FCC: Measuring Broadband America

The FCC has released its report on broadband speed.

The issue has to do with the way the ISPs advertise their speeds: typically it's something like "up to XXX mbps." That leaves a lot of wiggle room, and in the past that wriggle room has been pretty large with actual speeds being half the advertised "up to" speed.

This report indicates that at peak times, DSL providers often provide 82% of the advertised speed, and cable provideres often provide 93% of advertised speeds. Fiber (Verizon's FIOS system) exceeds the advertised speeds in many cases (114% at some peak times).

You can test your own speeds: two of the most common (free) sites are http://speedtest.net/ and http://speakeasy.net/speedtest/. 

The results from the FCC report and anecdotal experiences just reinforce the suggestion that "up to" should be interpreted as meaning just that. Regional differences definitely are part of the picture, and the data in the report clearly shows time-of-day (evening) degradation.

Whether the "up to" effect is more pronounced with higher advertised speeds, isn't clear from the report. I typically pay for the highest speed at my ISP, and it seems to me that the higher the advertised speed, the bigger the "up to" effect. For example, at advertised "up to" 60 Mbps, my typical speed is around 30 Mbps -- about 50% of the "up to" speed. A previous plan (I believe it was 25 Mbps) consistently provided 17-18 Mbps (65%). Whether this is common or now I don't know.

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