[quote=Ars Technica][img]http://static.arstechnica.net/2011/08/02/all-isps-over-time-4e382f0-intro.png[/img]
For the first time ever, the FCC has collected data (PDF) showing real-world speeds that Americans receive from their Internet providers. And the news is pretty good! Or, perhaps, it's pretty bad!
Advocacy group Free Press blasted the results, released today. "No matter how industry tries to put a positive spin on these results, the report shows conclusively that many Americans are simply not getting what they pay for," said research director S. Derek Turner in a statement. "This study indicates Comcast, Cox, and Verizon FiOS largely perform well, but other companies like Cablevision, AT&T, MediaCom, and Frontier all fail to deliver their customers the quality of service promised.
“In every other industry, giving your customers less than what they paid for is a very serious offense. ISPs should be held to the same standard, no matter how much they try to spin their way out of it.”
Nick Feamster, a Georgia Tech professor who worked with the FCC on proper metrics, had a different take. "We found that the performance of US ISPs more consistently matches their advertised promises than the ISPs in other countries—they do a pretty good job."
As for the FCC, the agency largely stays away from subjective evaluation, though it does note that "actual download speeds are substantially closer to advertised speeds than was found in data from early 2009."
Instead, the FCC report is all about the data. And that data shows the major ISPs generally offer 80-90 percent of their advertised speeds, even during the peak hours of 7pm-11pm, with cable and fiber services actually offering higher-than-advertised speeds for much of the day.
But one ISP stood out, and not in a good way: Cablevision had absolutely atrocious download speeds, dropping to nearly 50 percent of advertised speeds during peak hours.
[img]http://origin.static.arstechnica.com/2011/08/02/speeds-by-isp-percentage-4e383ac-intro.png[/img]
The FCC obtained this real-world data by contracting with a company called SamKnows, which had run similar tests for the UK government. SamKnows recruited 78,000 Internet users from across the US, then selected 9000 of them to receive a specially configured router. That router took a series of measurements during March 2011 that tested broadband speed from a user's home to a remote server across the Internet. Results were checked against ISP-installed reference points to ensure accuracy.
Not surprisingly, fiber to the home was the best-performing technology, while DSL brought up the rear, but the differences were modest, especially for upload speeds.
[img]http://static.arstechnica.net/2011/08/02/speeds-by-tech-4e382ed-intro.png[/img]
The data finally gives consumers a standardized way to compare Internet connection quality among ISPs, rather than limiting themselves to advertised speeds and prices. Want to compare lag between ISPs, or between service tiers? Now you can.
The report also shows that, apart from Cablevision, Internet speeds no longer fall into the toilet when everyone comes home from work in the evening. And if you are lucky enough to have Verizon's FiOS—you won't notice any difference in speeds, ever.
Verizon might be interested in suing the FCC over net neutrality rules, but it's happy enough when the agency shows FiOS in a positive light. Today's speed data "confirms that Verizon FiOS Internet customers receive blazing-fast and sustained upstream and downstream speeds even during peak usage periods," said the company in a statement.
Update: Cablevision got in touch to defend its record.
"Cablevision delivers some of the fastest Internet connections in the country, on our basic tier, two higher levels of service, and our WiFi network, and this report simply does not reflect the experience of our nearly 3 million broadband customers," said a spokesperson. "Our high-speed Internet product leads the nation in consumer adoption and has consistently won top ratings in much broader and more extensive consumer surveys conducted by J.D. Power & Associates, PC Magazine and others." Those ratings, however, cover things like "overall satisfaction" and not actual download speeds.[/quote]
[url=http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/08/fios-dominates-as-fcc-measures-actual-internet-speeds.ars][source][/url]
Well, now you know. By the way, those charts are showing percentage of the advertized speed, AKA how much you are/are not being ripped off. Which means that Verizon is giving 115% of as much as 150Mbps. Pray, tell, is that 25/25 Mbps plan from Verizon as mind-blowing as it sounds? I'm stuck in the land of 1.4Mbps with Time Warner.
It's funny. I've heard a lot of flack about Comcast in the last few years. My father switched from Verizon to Comcast because Verizon were being dicks with their business class and everything. I was fairly annoyed thinking that Comcast was going to be shitty and terrible. It turns out it's not actually that bad. In fact they are pretty good. Haven't had any problems with them yet.
I'm with cox and I hate it, the speed isn't whats advertised, and it's constantly dropping in and out. hopefully this will make the isp's get their shit together.
I had Verizon Fios before I moved, I miss it so much.
FiOS master race.
So Fios actually gives more than what you pay for? That's pretty awesome. Here in Canada you typically get exactly what you pay for, but they make sure you don't get a single byte more.
Holy shit. I never realized Cablevision was THAT bad.
My plan is supposed to be 30mb/s but whenever I do speed tests, it's between 3 to 10 mbit/s. That's Australian internet (Telstra) for you.
I knew it. The data for Qwest is spot. on. I NEVER get the full 8mb/s that i pay for. Nor the 856k I also pay for.
