Find All The Broadband Options At Any Street Address | Hacker News Reader

Find All The Broadband Options At Any Street Address

broadbandmap.gov

40 pointsarjunlall23 comments

This thing is so broken its not even funny. I tried it when it first came out and not a single one of the wired providers it listed will actually serve my address. The two that actually do serve my address weren't mentioned anywhere. Now when I search my address it doesn't show anything at all.

I'm glad we spent $200 million on that.

It did OK for my street. It wasn't missing anything that I was aware of but some of the speeds were incorrect (I get 10 Mbps from a provider it listed as only offering 1.5). Overall a valuable tool that needs improvement. I think 200 million is a pretty good deal considering the volume of data it promises to handle.

It gets the providers right, but completely and utterly misses on the speed estimations.

My speed estimates for wired providers were both about an order of magnitude high.

I believe it goes by maximum advertised speeds.

As you might imagine, there are plenty of reasons why that would be out of touch with reality.

What you're looking at is probably all of the TIGER city blocks bounced against various zip code or county lists that the telecom companies provide. That's why if, for instance, AT&T has ANY U-verse coverage in your area, you will likely be flagged as receiving U-verse, even without being able to subscribe to it.

So I can say with pretty high certainty that the reason this sucks is because of the telecom lobby. There is an enormous amount of pressure on regulators to not require the telecom companies to disclose detailed information about where they provide what levels of service. Even information that's retrievable by going to their site and checking for coverage and/or service availability at an address. They most certainly have this information, but it's considered one of their most closely guarded trade secrets.

Those at the NTIA (and FCC to a degree) seem to be mostly interested in figuring out the minimum amount of disclosure they can give to meet the law-mandated requirements. This is the same old problem in Washington where the people who end up regulating are those that were plucked right out of highly-networked positions in the industry they regulate.

Any street address in the US.

I'm in Manhattan (so a rather large city) and use Time Warner which isn't listed for my address. My anecdotal evidence aside, this really cost $200 million? I'm pretty cynical, but there must be more to it.

Really useful when searching for office space or apartments. I can recall many friends who get a great lease on an office only to find they have really slow internet available for their startup.

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This is practically useless for my semi-rural location. The listed speeds are so wrong it's hilarious. Yes, Verizon is a service provider here, but the only option is Mobile Broadband which peaks at about 1.3Mbps on a good day. The site makes it look like everyone out here has FiOS.

And they broke the back button when you navigate to the 'Engage' page.

Edit: And I'm really trying to find a way to confirm or refute the info, but I see no 'yes' or 'no' icons it claims are there.

At my address it finds me several companies that are only offer business solutions with a choice of T-1/OC48/etc. Not exactly consumer broadband...

I like how the redirect to some of the providers' sites is a redirect to http://, even for big names like Comcast. If it does have a site, it's a redirect to e.g. http://http://example.com

For me: Advertised Speeds Above 3 Mbps Data as of: 6/30/10 Comcast Corporation 100 Mbps - 1 Gbps

Advertised Speeds Above 768 Kbps and Below 3 Mbps Data as of: 6/30/10 AT&T Inc. 1.5 - 3 Mbps

Firstly, I don't think Comcast will give Gbps speeds anytime soon. Secondly: I get close to 6Mbps from ATT. Thirdly: data is from 6/30/10 ? Did somebody like physically walk the data over from SF to DC ?

Seriously, we're going to report AT&T and Verizon "mobile data," seemingly at their maximum published speeds (i.e. impressive marketing numbers)? It would be a sad day when I have to resort to a data card from either of these providers--with their latency, data caps, and limited coverage--as my main source of "broadband."

It shows the right wired providers, but the max up/down rate is low for Cox), and Verizon DSL shows 50-100Mbps; I don't know anyone who gets 50Mbps on the highest plan here, and the lowest plan is like 768kbps.

We're from the government and we're here to help!

No results in Chrome at all for my area, which is served by Comcast. I wonder how much taxpayer money was dumped down this particular rat hole.

This data is not accurate, at least for me.

After calling AT&T and Verizon just now (both listed) they tell me I can't subscribe because they don't offer service here.

Or in Australia (for any Landline phone number): http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/

Uhh...? http://grab.by/98T3

Totally broken.

That site doesn't work at all in Opera. I haven't had that happen in years. (At least the ads show up...)

something similar what my startup does in UK - http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/broadband_speed_in_my...

What, another example of lavishly founded government service?

I would understand the value of something like this in a poor or enterprise-unfriendly country. But in the US? If it has been funded with taxpayers' money, I say it's a waste.

It suggests I get satellite broadband. For my apartment in downtown Chicago. Government!

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