Comcast gave false map data to FCC
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Several comments suggest systematically comparing FCC data to what ISP websites say about availability. My research group did this! Here's the paper:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3419394.3423652
And here's a followup project by investigative journalists at The Markup:
https://themarkup.org/still-loading/2022/10/19/dollars-to-me...
> https://themarkup.org/still-loading/2022/10/19/dollars-to-me...
That article is pretty bad. It doesn't once mention DSL or that technology's inherent technical limitations that can result in widely variable speeds (IIRC, your bandwidth is determined by the length of the wire between your house and the central telephone office). Then it spends a lot of time talking about race, which is likely creating a misleading impression that lends itself to outrage.
Also it depends on what version of DSL standard we are talking. I personally started with adsl2 which was 12/3, upgraded eventually to VDSL2 which did 150/10 and latest standard is G.Fast which can give 1 Gbit/s aggregate uplink and downlink at 100m
At an highly optimistic 1 mile you’re already down to 20Mbps and most people are significantly further than that. Remember it’s the physical distance of the cable between the actual devices that matters and that’s not straight.
admittedly, even g.gast it's not as good/scalable as DOCSIS or Fiber, but it could be used and deployed "back in a day" as perfectly good solution. and even today it's not that bad for majority of population, if properly deployed
as anecdote , i saw like 20 years ago privately deployed/managed DSL systems in kibbuz. wonder what they have now
Also a single 600-700MHz 5G tower can cover hundreds of square miles with 5G service with up to 250 megabits per second. 2.5-3.5GHz can still hit several miles with up to 900 megabits per second, and 24-39GHz towers can cover a mile radius at up to 3Gbps. Real world performance depends on many many factors, but DSL performance can be similarly degraded from it’s theoretical maximum.
> Real world performance depends on many many factors,
like how many UEs are sharing spectrum. Which is usually a lot
> but DSL performance can be similarly degraded from it’s theoretical maximum.
totally.
and why is 5/1 also the only AT&T offering in pockets of high tech Irvine CA?
To be clear, they were still actively selling those services, and in some cases, it was the only option, but they just didn't want them to count.
Is this one of those situations I hear about where researchers would be super happy to provide copies of papers that ACM etc keep behind paywalls, if you just ask?
It's super-paywalled. Can you upload a copy of it somewhere?
(I remember when Clinton gave away a huge giveaway to the telecoms so they would provide fibre everywhere, and then they did fuck all and just laughed.)
In a just society, they would quickly be presented with a estimated bill for the largest amount that they could possibly have stolen - I'm sorry, let me repeat this word "stolen" - from the US taxpayer, PLUS massive penalties, and then they would be required to prove how much they actually stole if they wanted to reduce the cost.
Plus complete discovery of all their records should be required, with a view toward criminal prosecution of their executives.
As it is, they have absolutely no reason not to cheat, lie and defraud if they think they can make money at it.
Could never have worked from up there.
I'm glad it worked for you! But the rural places where my friends live have lots of trees, tall ones, and they made Starlink totally unusable.
I'm not sure what the answer is in general. It's probably not realistic to expect universal wired broadband in very rural areas. Conventional satellite is by all accounts pretty bad. And cellular isn't really an option absent a good 5G signal.
But, other than a vacation cottage, lack of usable Internet isn't really an option either if you're going to be working from somewhere.
Is the infrastructure for low-broadband in low density areas inherently more expensive than POTS infrastructure was 75-100 years ago?
POTS bills also at least used to have a universal service charge line item, in part to subsidize rural service.
No? The process to transition the USF to covering broadband didn’t even start until the tail end of the Obama administration.
An example, in Carroll County, GA I live outside of Carrollton, GA and have 2 fiber options 1) Charter/Spectrum which I use 2) CarrollEMC/Crossbeam which looks like they just dropped fiber on our power pole within the last month. If you look at the FCC map of Highway 5 it correctly shows ATT DSL availability, incorrectly shows Comcast coax availability, and does not show either Charter/Spectrum or CarrollEMC/Crossbeam. There is only a process to challenge availability on the FCC map, like Comcast...that incorrectly shows availability, and no option to add new providers to the map. It is left up to the provider to claim availability.
There are now plenty of rural areas with symmetrical gigabit broadband available, while most cities are stuck with whatever pitiful options Cox or ATT decides to bestow.
I don't know why. It seems incredibly realistic to expect wired broadband in most rural areas. (We were able to provide them with power lines and telephone lines over 60+ years ago, there's no reason fiber would have to be any different)
Alternatively, perhaps the starlink antenna could be mounted on a large pole or modest radio tower. That would be ugly but probably a lot less ugly than chopping down your trees.
