Broadband Consumer Labels
fcc.gov
fcc.gov
More on Gigi Sohn: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23599075/gigi-sohn-fcc-ne... and https://www.theverge.com/23437518/biden-fcc-gigi-sohn-fox-ne...
FWIW, I've won every single challenge, and it was a fairly simple process.
ZIP+4 solves this to some extent, if anybody bothered to actually use it.
Challenging these is a very easy process and requires that the ISP respond within 30 days. I've won all my challenges; basically correcting my entire extended neighborhood from false information. (Some ISPs do this for grant money reasons)
I don’t love the “read our policy” lines, as it just continues the practice of hiding behind the complexity of legalese.
This is good, but is mostly useful in a place where you have enough competition to compare providers. Otherwise it’s just a simplified listing of how terrible your limited options are.
I've heard that the Google tests are pretty good, and I also just learned that fast.com is good, because it sits on Netflix's IP range, and ISPs can't game it, without also letting Netflix have full throttle.
You might not be able to do anything about it as a tier-3 ISP, but to say you have nothing to do with off-net speeds glosses over a few details.
I will clarify then. I have almost no control over whatever happens offnet beyond my immediate uplinks.
The issue was a very low packet loss which does not really concern UDP or quick/small TCP transfers, but screws up big TCP (multi GB) transfers as TCP of course assumes congestion and throttles back. I could see some TCP retransmissions and DUP ACKs which confirmed that guess. I assume the speedtests used either not-TCP (WebRTC?) or multiple connections, so they were papering over the issue. One could also argue they did their job and stated the raw (IP-)capacity of the connection, without worrying about details of a specific protocol (TCP in this case).
I think fast.com is the right answer for some cases, because it is as close as you can get to "real" loads, if your intended use case is video streaming from Netflix.
(Sidenote: my issue magically resolved itself a few weeks later, before I could be bothered to haunt my ISP.)
It is always good to list typical speeds, but with most major ISPs it won't change anything. The big thing is forcing them to list upload speeds.
To the extent that you do have options, how likely is it that the secondary player is the same size and playing level as the majority player? Does this benefit them or hurt them?
I'm in a Top 50 market. You've got Fiber and DSL from AT&T, 5G from T-Mobile and Cable from Comcast. AT&T and Comcast have very uneven areas of coverage still and mostly don't overlap and 5G rollout started, but it's only available at a small fraction of addresses within the city. This would have almost no value for a residential consumer here.
And probably viasat, hughesnet, and starlink. And mobile broadband plans from the three major carriers and probably a couple dozen MVNOs.
But two is enough to compare. And if there’s only one option, it’s even more important that consumers are fairly informed.
You didn’t include geo sat, starlink, 4g tethering, microwave stuff, and whatever other WISP miscellaneous things each area has going on.
To you they aren’t “high speed choices”, but that’s just because you’re picky. If someone just wants to be able watch Netflix there are many options. If someone just wants to email pictures and pay their bills, there are many different options there too.
Getting this will give all of the non-power users a way to see what’s available and pick something when they don’t need 1gbps 20ms latency.
Edit: these AFAIK act as SLAs that give me instant unilateral contact cancellation rights with no notice period. And possibly fraud if they knew they couldn't provide it to me with the network like they had it when I joined; they are required to keep the network up to continue holding compliance, but it's wonky.
* A machine-readable format, not just human readable
* with a fixed schema
* Precise units (ie, no MB vs MiB disambiguation required)
* Reliability stats with historic information
* Accurate maps related to speed, especially with tech like DSL that is distance dependent.I mean clear labeling is always better than not, but if you have no actual options how much does it help?
Where I live my choice for actual wired broadband is: Spectrum. That's it. My only other viable Internet option is 25 mbps DSL from AT&T. So if I don't like the service from Spectrum: tough luck. If I'm looking at the label before ordering Spectrum and don't like what I see: tough luck.
And my situation isn't particularly rare.
And maybe you can use that label to more easily convince your local politicians that they should be giving more companies access to the poles.
Additionally, the FDA now requires nutritional and allergen info to be provided for restaurants, though it is sufficient to make them available online.
Here's a direct link to the doughnut store Krispy Kreme's nutritional facts for their Original Glazed® doughnut.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/kkd-e1-images.kktestkitchen.com/eco...
Or Dunkin' Donut's nutritional facts:
https://www.dunkindonuts.com/content/dam/dd/pdf/nutrition.pd...
and allergen info:
https://www.dunkindonuts.com/content/dam/dd/pdf/allergy_ingr...
FDA's fact sheet about this:
https://www.fda.gov/food/food-labeling-nutrition/fdas-implem...
