Thanks to Mary Mehsikomer for the heads up on a recent Ars Technica article on American broadband speeds — Your fears confirmed: “up to” broadband speeds are bogus. Here’s a quick excerpt that I think gets at the root…
In reality, no one gets these speeds. That’s not news to the techno-literate, of course, but a new Federal Communications Commission report (PDF) shines a probing flashlight on the issue and makes a sharp conclusion: broadband users get, on average, a mere 50 percent of that “up to” speed they had hoped to achieve.
The timing could not have been better. I was just on the phone to my provider last week. They are telling me that my connection is “up to 7 Mbps down”; but speed test seem to clock me at 2 Mbps. My neighbor stopped by today to see if his diminishing bandwidth is him, the web sites he’s visiting or his ISP. (He pays for 1.5 Mbps and gets 1.2 Mbps; I’m thinking now that I’m really getting robbed!
As Ars Technica points out the National Broadband Plan takes on the distinction. Here’s the recommendation from the National Broadband Plan:
Recommendation 4.2: The FCC and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) should collect more detailed and accurate data on actual availability, penetration, prices, churn and bundles offered by broadband service providers to consumers and businesses, and should publish analyses of these data.
I can’t wait until that happens and to see what an effect it has on services promoted and offered.