If close to the home doesn't work, depending on siting requirements, you can erect a tower in a clearing or where there is clear line of sight to the sky and then run power and network to the tower from the nearest structure. Don't neglect lightning surge suppression to protect equipment.
Similar to this: https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/mk4jfx/starlink_d...
Either way, I'd say Starlink is an enormous improvement over every other satellite solution I've tried. The lack of data cap alone puts it head-and-heels above the competition, and the speeds are good enough to coax people off 4G. I have some small complaints about CGNAT and the provided router, but the service itself is more reliable than some cable connections I've tried.
Having seen (and tried) a lot of the alternatives, there really aren't any pushbutton services that compare.
It’s much like a cell tower where a geographical area has finite capacity. You use your “priority” data that has speed guarantees, then it slows down, but is still unlimited. Apparently some users were reselling the link & maxing out the upload/download 24/7. (yeah, I get it, but in this case some kind of QoS probably needs to happen to turn a profit)
I’ve been a beta user since the first couple months of launch. They’ve had growing pains, but it has overall been light years ahead of our local WISP or Hughesnet/Viasat in terms of speed and reliability. Several of my neighbors have no other option than traditional geostationary satellite providers, and I don’t think any of us every want to go back to 600ms+ latencies!
edit: I just wanted to add that for many people, priority speeds for 1TB & having sub-100ms latency is far, far better than the alternatives.
Comcast has similar traffic caps for many of their plans. It's perfectly adequate for most typical users.
Don't worry though, once you hit your gratuitous 50gb/month limit, they only make your network 8x slower until you pay $10/extra gig... I wouldn't praise Starlink if it wasn't such a steal by comparison.
Don't you mean the other way around? Not that it's any better.
Customer volume for Starlink is arguably more valuable to SpaceX than profit per customer.
Dangerous also because the media industry insists that ISPs permanently cancel the service of customers after multiple unproven allegations of copyright infringement and without a single conviction. So far, the courts have been completely agreeing with them and ISPs who refuse to bow to the wishes of the media industry and terminate these users are being sued.
Anyone can lose the ability to have an account at the only ISP they have just because some third party P2P snoop, hired by a movie studio, forwarded a DMCA notice to their ISP with their IP address on it too many times (with "too many" being entirely unspecified in law and up to whatever the ISP thinks won't get them sued). Those third parties haven't exactly always been so careful about avoiding false accusations either. Actually doing anything to deserve a DMCA notice isn't required.
Incidentally the latency has really improved my web development practices.
I would take a 100/100 fiber to the home connection than a “1Gbps” Comcast connection.
Somewhat related.
I'm in the middle of signing a lease on a new place...
One of the biggest draws for me is what me and my friends jokingly call "the socialist service" I'm going to have.
Water, Sewer, Electricity, Phone, Cable and Internet (up to 2gig!) all in one bill and managed by the same company. Oh and the bill is on average cheaper than even a single electricity bill from the nearby city my old place was in.
Only downside is the internet is cable so not asymmetric.
Comcast gave me a quote for $330,000 to run a fiber line to my house.
Starlink is beter than nothing but still disappointing compared to the speeds they promise. And I worry it's going to get worse as more people start using Starlink.
There was a comcast truck driving down the street a while back (before we had starlink) and I literally chased him down and asked if they were installing broadband. He was a little confused, and then said "no, I'm just checking the line levels...but you're the fourth person to ask me that on this street"
I had a funny similar thing happen a long time ago, back when copper ADSL was “broadband”, and it was all the incumbent local telcos or resellers: Before a move, I contacted my local telco, who I was getting ADSL directly from and setup everything for the move, including confirming that service was available and, because of available service appointment windows, having it shutoff at my new place before the move and turned on at the new location.
When we got to the new place, telephone was up and ADSL wasn’t. Initially was told they would need to schedule a new service call, which they missed, and then when I called again was told service wasn’t available. In the meantime, given the service problems, I had already contacted one of the ADSL resellers, who said my address did have ADSL available, and was quoted a lower price than directly from the telco. Confronted the telco with this information, and they insisted that despite confirming multiple times in the past that the new address was in the service area, it was, in fact, too far from the central exchange for ADSL service. Switched to the reseller, and stayed with them for several years (and faster service tiers) before switching to another provider that had fiber available.
Having at least two good internet providers is a requirement for any home I purchase going forward.
The very first thing we did (mostly my wife) was to call Comcast, give them the specific address, and have them verify the place had high speed Internet.
For those that passed that test (a relatively low percentage did since we were looking to live in a relatively rural area) the next thing we did was contact the relevant real-estate agent. This part was tricky and often annoying. We cut through everything they had to say and said that, if they wanted to potentially move forward, they had to do something for us. They had to get permission from the current owner and run an Internet speed test.
