum speed commitment, and any month they do not meet it I do not have to pay them. It's worked beautifully for me.
This is what we've been saying the whole time.
The whole "Net Neutrality" debacle is actually a cry against fraudulent advertising; ISPs that lie about what they provide should be punished (e.g., by lawsuit), and the government should be restricted from supporting monopolies (e.g., there shouldn't be special contracts established by states or municipalities).
The right solution for keeping the Internet working well is not Net Neutrality regulation, but rather a Federal U.S. law (via the Constitution's "commerce clause") that prohibits localities from creating what are effectively government-sponsored monopolies; the right of The People to compete in a market to provide goods and services shall not be infringed, including competition to provide Internet service.
That is the American way to solve these disputes.
These twaddles are as old as ISPs. I just wonder why it took so long. Most ISPs are advertising the RAW carrier bit-rate rather than the actual net data bit-rate. DSL Provider show you ATM bit-rate. You can roughly cut 10-12% for the real BPS. And it still represents the raw data rate between your modem and the DSLAM. Even when you get optimal link there, the local collect loop is either deliberately throttled or saturated. By the time your data can travel to or from outside your ISPs internal network, it is already diminished. Getting VDSL2 here advertised as up-to 100up/30down MBPs. Lines has 0 loss, 0 CRC, and talks at 90/25 MBs. Even if it is encapsulated in an ATM transmission with 10% loss. That make it still like 80 Down / 25 Up. In reality ISP is throttling it to 25-30 Down 20 Up because their fiber to the central has not enough capacity in my area. Sheepples here don't care as long as they can go to Facebook to post their pathetic lolcats. Good hope some advertising regulators pay attention. Was about time they did.
Léa Gris
There seems to be no end to McTeagle's poetic invention. 'My new cheque book hasn't arrived' was followed up by the brilliantly allegorical 'What's twenty quid to the bloody Midland Bank?' and more recently his prizewinning poem to the Arts Council: 'Can you lend me a thousand quid?'
The lady at Comcast told me she's not having any speed or connectivity problems.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It's the same issue as net neutrality.
Here they sell you 20mbps knowing they never intend to spend enough on the network to support it. It's a lie being sold. Something that is any other business is a trading standard crime.
NN: They sell you 20mbps, yet slow the website you visit down to 2mbps because they didn't invest in enough infrastructure and can see an opportunity to sell the right to the website to not be throttled. Really they're again selling you a lie. Selling both ends of the pipe as if they're not throttling the pipe.
It's all the same thing, screw over the customers, and subvert the regulators by injecting bad actors. Pai.
but I changed my mind. Instead, a few months ago I hacked up a bit of old phlegm onto my screen and it has dried up occasionally occluding some text.
I thought that you should know about that.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Trump can have his lackey gut Net Neutrality rules on the condition that:
1) All ISP's divest their media and content assets, that includes Google's Fiber assets.
2) All media companies divest their TV production, Film production, Animation, and Sports assets from each other.
3) All ISP's divest their wireless (mobile phones, satellite and OTA broadcast stations) to be independent in every market.
Therefor:
Wireline ISP's - Will only be permitted to offer symmetric fiber internet. Cable, xDSL and Wireless-only last-miles will only be permitted where they are already installed. All new installations must be Fiber. When the equipment dies, it must be replaced with Fiber. ISP's shall not throttle internet service and the only option for bandwidth management is to change the bandwidth provisioning (eg from 1Gbit to 100mbit), and will not charge by bytes.
Wireless providers - Will be unaffiliated with landline ISP's and only a "last mile" solution for internet access. For roaming internet access and voice calls, customers will be able to move their phone number from wireline ISP to wireless and back without changing provisioning. What this means is that regardless if the phone is connected by LTE-Advanced or WiFi, the phone number is the same, and can not be billed for time or data, only for the "size of the pipe" *point of interest, most LTE installations are faster than DSL and Cable, often at 100+Mbits bi-directional, where as cable is often grossly asymmetrical (eg 100/2 and 1G/10M is often seen.)
Tier 1 ISP's and backbones - Shall only bill by pipe size, not bytes. Customers who wish to bypass landline ISP's and Wireless ISP's to connect directly to the Tier 1's, shall be given the same options as any other customer of the Tier 1 ISP.
Broadcasters (OTA and Satellite) - Shall remain independent and can only be owned by the city/community, or privately as long as they do not own any other broadcasting assets. What they choose to broadcast is not subject to any censorship rules from 7pm to 4am. News broadcasts must clearly be labeled "NEWS" (with a website link for text version of the news) or "OPINION" (linking to an opinion section) and can not broadcast anything as NEWS that has not be fact checked.
PayTV studios (eg HBO, CNN, ESPN, etc) - Shall remain independent in a "one channel, one company" arrangement, where by the content can be licensed to any in-state, out-of-state, or out-of-country ISP or broadcaster with no conditions attached, and must make IPTV applications (eg HBO Now) available world-wide regardless of licenses with broadcasters.
Film studios - Shall remain independent from PayTV providers and Broadcasters, and shall not merge with each other.