And I checked, and no T-Mobile and Verizon do not provide 5G fixed wireless service in this neighborhood. That was going to be my backup. AT&T LTE is available here, but it's no faster than DSL and during times of high load, it's much worse than DSL.
FML.
Maybe I'm missing something, but the labels use average speeds, not rated maximums.
It's not the same animal, by any stretch of the term, but I remember all-you-could-eat Internet for $20 a month with my 52k modem.
I agree about throttling, but data caps and overage fees are both on there, no? Right under the avg speeds it lists "Data included with monthly price" and the line below it is the overage amount in $/GB. Seems very straightforward to me.
I agree with your point, but at least the information would be provided in a standard format.
Absolutely not. The big bold text needs to be the real rate. I’m tired of having to read small text to understand the real rate.
It will be much better for consumers if the big price is the real price.
I’m tied of cable companies slinging $40/mo. Plans that are really $140/mo.
But how is "typical download speed" determined?
It seems extremely non-obvious, particularly since congestion occurs in different spots (e.g. at the block level or at the apartment building level?) at different times in different locations. In fact I wouldn't even know how to begin to define it.
Is there some kind of methodology for this, either based on real-time monitoring, or else a theoretical calculation based on usage patterns and network topology?
This biases the result toward evening streaming, but that's typically what people care about anyway.
The concept of "the average speed a user sees" -- there isn't an obvious way to me for how an ISP could calculate that for even a single customer, let alone across the whole network.
Which is why I'm curious if there are network experts who have ideas of how you could even define it in a way that is both relatively accurate and practical to implement.
ISP's seem to have had ZERO issues in the past with metering connections for speed, data, or some combination of those on a per user basis, so it must be possible.
I don't really like the idea of making regulation too technical or specific. "Typical" is a good word here.
Especially the "This is an introductory deal that lasts for <time>" portion.
I can't wait to see how major ISPs would absolutely bend the heck out of the rules to make this somehow not a win for consumers.
Even after explaining that upload bandwidth is pretty critical for good video calls, most people I was helping simply couldn't find the up bandwidth number in ISP service offers. You have to dig deep into the fine print currently unless service is symmetric.
I'd love to see this for cellphones as well
Someone with those options definitely should be comparing them based on their specs.
For starters, the Internet is best effort, and thus download and upload speeds will depend on the whole path at a given moment, irrespective of how good the connection is. Also applies to latency.
Information about what the link speed is, and how much bandwidth is guaranteed to be allocated to your link would be much more useful.
There's also information on IP address allocation in IPv4 (fixed? dynamic? only a CGNAT?) or IPv6 (dynamic? CIDR size?), or whether you get an appropriate endpoint you can attach your router to, vs being locked into an ISP provided box (the FCC should probably do something about this).
No information about SLAs either.
Link speed is what it is. On GPON your ONT links at 1.2gbps. No one cares about this information. We don't provision based on link speed. Unless you are paying for guaranteed bandwidth, you arent going to get guaranteed bandwidth. I monitor all of our pons and if they go over a certain percent utilization for a period of time we split them or move customers around. There are systems and reports to do all of this.
The amount of customers that even know what IPv4 is is minuscule.
You are using our ONT, there is no madness that would allow otherwise. I will give you a passthrough port if you need one.
SLA on a residential connection for $90 a month? The SLA is as fast as we can get you back on during business hours.
Residential customers are being played for fools and taken advantage of.
ISPs get paid, yet act without accountability. This has to change.
Have you ever worked in this space? I do this every day and I try to educate anyone that needs a little help, but at the end of the day they just want their TV to not buffer all the time for the most part. Most of our outages are caused by the end customer.
We aren't playing them for fools and despite you thinking we are, we are providing a desperately needed service in an area that is unprofitable for most companies to serve.
The FCC should help establish a framework and enforce some minimums.
This should not cause much overhead if at all, to an ISP that isn't being abusive in the first place.
It is useful that the remote end is the ISP exchange with the other ISPs.
It is way less useful to talk about averages. The averages could be great and it won't mean much when all of a sudden it can be slow, or not work at all.
The important information (and missing there) is what the guaranteed speed is, and what the guaranteed response times are for incidents.
e.g.: Outside the US, many countries have mandated minimums for guaranteed bandwidth, set as a percent of the advertised speeds. Similarly, they enforce certain maximum response times for incidents. There's of course different minimums for residential vs business, and ISPs will offer better tiers with better guaranteed bandwidth.
The FCC has the power to fix the insanity that is US broadband, but appears to be not motivated to.