In an upstate New York match-up, the Rochester/Finger Lakes region scored dead last in broadband speed and value, according to data from Broadband.com.

Why are broadband speeds so much lower in the Flower City?  Blame Frontier Communications, which continues to pitch its decade-old DSL product, delivering an average speed of 4.45Mbps, while other upstate cities enjoy access and competition from Verizon’s fiber to the home network FiOS.  Frontier DSL actually often costs more, after taxes and fees, than Time Warner Cable’s much-faster cable broadband product, Road Runner, which rates an average download speed of 12.77Mbps in Rochester.  Frontier does manage to pull one win — higher upload speed DSL providers can often achieve in cities where cable operators keep upstream speeds as low as possible.

Time Warner Cable has dragged its feet upgrading broadband service in the area to its DOCSIS 3 platform other upstate cities have had since last year.  DOCSIS 3 should arrive within the next 4-8 weeks, which should boost broadband speeds, but may not deliver lower broadband prices because of Frontier’s uncompetitiveness in the area.

(Source: Broadband.com)

The top city in upstate New York for download speed is the state capital, Albany.  But Buffalo wins the contest for upload speed thanks to aggressive competition for Time Warner from Verizon in the Queen City.  Buffalo also pays the least for service — nearly $5 less per month than residents in Rochester pay on average.  Syracuse scores in the middle — but closer in terms of speed and value to other Verizon-served cities.

Slow and expensive broadband service can hamper economic development and costs consumers more.  Unfortunately, there are no signs Frontier Communications has plans to do anything differently in its largest service area — a classic driver of the accelerating number of customers calling to pull the plug on their landline service.

Time Warner Cable's Road Runner vs. Frontier Communications' DSL (Speeds are downstream/upstream; Source: Broadband.com)

A new report has found the home of America’s worst broadband service can be found in the state of North Carolina.

The Tar Heel State ranks dead last in the number of homes able to access the Internet at speeds the Federal Communications Commission defines as “broadband” — 4/1Mbps.  The report quotes from FCC figures that show only 10 percent of North Carolina households are receiving broadband service at speeds that equal or exceed 3Mbps downstream and 768 kbps upstream.  States traditionally thought to be bottom-ranked, including Mississippi and Idaho, are now doing better than the home of Research Triangle Park.

The report comes courtesy of the SouthEast Chapter of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (SEATOA), which is attempting to fight off efforts to stop individual communities from delivering the service big cable and phone companies refuse to provide in large parts of the state.

Where Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and CenturyLink do deliver service, customers pay dearly for it.  Broadband.com found most of America’s worst broadband values in North Carolina.  In fact, outside of prohibitively expensive Anchorage, Alaska, seven of the ten most expensive cities were in North Carolina, when measuring cost per megabit (see below for a better understanding of how this figure was computed):

America's Worst Broadband is in North Carolina (source: Broadband.com)

Comparatively, states in the northeast were meccas.  Sixty percent or more of residents in Delaware, Massachusetts and New Jersey have broadband at speeds the FCC now considers bare minimum.  In larger states: New York, 43 percent and Pennsylvania, 44 percent, broadband speed still scored higher despite the large rural sections of both states.  Verizon’s fiber-to-the-home network has compelled upgrades among cable company competitors to keep up with the benefits fiber optics bring.

But in North Carolina, only community-owned networks are delivering service comparable to that found in the increasingly-fiber-wired northeast.  Instead of committing to upgrades, large cable and phone companies are spending plenty lobbying to restrict and banish the improved service these networks provide in communities like Wilson and Salisbury.

SEATOA’s conclusion?  The current inadequate level of service coming from North Carolina’s cable and phone companies allows the state to fall further behind in America’s economic recovery.

More about how Broadband.com calculated the results can be found below the jump.

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Du Quoin, Ill.

Remember when your cable system delivered 60 basic cable channels with a handful of premium services, none in High Definition?  The people of Du Quoin, Ill. do — to this day.

They, along with several other small southern Illinois communities served by Comcast, are living a wired life free from HD programming, cable networks many take for granted, and a quality of service that has diminished as an aging cable system outlives its useful life.

Now the commissioner of Du Quoin has put Comcast’s franchise “on hold” until the cable company updates service for the town’s 6,500 residents.

Commissioner Rex Duncan told the city council last week he’s fed up with Comcast’s lack of interest in delivering even a handful of HD channels to subscribers, even as the company moves channels that used to be part of the basic cable lineup to a new tier that requires the rental of a digital converter box.

Until Comcast decides to invest in upgrades in the area, De Quoin joins the cities of Pinckneyville, Benton and Christopher and the villages of Tamaroa and Buckner in refusing franchise renewal requests from the cable operator.

Reviewing the lineup in Du Quoin shows subscribers confined to receiving the same number of channels most cities had more than 15 years ago.  Not a single HD channel is included.  Broadband customers can choose from two promoted packages, one promising “up to” 15Mbps and the other claiming 20Mbps with the PowerBoost feature.  But few residents actually see those speeds according to one of our readers.

Sid, a lifelong resident of De Quoin, says speeds approaching 7Mbps are more typical, except at night when they drop.