I wish I had FIOS, but my little town doesn't have it, unfortunately
Hurry the fuck up Verizon and move the cables to this area of the state, the hospital here gets better internet than ANYWHERE in the state besides kansas city.
Hmm, my ISP isn't on there.
But I want FiOS, sadly it isn't available in my area. :frown:
Goddamn shame Verizon stopped rolling out their FiOs... if only they included my area.
I'd like to thank the US Taxpayers for buying me a $100 router. It's really nice, thanks! I'm on FiOS and I participated in the study. It was jolly good fun.
Honeslty, I'd recommend anybody to Verizon.
In fact my house doesn't even support Comcast, it's too old or something, fuck that
Since I upload so much to youtube, I would love to have FIOS. I live in Boca Raton florida and every few days I search their site to see if there is new info around my area.
And I hated Verizon for not putting anything around here, but there was an article explaining why FIOS is so tight lipped about it being rolled out. Basically most states have laws that require all communications infrastructure to be shared to each and every communications company. This is how we had a giant telephone network. Companies like AT&T back in the beginning would put up poles and lines to gain customers and wouldn't let anyone use it. So a competing company would have to put up their lines right next to it.
They couldn't even place their wires on the same poles, this caused so much shit build up of so many confusing lines that eventually laws came about where competing companies would simply use the same infrastructure for what I think is free of charge for their own service. This is supposed to spawn more growth and help competition, unfortunately for instances like FIOS, Verizon is having to foot the unbelievably huge cost for direct-to-house FIOS lines and has to recoup that later on through billing. But if they do, competing companies that don't have to build anything come in, get access to the infrastructure and can charge significantly lower costs because they have close to nothing to recoup.
So I believe Verizon is trying to install it in communities where the vast majority of the customers are likely to sign up if they install it. Not simply pledge for it and then go with another service that is cheaper. So Verizon is holding off and trying to plan it out. It sucks, but I can completely understand Verizon wanting to do this. The law now-a-days seems pretty ridiculous, but back when we have NOTHING connecting people together the law served a good purpose to keep the networks relatively clean.
This is what I learned from some searches if anyone has more info, correct me. I don't know the whole story.
My ISP provides FiOS, but only to the newer developments in town. What makes me mad is they have a FiOS connection from them to the town west of us. I can look out my window and see the "DO NOT DIG: FIBER OPTICS" posts, but they don't provide it here. :saddowns:
I have FIOS and love it. It's never went out on me and the speeds are fucking brilliant.
[img]http://www.speedtest.net/result/1414839721.png[/img]
[QUOTE=Atlascore;31500148]I'm stuck with Time Warner, they have a monopoly in North Carolina or something, they're the only ISP I can find here, their internet is always broken as fuck, sometimes you can download things at 2.5MB/s and other times it can take you five minutes just to load google.com, seriously I hate this shit, it's getting annoying, especially when I want to play any multiplayer game.
The worst thing is, I know this guy that lives in California and he has TW too, and he doesn't have any of these problems.[/QUOTE]
You know what? It's been getting progressively worse with Time Warner here in South Carolina, and for a few days about a week ago I got shitloads of IP address conflicts. I checked the router, so it wasn't internal. If I had any say in the matter, I'd switch to Comcast until Google or Verizon comes into town with their fiber-optic service. This is just miserable.
[img]https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=8d2d0d8864&view=att&th=12e774781b7b35c3&attid=0.1&disp=emb&zw[/img]
I preach FiOS day and night. I have gotten numerous neighbors to switch. I feel special.
Verizon FiOS is amazing. Once they installed the wires in my neighborhood we got their service and we always get faster download speeds then what we're supposed to get. Amazing.
FUCK MY LIFE. I want to get rid of Qwest and goto Verizon but they dont have ANY services were i live. I can get 25Down and 5 up from them for the same price as Qwest's 8Down and 856k up.
I don't mean to vouch for Comcast, but they are actually fairly good speed wise.
Speedwise, cuntcast was fine. However, in the customer satisfaction department, I'd have to rate cuntcast at a big fat zero. We would get sporadic disruptions, and outages that lasted for days. Turned out that an animal had eaten through our cable line and not one of the service people wanted to take the effort to replace it. It had been like that for a year. Switched to FiOS, no problems since.
I hate comcast too. Speed is fine. Reliability is fucking abysmal. I find myself tethering my phone to my PC more and more to get decent access and even better speed.
[QUOTE=Brt5470;31500592]I hate comcast too. Speed is fine. Reliability is fucking abysmal. I find myself tethering my phone to my PC more and more to get decent access and even better speed.[/QUOTE]
Yikes! Never mind, I love Time Warner now.
[QUOTE=Trunk Monkay;31500059]I'm with cox and I hate it, the speed isn't whats advertised, and it's constantly dropping in and out. hopefully this will make the isp's get their shit together.[/QUOTE]
? It never even drops below 90%, it's almost always above 100%. You're getting [i]more[/i] than you pay for. What are you complaining about?
If you have Verizon, here's my rule of thumb.
If it ain't FiOS, fuck Verizon.
FIOS is great. But too bad I only have basic... 10 down 2 up :(
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