Why The FCC's Broadband Data Is Wrong
from the policy-implications? dept
The FCC's broadband policies lately have clearly been designed to consolidate power of a few large incumbents, at the expense of competition. To support much of this, they use their own data on broadband availability. However, as Broadband Reports is discussing, even the General Accounting Office is pointing out that the FCC's method for measuring broadband penetration is greatly flawed. This isn't new, but the FCC has refused to change, preferring its own problematic numbers in setting broadband policy. The FCC system apparently works by looking to see if anyone in a specific zip code has broadband access, and then determining that the entire zip code has broadband available -- even if this is clearly not the case. That means that even if a provider serves only a small percentage of a region, the entire region may be considered as having broadband available. In cases where there are concerns over whether or not their is real competition with multiple providers, obviously this presents a pretty big problem. People with one or no choices may actually be considered as having multiple choices -- reflecting a competitive environment that does not exist. Considering how much faith people put in the FCC's statistics in setting broadband policy, this methodology isn't just an academic discussion, but one that helps lead to a situation where a lack of real competition is being described in completely opposite terms.
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Competition? Hah!
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Re: Competition? Hah!
Yet my zip code is the same as the small town down the road and AT&T does offer DSL within a small range of the CO. So that means the FCC says I have access to DSL.
The couple of small towns that have any broadband access don't usually have "choices". They have a broadband provider.
(For that matter, there's no cell phone competition here either. There is ONE provider that covers this area. I had to terminate my service with a cell company that I had been with for six years because my phone was useless.)
We're something like 16th among first world nations in broadband penetration and apparently we're that high only because the FCC is lying.
At this rate, third world countries will be passing us up...
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Competition
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Competition a bad joke
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Broadband Competition Joke
Where I live, SBC... sorry ATT is offering basic (not much better than dial-up) for 12.95 per month for the first year. Comcast is competing by offering serivce at 45.00 per month for cable TV customer, and 55.00 per month for non-customers.
If you want higher speed DSL, you pay as much as cable customers.
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No Choices
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Acctually it's more like 5.5 Down and 1.3-1.6 Up
oh BTW Thats Mega Bits we are talking up to 768K/S Up aand down is my limit but what i get is usually 500-730 K/S Down and 300 K/S Up well i think thats there is worth 49.99 a month
and yes i have a satilite looking thing on my roof and i dident have to pay for the equipment under contract they own and maintain the equipment
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Acctually it's more like 5.5 Down and 1.3-1.6 Up
oh BTW Thats Mega Bits we are talking up to 768K/S Up aand down is my limit but what i get is usually 500-730 K/S Down and 300 K/S Up well i think thats there is worth 49.99 a month
and yes i have a satilite looking thing on my roof and i dident have to pay for the equipment under contract they own and maintain the equipment
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Land of the free?
used to have dail up. 56k link (worked at around 40k normally) ona free phone 0800 number, cost me 10ukp a month, effectivly no limits (2 hour kick off then redial, and a usage cap you coun't reach if you tried (i did)).
then 300k broadband for 15ukp, later upgraded to 600k for no extra cost. currently looking at a 6.5meg adsl for 27ukp a month.
it helps we have the one thing you lack stateside, competition of a sort, BT do most of the lines but have to lease them out so we have stacks of ISPs to pick from. plus the cable people (now just one of, with poor coverage).
it amazes me the situation you suffer over there, mainland UK is ok, mainland europe is meant to be even better, well faster dunno bout the cost.
over here dialup works just about everywhere, braodband is pretty well covered too, though the speed varies depending on area. prices are cheapish, since anyone charging what you guys pay would go bust here.
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Yeah, but...
I'm not saying that the US is all like this...but there are still huge rural areas here. It costs a lot of money to blanket an area with broadband...and if there aren't people under that blanket, it isn't worth it to them.
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Competition
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No competition
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