FCC Finds 68 percent of U.S. Broadband... Isn't

I'm shocked! And here I thought they *all* provided enough bandwidth to fill up your monthly cap within 3 days!

/snicker

This isn't shocking at all.

Isn't that false advertisement? Correct me if I am wrong, but there isn't a term for speed between dial up and broadband. I guess they cant say it is dial up so they round out the speed to broadband.

Hmm. I didn't know there was a definition for Broadband. I do however now know that my 5Mbps Down and 500Kbps UP isn't broadband. Thanks

Lol, in my area, the only ISP abuses. Theyre billing me $35/month for 1mb. And the max download speed is 54 kb/s. They call it broadband, is it enough to report them to FCC?

Hell, I could have told them that.

yea... nto really surprising, in my old place my speeds were pathetic, 2-3 meg down and .5 meg up... payign the same service in a different part of town where i bough tmy hous ei get 25 down and 3 up

Is this data tested from an average selection of end-users' residencies, or from the broadband offices/hubs?

The actual service the user receives depends solely on the carrier medium between hubs and the user's residence...this often is average to poor...and in the case of cable broadband, it is shared within the local area, so of course this could be saturated by a small group of users depending on the setup.

Please provide more detailed information on 'how' the study was done to show/prove their findings.

The fastest internet in my area is RoadRunner, and the highest available upstream is 512kbps...

Not really, false advertising or deceptive advertising is considered false or misleading. You know about the speeds when you sign up YOU personally are aware of the speeds. It should be categorized as low speed broadband. Now if they were selling 6mbps and charging an insanely low rate..and it ended up 768k...then yes that would be false advertising.

My connection can fill my 250GB cap if utilized fully for less than 12 hours straight. Does that make sense?

I get 12mb down/1mb up here in Iowa, so I can't complain, but that's with cable. Couple years ago when I tried DSL, it was 256kb down, thats EDGE speeds over a physical line, pathetic.

Hey, I get 300/s down at work, and 50 at home. Im happy

Thats quick if your talking Bytes and not Bits
250,000,000,000 / 12 / 60 / 60 = 5.7 meg per second

Consider yourself lucky. I'm either stuck with dial up, or my telco company's 'broadband'. Huge monopoly area. I pay $70 for an inconsistent 1meg down with an upload equivalent to yours. And by inconsistent, I really mean it. Hell, I'm lucky to get connection when it rains, because their connection boxes are so screwed up.

It's not much cash savings. A lot of providers *cough* AT&T *cough* increase speed double or triple for only $5-$10 bucks more a month, but starting prices are $30+ for the slowest speed.

I pay 40 bucks a month and usually after 6pm each night I can't play youtube clips because the system is over flooded...this is after they've done their major upgrade in the area. You can forget about streaming Netflix.

Suddenlink...Cabot,AR

This news is not surprising considering the cable companies are scamming the gove4rnment here in the USA. One of the things the broadband act was supposed to do was increase our national speed average. So they decided, lets fake it, by implementing Turbo Boost and crap like that so all the speed test averages go up. When infact they have done nothing else to improve our broadband network infrastructure. I hope the government finds a way to fine or penalize them for this. How about the lazy a$$ cable companies quit trying to profit so much and upgrade the actual infrastucture. I'd probably create Jobs which are needed everywhere. Plus the cable networks are gonna start losing all their customers to the phone networks like Verizon. I'd switch but Fios is not available in my area yet.

@goofy

If that is the case then they likely have load balancing issues. I had a similar problem where I live. It took literally a year of calls to tech support to get them to fix it. I documented trace routes and ping times. Download speeds at different times of day... the works. I was paying over $40.00 a month for 15 mb/s service and was getting 1 or so on a good day and there was no way that was going to stand. I realize that you have moved and your service is now better, but if this is happening to any of the rest of you then I suggest you call and complain. I did that once a month for a year, and demanded a refund for the service once a month for a year. (Which I got, after all they were not providing what I was paying for).
It took forever and was very frustrating but in the end my speeds went from the 1 mb or so down that I was getting to the 15mb, (usually 18mb or more), that I pay for. So a little perseverance paid off, plus it benefited everyone in my little area of town whether they realized it or not.

I do pretty good where I live, 10 down/5 up for $26 a month. I could pay $50 and get 40/20. Not bad for living on the outskirts of a small town that's far away from a big city.

I'm just luck enough to have a small ISP that runs fiber to your house. There are times that I get faster than my advertised speed which is awesome too.

paying charter for 16mb service getting about 6mb down 1mb up. Better than the 10mb and getting 4 but still a far cry...

If you have a connecion of 50 MBits/s or higher it does.

And anyone out there with broadband internet already knew this. FCC should crack down on these companies. Either get what you pay for, or stop the false advertising!

Not false advertising when the ads say "up to 7MPS*"

(*top speeds not available in all areas +)

(+any areas)

The FCC currently has no control over ISP that don't provide dialup access. This definition of what "Broadband" is, is essentially meaningless unless Congress grants them control over ISP's through a new definition of what type of service internet access is to be considered. If you're paying for a service you're not receiving...you can file a formal complaint with your state or local government. If you're using a 1mbps DSL service, then being below 1mbps is common as DSL connections rarely obtain their maximum speed.

Traditionally "broadband" is "digital" while "baseband" is analog. Dial-up is baseband technology. It doesn't matter what speed it is, broadband is any digital signal. "Broadband Internet" may be defined by speeds, though.

The FCC study almost exactly mirrors my ISP's speeds... windstream. I have 5/3 service and get about 3/0.5 It normally doesn't come close to even HALF the advertised-and-paid-for speeds. On top of that, I have to pay for a phone line as well (DSL). But my ONLY choice of broadband provider is Windstream Communications, so I live with it.

I really wish they'd start allowing actual competition between cable companies. Everywhere I've ever lived there was only ONE cable provider and they took advantage of that fact.

Yeah, here in the U.S. it has been no real secret that when it comes to overall internet speed that we have consistently been behind other countries. It has been a while since I looked and don't quote me on this, but I think on average we rank somewhere between 15-17 in rankings world wide. Course that depends on which report you read, either way it is pretty pathetic.

At least you all got it all nice. I'm paying $31 for 6GB bandwidth and speed between 1-7.2 Mbps in my country. I usually get 2Mbps. And after the bandwidth is finished, I need to face a 64kbps speed until my next billing cycle

I like my 32Mbps down and 2Mbps up. My total cable bill with internet, HDTV and some premium channels is under $100/mo.