Cable Companies – Always the Villains

For as long as I can remember, there has been a bad taste in people’s mouths, left there by interactions with cable companies. It does not matter the brand of the provider, from Adelphia, to Comcast, to Charter, and finally Time Warner, the basic move that these companies are trying is to get over on the public at large.

It does not matter what the problem might be, cable companies try to avoid the solutions, as that would involve the spending of money, for infrastructure, for repairs, for training; name your problem, they don’t want to pay.

The latest, in this long line of indignities suffered by the customers of the industry is detailed in a report on Ars Technica, where the definition of broadband speed is bandied about.

The feedback is coming in fast from the Federal Communication Commission’s request for a definition of broadband, and the message from big cable is clear. The last thing it wants is a standard that defines ISP service by real-time performance. “The Commission should continue to look at maximum advertised speed rather than some measure of ‘actual’ speed,” advised the National Cable and Telecommunications Association in its response to the FCC’s call for input.

This counsel was prompted by an observation that the Commission made in its request for comments—that debates over defining broadband tend to focus on stated download and upload throughput. “But neither is precise or diverse enough to describe broadband satisfactorily,” the agency noted. “For example, advertised throughput rates generally differ from actual rates, are not uniformly measured, and have different constraints over different technologies” (we’ve got a feature on this issue here).

This ‘maximum advertised speed’ is a big plus when the cable companies advertise, yet few people in areas served by these companies enjoy anywhere near the top rates given in the promotional materials.

The reasons vary, but most of the time it has to do with the fact that cable is a shared connection, more than the one had by DSL users. Also, in many areas where the cable service is available, the density of users is much higher than where DSL is offered, and if there is not a high density of prospective users, chances are there will be no cable service.

Still the people who would have you believe their service is Comcastic! want to judge service levels by the nebulous ‘provision level’ method.

Most of the public interest groups that have weighed in on this issue agree that this is a real concern. “Any definition on broadband must be rooted in actual delivered speeds, because delivered speeds—not advertised speeds—influence the practical utility of the broadband connection,” counsels Free Press in its filing. NCTA does not like this idea, arguing that it would be difficult to develop “a single figure that consistently and reliably describes the ‘actual’ speed of all types of broadband connections for all purposes.”

Ditto says Comcast. While the company writes that it shares the FCC’s concerns, “the actual online experience of any particular consumer at any particular moment in time involves a wide range of factors, many of which are outside the control of the Internet service provider.” Given this, the cable ISP suggests that “the ‘provisioned’ speed is still the most useful metric in evaluating whether any particular Internet service is ‘broadband.’”

Free Press acknowledges that the FCC can’t be running around all day and night measuring the throughputs of ISPs. “But it can establish a standard for classifying delivered speeds,” the group argues. “We suggest that such a measure would be the bandwidth that service providers can be reasonably expected to deliver to end users on their own networks during peak-use times.”

The article continues with input from Google (obviously interested in speed for delivery of its services) and AT&T (which you might think would be on the fence, as it has both DSL and cable, but it is a provider, so it leans to the side of cable, thereby relieving itself of any blame in the problems observed).

The sad thing is that the more these companies are allowed to obfuscate numbers and service levels, and carp about definitions, the further behind we become, as a nation, in terms of penetration of service, and speed of that provided service.

Pretty sad showing for the nation that came up with the idea. Very bad showing for the FCC, a government agency put in place to have the interests of the public at its core.

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What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad. Dave Barry

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