Game studios - Shall remain independent from PayTV providers and Broadcasters and shall not merge with each other.
"IP licences" (eg Harry Potter, Marvel, DC, etc) - Shall be spun off into their own licence holding companies, of which they shall not merge with other licences. They are free to licence their IP to any Film, Game, or PayTV studios, provided that no exclusivity is made to any of the above (Wireline ISP, Wireless ISP, Broadcaster)
Current IP licenses held by any company must be split up into individual licences, and may be managed by one larger licence management company provided that the licence management company provides RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory)
access to the licence.
That about covers everything.
So for a company like Google, they would be required to divest their fiber assets, but they can keep their Youtube and DoubleClick advertisement products.
A company like AT&T would be required to break up all broadcasting assets into a separate company and break all media ownership into PayTV/Film studios
A company like Time Warner, would be required to break up it's Time assets from it's Warner assets, and it's ISP assets.
A company like Comcast, likewise would be required to break up it's film production and ISP assets.
Trump is a bitch. If you voted for him youâ(TM)re a douche, a cunt and queer.
This is what we've been saying the whole time.
The whole "Net Neutrality" debacle is actually a cry against fraudulent advertising; ISPs that lie about what they provide should be punished (e.g., by lawsuit), and the government should be restricted from supporting said monopolies (e.g., there shouldn't be special contracts established by states or municipalities).
The right solution for keeping the Internet working well is not Net Neutrality regulation, but rather a Federal U.S. law (via the Constitution's "commerce clause") that prohibits localities from creating what are effectively government-sponsored monopolies; the right of The People to compete in a market to provide goods and services shall not be infringed, including competition to provide Internet service.
That is the American way to solve these disputes.
That's exactly what Net Neutrality did, it made them common carriers and liable for their arbitrary blocking. It didn't stop the blocking as such, it meant they could be *sued* for the blocking. Without that they can simply put an asterix in their adverts and say "connectivity may not work for all sites" and they've covered themselves legally as they screw over monopoly customers.
I don't think lawsuits are a fix here, these are monopoly providers in many areas and need to be regulated as such. Hence they were brought under FCC to regulate them.
That's how its worked so far, they blocked competing products (e.g. online payment systems), and the FCC issued a rule to stop them, and the telco has sued the FCC to reverse the rule. Then the next block, the next FCC ruling, the next lawsuit and so on. Net Neutrality was just a legal basis they couldn't find a viable challenge for in court, so they spent big time to get Chairman Pai in the FCC to subvert from within.
Currently Verizon's blocking 4K video, which competes with their own offerings (which only go to HD), and their boy, Pai, needs to remove the laws to protect them from lawsuits.
As ever, middle America gets screwed over, since rural areas are largely stuck with one ISP. They'll end up paying the bill. I feel sorry for them, they were lied to by Trump and Fox and all the sources they trusted.
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Why won't this just lead to a rush of ISPs cutting off customers who pull their average down? Split the company into two: half modern, wealthy, and fast, and half poor slow and never being invested in.
This would destroy the major USA ISPs. Most of them advertise "up to" speeds that are asynchronous and rarely live up to half their expectation. Many of the larger ISPs depend on this lack of clarity to arbitrarily over subscribe their customers. This would drastically destroy many of their shady marketing practices. 3 Here's to hoping...
Is there something fundamentally wrong with their systems of government?
Everybody knows that "Up To xx Mb/s" means "you should almost, maybe, sometime, perhaps, likely, on occasion, once in a blue moon...."
Now they are trying to change things in a terrible, terrible way for ISPs - taking away hope and replacing it with fact - OK, at least 1/2 the time... but still...
*** Don't be dull.***
You're a fucking idiot.
When we moved to rural southern Ohio in 2008, the ONLY option for "broadband" available to us was the iLEC's DSL, which it advertised as offering "up to 1 megabit" speeds (although I never saw downloads faster than about 680kbps, with just over 100kbps up).
Then the rental house we lived in was struck by lightning, which trashed the ISP's DSL modem, of course (along with a bunch of our own electronics - thank you, renter's insurance!). A chat with the tech they sent to test and replace the modem revealed that the iLEC capped DSL rates at 768/112 kbps at the DSLAM, so, in fact, the "up to 1 megabit" claim was a flat-out lie by the iLEC, Horizon. There's no other way to characterize it than as a deliberate, knowing misrepresentation.
Here in the USA, that's entirely legal - and the new, Trumpified FCC sure isn't going to do anything to change that.
Lucky us ...
Check out my novel.
They knew exactly what they were doing.
Twinstiq, game news
Soros was a *child* at the time, and is being held to an adult standard in this particular example.
Dialectician. Archology.
I can handle the fact that my connection speed may fall short of advertised speeds... What drives me insane is "unlimited" data plans that drop your speed to pre-DSL speeds once you've reached your data cap. "Unlimited" means to me: NO FRICKING DATA CAP. All "faster speed" means to me is that I hit my data cap quicker and therefore spend more time at a MUCH MUCH lower speed than advertised.