Three years ago, Bush Administration FCC Chairman Kevin Martin championed an initiative to offer free national Internet access across the United States via wireless access.  Martin’s idea was to take a portion of unused spectrum and auction it to a company that agreed to set aside 25 percent of the 2 GHz “AWS-3” band for a free, slow speed Internet service.  The winning bidder could underwrite the free service with online advertising and sell access to the remaining 75 percent of the spectrum, presumably for faster access.  Think NetZero for the 21st century.

That proposal just happened to coincide with a nearly identical plan offered by M2Z Networks Inc., a politically-connected start-up backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner John Doerr and loaded with former FCC people.

M2Z had everything the FCC wanted from an applicant:

• a minority owned business that would raise the percentage of minority-owned telecommunications businesses;
• a willingness to agree to Martin’s demands that the free Internet service be censored to remove adult content;
• sufficient financial backing to win the spectrum auction;
• political connections that could help drive the plan through a political minefield and objections from incumbent commercial providers.

John Muleta, co-founder and CEO of M2Z Networks, also headed the FCC's Wireless Telecom Bureau between 2003 and 2005.

M2Z planned to offer free Internet access below the definition of broadband speeds defined in America’s National Broadband Plan — 768kbps, and would also include web advertising injected by M2Z.  Premium, paying customers could access faster speeds and avoid the extra advertising.

Unfortunately for the project’s boosters, Martin’s maverick proposal met a roadblock of opposition, including from his boss, President George W. Bush.  Commercial providers, especially AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile immediately attacked the plan.  AT&T and Verizon did not want a competitor giving away free wireless access when they were charging top dollar for it.  T-Mobile objected, fearing interference to spectrum it owned nearby (fears that proved not credible).  Civil rights and consumer groups objected to Martin’s insistence that adult content be blocked using imperfect filtering software.  Still others thought M2Z would never be able to cover 95 percent of America within a decade, as required by Martin’s proposal.  Some speculated M2z would launch service, deploy it to major cities, and then petition the FCC to forget about the 95 percent requirement.

Philosophically, many industry groups also objected to the Commission sticking its nose in private company business plans, dictating the services offered by the winning bidder.

Despite some willingness by M2Z to compromise on issues like the “smut filter,” with the remaining parade of opposition it came as no surprise the FCC left M2Z’s proposal on the back burner for the remainder of the Bush Administration.

With the arrival of the Obama Administration, Kevin Martin was out at the FCC.  In came Julius Genachowski and a National Broadband Plan.

The concept on offer from M2Z just didn’t fit the vision of America’s broadband transformation.  Although wireless 3G and 4G networks remained hot topics, other wireless projects have simply not gotten as much attention outside of rural areas.  As many community-owned Wi-Fi services shut down, the concept of free, slow-speed broadband just wasn’t a hot topic any longer.  Even worse, approving a plan offering speeds well below the FCC’s proposed definition of broadband threatened to muddy the message America needs faster access.  Last week, the FCC quietly sent word to M2Z that they had rejected their proposal, effectively killing the venture.

How broadband advocates frame broadband expansion can be critical to the plan’s success.  Critics already opposed to broadband stimulus programs could argue M2Z offered a free market, privately-funded solution to Internet adoption without spending billions of taxpayer dollars.  Although 768kbps would offer little to solve the digital divide, totally free access isn’t something easily ignored, even if M2Z was never capable of extending service to 95 percent of the country.

But in the end, vociferous objections from AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile were probably the primary reason for the plan’s ultimate demise.

After all, if you could get free wireless access at speeds comparable to what several carriers realistically deliver to their 3G customers today for upwards of $60 a month, would you remain a paying customer?

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/C-SPAN M2Z Networks The Communicators 10-11-07.flv[/flv]

In October 2007, C-SPAN’s “The Communicators” spent 30 minutes discussing the state of competitiveness in American broadband and how M2Z planned to shake up the duopoly.  Three years later, the duopoly remains and M2Z’s plan is dead.  (29 minutes)

A new report published by the Federal Communications Commission this week finds Americans are being ripped off by their broadband providers who promise speeds 50 percent faster than they actually receive.

In a generically named report, “Broadband Performance,” the FCC finds Americans love spending increasing amounts of time on the Internet, but face providers making bogus marketing claims for speeds they’ll never actually receive.