This was a PITA, but most of the time they did it. And most of the time, Comcast's data was accurate about whether service was available.
The place we ended up buying is about 10 miles outside of Olympia Washington. Our street is one of the very few in the area that has high speed comcast.
Having said that, we also got a starlink dishy right away and we use that as backup, because while most of the time our Internet is really excellent, speed is great, etc, it has a lot of small outages, so it's worth having a highly reliable but much less fast backup.
Even this method can be flawed - there might be a hefty installation fee, or you might run into a situation where even though service is technically offered at your new place but it's not physically possible to install. My mom and I ran into the latter situation years ago when she moved into a new house during a FiOS installer strike. They scheduled installations weekly for a month or two, optimistically thinking they'd reach an agreement I suppose, but nobody ever showed up. We eventually had to sign up with Comcast, which sort of got us through a few months until it was possible to get FiOS installed.
If the cost > benefit, they will adhere to the rules.
$5k per false data point should be enough. 10 addresses inside the service area = $50k. And 10% of that fine should go to the whistleblower.
That's how all this government data submission should work. At that point pretty much everyone with any skills will be going through every address in America and checking the database, hoping to get some of that pot of money.
Or make ISP's connectivity report binding. If the ISP claims that they provide connectivity and they do not, make them liable for the user's costs to get equivalent service from an alternative provider (e.g. Starlink), until the ISP can provide connectivity to the subscriber or the subscriber is out of the minimum contract period with the alternative provider, whichever is later.
An ongoing rather than one-off cost would give the ISP an incentive to build the necessary infrastructure that they have misreported already exists.
Failure to fulfill the offer should have a maximum penalty of compulsory purchase of the claimed property at 2x the greater of current market or last purchase price if offered. A penalty structure for late service (E.G. 1 month wait) should also be an option. Maybe 1/100th the value of the instant buy requirement per month (rounded up) of non-service.
How would you feel if a city advertised that Water and Sewer service were available at a given property, only to find that there weren't even mains anywhere nearby or that even if there were they were already 'at capacity' and you wouldn't be authorized to hook up?
That's the sort of data that drives rejection of sale.
Absolutely not. They could just not lie in the first place, then there's no 'bar' to meet.
I bet there are lots of installs where they take your money, and then later call to apologize that they can't in fact offer service and give a refund.
Part of 'lying' as a company is to make sure that your internal data sources tell the same story, but just never invest in correcting any inaccuracies that aren't in favor of the story you want to tell.
This was probably originally meant to keep wide-scale pricing information secret from competitors, but it sure has the nice side effect of making it hard to verify their coverage promises.
Where are our ombudsmen
I have windstream gigabit fiber. There's a windstream box in the back yard.
So yeah, I can see all sorts of sketchiness going on with the FCC and their map and how they gave out money to sketchy LLC's for rural internet service.
PDF version of the information is here: https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/filing_an_informal_c...
This seems like something that could be automated quite easily with a browser-based tool, that could then be used by individuals to quickly add themselves to the “I’m not covered” list. If there was ever a grass-roots effort that techies could spearhead, this has got to be it.
I imagine that this is the case in many places, but I submitted a challenge. ISPs have gotten away with abusing government subsidies (and many times, abusing their customers with fees and silly price increases) for too long...
https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...
IIRC many parts of Eastern Europe have managed to provide broadband by building mesh networks with wireless backhaul. (MikroTik builds some of these products, Ubiquiti also has others). This should be a reasonable way expand broadband easily in the short term without having to lay fiber across the countryside.
Let's not overstate the problem here...
Also, this is data used to participate in federal grant programs, so it's not like an "oopsie!" kind of thing.
> We tested Comcast's coverage claims in Hillier's area by clicking nearby addresses on the FCC map and then entering the addresses on Comcast's ordering website at xfinity.com. Our search wasn't exhaustive, but we found over 30 residential addresses on Quartz Loop and several abutting streets that had the same problem—Comcast claims to serve those houses on the FCC map, but each address is listed as "invalid" on the Comcast website.
https://fcconnexion.com/residential/residential-internet-ser...
The FCC needs to enable a fraud bounty. I'd be more than happy to stick it to these companies and get paid for doing so.
Probably adds too much complexity to be worth it (especially the part about deposits), but still interesting to think about.
The board of directors are also people, and can be thrown in jail.
*SOMEONE OR SOMEONES* at the top signed off on that document. If it's multiple people in on this, that makes a conspiracy to commit mass fraud at a country-scale.
see also: "full" self-driving
We need people who expect things to be better than they are. I'm not sure anyone who's been following the FCC for the last 10 years or so would really expect better. As pointed out elsewhere, Comcast won't get in any trouble for lying through their teeth.