“I don’t think Comcast has changed a thing in southern Illnois in over a decade,” Sid shares.  “The company’s cable TV lineup still thinks it’s 1992 — we are lucky we even have broadband.”

Residents have complained regularly to local officials about Comcast’s performance in the region, especially when they compare the service they receive with what residents in nearby Carbondale, the self-styled “capital of southern Illinois” receive.

“I realize southern Illinois is between nothing and nowhere, with large cities like St. Louis and Evansville whole states away, but considering how many people depend on Comcast to get reasonable reception of local stations pretty far out, they do a good business here,” Sid says.

Sid does not expect many upgrades in the near future, either to his cable or broadband service.

“DOCSIS 3?  What is that?”

North Carolina: The home of the House-sanctioned broadband slow lane.

Not a single Republican member of the North Carolina House of Representatives stood with consumers yesterday as the cable industry’s custom-written anti-community-broadband bill — H.129 — passed the House in a lopsided 81-37 vote. Fifteen Democrats joined them, some after it was apparent the bill would enjoy lockstep support from their Republican colleagues.  Only three dozen Democrats were willing to choose the interests of their constituents over the interests (and campaign contributions) from Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and CenturyLink.

Rep. Bill Faison (D-Orange) told WRAL-TV voters need to be aware H.129 was Time Warner’s custom-written bill imposing harsh terms and conditions on community broadband networks, while exempting big cable and phone companies.

“Where’s the bill to govern Time Warner?” Faison asked.

Faison predicted the bill will make it next to impossible for any future community broadband effort to deliver service, even in areas where nobody else has or will.

In the communities of Mooresville and Davidson, House Speaker Thom Tillis (R-Cornelius), who represents north Mecklenburg including Davidson and Rep. Grey Mills (R-Mooresville) both voted for the bill, throwing the local community-owned MI-Connection cable system under the bus.  That cable system, acquired from bankrupt Adelphia Cable and rebuilt to modern standards, faced unexpected financial hurdles from the decrepit state the infrastructure was left in when it was sold.  H.129 would limit the system’s ability to reach its entire natural service area in an effort to remain viable, likely banning service for unincorporated Mecklenburg and Iredell counties, and parts of the community of Corelius.

Avila’s statements defending her bill ranged from confusing to the downright absurd — particularly the assertion that high tech businesses will avoid North Carolina if her bill didn’t pass because companies would not want to do business in a state where the local government provided competing broadband service.  That’s a ludicrous notion for a business confronted with 1.5Mbps DSL from CenturyLink.  No high technology business will want to do business in a state that delivers some of the nation’s least adequate broadband service.  With Ms. Avila’s efforts, that fact of life could gain rubber stamp approval from many in the state legislature more interested in protecting the profits of New York-based Time Warner Cable than Wilson, N.C.-based GreenLight.

The bill is headed to the Senate next.  We’ll have a Call to Action up shortly regarding this.

If your member from the House of Representatives is not on the list below, they need to be held accountable for doing the wrong thing for North Carolina broadband.

NC House of Representatives Members Voting For Consumers By Opposing H.129

(Click the name of your member to obtain current contact information, and please send thanks for their vote yesterday.)

Q.  What moves faster than North Carolina’s cable and DSL service?

A.  Legislation to make sure the state’s telecom companies can continue to provide slow, expensive, and hit or miss service for years to come.

Big Telecom money has greased the process as H.129, the Telecom Monopoly Preservation and Protection Act is rushed to the House floor before North Carolina consumers know what is happening.

Residents have until Monday evening at 7pm to make their feelings known on this anti-consumer nightmare for cities and small towns:

• H.129 will shut down the digital economies of small cities like Wilson and Salisbury just as they are primed to sell themselves as a great home for high-tech, high-paying jobs.
• H.129 guarantees rural North Carolina will resemble the 21st century equivalent of Oliver Twist — begging for whatever limited broadband the state’s phone companies refuse to deliver.

The appalling truth is that the companies pushing for this bill only want broadband service on their watch, under their control, with their high prices and virtually no competition or choice.  And now AT&T is prepared to limit your broadband usage as well, establishing usage caps and overcharging customers who exceed them.

Do you want your broadband choices limited to these phone and cable companies?  Considering North Carolina broadband is ranked 41st out of the 50 states, it’s clear they don’t consider the state a priority.

But it does not have to be this way.  Where providers drop the ball, communities should have the choice to pick it up and run with it.  That is what Wilson and Salisbury did, and the result is the best broadband service in the state.  That’s a threat Time Warner Cable and CenturyLink can’t afford to ignore, which is why they want these networks stopped at all costs.

Defeating H.129 is critical to the state’s broadband future.  As written, it delivers no new broadband connections, does not promote or provide any competition, or help any individual or community.  It was written by the state’s telecom companies to benefit them, and them alone.  It guarantees you will be stuck paying ever-increasing bills for limited service indefinitely.

Tell House members they must do what is right for the voters, not what is right for the cable and phone companies.  Tell them to VOTE NO ON H.129.  The broadband saved may be your own.

You can find your individual representative and their contact information below the jump.  Please get writing and calling today!

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