The most important part of this, in my opinion, is an easily-missable detail at the bottom: every one of these labels will come with a unique identifier to a database of broadband plans, presumably one maintained by the FCC alongside the numbers on these labels. That's huge. The FCC will be using that to look at Internet access and fairness and everything related to broadband access. It's the equivalent of the hospital billing data but for Internet. Really looking forward to what broadband access numbers in the country really look like when there's a centralized database that you're not allowed to lie on.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics. As long as the data is broken down by zip code, and not street-by-street, broadband competition and thus access will still be made up of lies large corporations tell the FCC. Where the FCC really needs teeth is to be able to hold those corporations to the advertised rates. If a speed test can't give the advertised maximum numbers, FCC fines should land on the companies advertising those rates.
This isn't true. The FCC broadband map can identify individual postal addresses, indicating what is and isn't available at that specific location. I have personally used this to identify false information that was provided by some nearby ISPs to try and inflate their numbers.
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)
However, Xfinity has already got in trouble for inaccurate data. Then what happens is you can challenge the data - for your address only. Then Xfinity will deny your challenge (they've got caught just doing an automatic denial), and then you have to appeal it. And once your appeal is upheld, ONLY your address is updated, not the block, or anything else.
I've done at least 30-50 challenges; largely for my neighborhood and surrounding area. It's a tedious process, but worth holding those accountable that should be held accountable.
FWIW, I've won every single challenge, and it was a fairly simple process.
The post office changes the +4 numbers ever few months. Those who use ZIP+4 get a discount in their postage rates, but they are required to update their address database on a regular basis. For most of us though ZIP+4 is completely impractical to use and there is no advantage so we don't use it.
I like that instead of listing maximum speeds (which is always provided with a disclaimer) the provider is listing typical speeds, which should give the consumer a more general sense of what to expect.
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 think that we should be careful about "gamed" speed tests, like Ookla. I've learned that I should ignore whatever Ookla says, as the ISP optimizes for it.
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.
Netflix tests usually go to the Netflix cache at your ISP's nearest POP. Usually I find the Netflix speeds at close to max speed for my connection as I'm in the same city as my ISP's Netflix cache. However other test sites show more realistic speeds to sites in other networks. Ookla/Speedtest gives you the option to select offshore servers which helps to identify issues with ISPs underprovionsing off shore bandwidth. I've had ISPs with excellent on net speeds but poor off net speeds so I'm generally more interested in off net speeds.
But we have nothing to do with offnet speeds. I am fine with people looking at them but there isnt anything I can do to help them if they have bad speeds to random offnet networks.
You absolutely do. Who are you paying for peering, who are you paying for transit, what's your interconnect with them, and, well, how much are you paying them? Which IX are you in?
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.
The speed tests can also tell a different story than actual use, even if they are not gamed. I went a bit deep when my HTTPS/TCP downloads from my otherwise unloaded server and previously beefy CDNs were not reaching anywhere close to what they should. I could get full speed with multiple downloads in parallel. speedtest.net and other sites showed everything was fine. I could also hit the speeds via iperf UDP tests in both directions, but iperf TCP download (to my home) showed the same slow speed.
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.)
Then what? The best thing I can get is Comcast with 1.2G down and 40mbit up. They don't have much pressure to do better, and because they have a very direct profit motive to make torrenting as bad as possible because they own a large stake in Hulu and content companies, they're not likely to change.
Do individual consumers honestly have enough choice in broadband at a single location that this would actually add value? It's been a while but last I checked "one ISP, two if you're super lucky" is the norm.
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.
Even if you only have one ISP, they often have multiple plans and it can be hard to compare them. Most cable companies won’t even tell you what their upload speeds are. It definitely still has value even if you only have one ISP.
Yes, this is super valuable. You’re biased because your mental filter as a techie has already taken out all of the choices people actually have.
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.
I would love to see Comcast forced to put a precise number on what upload speed they're giving me. They actively refuse to say. There's nowhere, anywhere in the Xfinity interface, that tells me what upload speed I'm supposed to be getting. I've pretty much figured it out based on forum posts and repeated testing.
On similar technology, here in Germany, I get 1000 Max down, and 50 Max up. But the latter are only promising 35 average and 15 min; numbers are for AFAIK 5min slices, averages over nominal 24 or 48 hours.
I forgot the download promises, but they where like 850 700 or so for the non-max values in same order and same definition.
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.
even if there is no choice wouldn't a clear label help the consumer recognize how bad the offer is compared to other areas, and thus create pressure to improve the service?
I'm so excited that this report card will include latency. I've had so many family members ask me why their high download and upload speed connection was "so slow" when their latency to a Google PoP was quite high. Now I can point to that number and tell them "lower is better". Now I just wish they published jitter numbers as well.
It would be great if these were required to be made available in:
* 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.
This is such a welcome requirement in my book. Especially the requirement to include upload speeds. One of the providers in my area (spectrum) never shows the upload speed anywhere on any main page. It is buried deep in very fine print with the terms and conditions.
What good is that high advertised speed if you can never get it during most of the day or peak times? We should skip the bullshit and only sustained minimum speeds should be allowed to be advertised. It would at least give the ISP the incentive to invest more their infrastructure.
Also what's the point when significant portions of the US have de facto regional broadband monopolies?
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.
Yup, welcome to my neighborhood in Austin. Literally two miles in any direction, and you've got at least three gigabit-class ISPs, but not here. Spectrum and AT&T DSL are it for "broadband" providers.
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.
In case you're not being facetious (hard to tell over the Internet and all), food deserts is a term referring to "an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food".
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.
My concern is the cap. Xfinity has one, it's 1Tb. I blow through double that each month due to WFH. I'm paying the extra fee to make the cap go away, but it's disingenuous to sell 'gig speeds' an retain that 1Tb cap. That means you can blow through that in a weekend Teenaged Boy LanParty.
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.
Yeah, it's a little disappointing that they are being obtuse with some of the stats on the label. Data caps, overage fees and bandwidth throttling should definitely be highly visible.
> Yeah, it's a little disappointing that they are being obtuse with some of the stats on the label. Data caps, overage fees and bandwidth throttling should definitely be highly visible.
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.
> This Monthly Price [is/is not] an introductory rate. [if introductory rate is applicable, identify length of introductory period and the
rate that will apply after introductory period concludes] This Monthly Price [does not require s1 a [x vear/x monthl contract. [only required if applicable; if so, provide link to terms of
contract
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.
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?
I think it seems pretty reasonable. If someone tries to use their broadband on multiple occasions and more often than not doesn't get the advertised typical speed, then it's not typical, and a court should agree with that.
I don't really like the idea of making regulation too technical or specific. "Typical" is a good word here.
From what I can gather in one of the linked rule documents, they may not have written the specific rule for determining typical speed yet. It appears to have several comment suggestions and requests additional comment.
But how are you going to measure that, is my point. A single user can run a speed test at a given point in time, but you can't be running speed tests all the time.
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.
>But how are you going to measure that, is my point.
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.
Wow -- something I didn't know I wanted but actually not too bad an idea. At least it is a starting point for conversation. Have to keep in mind that not everyone understands the technical lingo associated with shopping for broadband so it makes sense.
I was just thinking this morning what a watershed moment it was when food got these. Bravo FCC, this is awesome news and a huge step forward in the junk food world of internet access.
In the first couple of months after the pandemic hit, a lot of friends and family were suddenly shopping for better internet and this would've been great to have.
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’ve been surprised that these types of labels are not required more broadly, digital health is another that’s needed. That said the nutrition labeling has gotten a bit too complex imho. I suppose it’s easier to add than subtract, but seems easy to include an QR code to mandate links for more information.
This is good as far as it goes--I think better information can help consumers at the margins. But it's hard to imagine this will do much to actual induce competition in markets where there are only a few (or one) players and most consumers are sticky.
I like that it includes the explicit data caps. Seems to be missing information on slowdowns above a certain point which seems important in some cases.
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).
According to the FCC doc [1], the measurements may be conducted "between two defined
points on a network, such as between a user’s interface device and the ISP’s network core or between the user
interface device and the nearest internet exchange point where the ISP exchanges traffic with other networks". They require these measurements to be an average. I think this makes sense - it at least guarantees your speeds within the service provider's network.
>They require these measurements to be an average. I think this makes sense - it at least guarantees your speeds within the service provider's network.
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.
There are servers that are provisioned to do this for isp systems. Sure you are testing to some known set of servers but you cant expect max rate speed to the internet. It doesnt make any sense and an ISP shouldn't even be expected to.
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 have no idea what you are even talking about. To an approximation of nearly zero. They don't know what 2.4ghz or 5ghz is or even what the different speeds mean.
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.