In 2009, average […] advertised download speeds were 7–8 Mbps, across technologies. However, FCC analysis shows that the median actual speed consumers experienced in the first half of 2009 was roughly 3 Mbps, while the average (mean) actual speed was approximately 4 Mbps. Therefore actual download speeds experienced by U.S. consumers appear to lag advertised speeds by roughly 50%.

[…] The “up to” speed, however, does not provide an accurate measure of likely end-user broadband experience. That experience depends on multiple factors, including the actual speed that consumers realize, taking into account the impact of network congestion; and other metrics like the availability of the network, latency, jitter and packet loss. In other words, consumers need a better, publicly agreed upon measure of broadband performance that reflects the network operation and end-user experience.

No surprises here - the FCC found fiber delivered the fastest broadband speeds with wireless and satellite service delivering the slowest

Providers in several countries have been called to account for marketing claims that never seem to be realized by customers.

For years, providers have relied on the weasel words “up to” to escape charges of outright misrepresentation of their products.  The FCC doesn’t believe the status quo properly informs consumers about true broadband speeds, especially when comparison shopping.

Some of the widest gaps between advertised and actually delivered speeds came from telephone company DSL service.  Many phone companies define their maximum speeds based on theoretical maximums, not the actual average speeds encountered by customers.  While some providers claimed up to 10Mbps service, they only actually delivered up to 3Mbps to many customers.

The report recommends new disclosures, including average actual speeds delivered to customers, what kind of speeds customers can expect during peak usage times, and what speeds consumers will encounter while using certain online applications.

Speeds can make all the difference for certain classes of broadband users, also defined in the FCC report:

➤ Advanced. These consumers use large amounts of data and tend to use the highest quality voice, video, and other cutting-edge applications.

➤ Full media. These consumers are moderately heavy users of broadband and mobile applications, seeking to access high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video communications but, typically not in the most cutting-edge forms.

➤ Emerging multimedia. These consumers utilize some video and graphical content but still see the Internet primarily as a way to communicate and access news and entertainment in a richer format than found in offline content.

➤ Utility. These consumers are largely content to access the Internet for basic news, communication, and basic entertainment.

The New America Foundation thinks the gulf between promises and reality has grown so large, it’s time to bring “The Schumer Box” to broadband.  Named after Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the “Schumer Box” was made a part of every credit card application and cardholder agreement.  It breaks out in large print fact-based disclosures to consumers about what kind of service and pricing to expect.  The Foundation wants consumers to have truth-in-labeling introduced for Internet users who will be able to comparison shop providers more effectively.

One consumer group wants a credit card-style disclosure of broadband speeds and policies

While the FCC’s findings may not reach the level of credit card-style disclosures, the agency does recognize there is a significant problem with providers misrepresenting their broadband speeds.

The report also found consumers are increasing their amount of monthly usage, often correlated to the speeds they receive.  Those with the fastest broadband accounts consume the most (and typically also pay the most for service).  Those with slower speeds consume less.

That finding supports the contention among many consumer groups that today’s speed-based broadband tiers fairly compensate providers for customer usage.  Those who use the most pay the most for the fastest speeds. Those who use the least pay lower prices for lower speed tiers.

The agency also rated fiber to the home America’s fastest broadband technology, followed by cable broadband, then DSL service, and finally wireless/satellite-delivered service.

Reardon is fine with this vision of your online future.

Marguerite Reardon confesses she’s confused.  She doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about regarding Google and Verizon teaming up to deliver a blueprint for a corporate compromise on Net Neutrality.  In a column published today, Reardon is convinced she’s on a debunking mission — to deliver the message that rumors of the Internet apocalypse are premature.

As I read the criticism of Google and Verizon’s supposed evil plan to demolish the Internet, and as I hear about “protests” of several dozen people at Google’s headquarters, I scratch my head and wonder: am I missing something?

The Google-Verizon Net neutrality proposal I read last week doesn’t sound nearly as apocalyptic as Free Press, a media advocacy group, and some of the most vocal critics out there have made it sound.

In fact, most of proposal sounded a lot like a plan FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski offered nearly a year ago, which many Net neutrality proponents seemed to support.

In short, Google and Verizon say they agree to a set of rules for the Internet that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or degrading lawful content on the Internet. Broadband providers would also not be allowed to take action to impede competition.

This is pretty much what Genachowski has proposed.

OK, terrific. There is agreement.

But wait, Net neutrality zealots are still unhappy.

Hmmm… “zealots?”  Reardon probably just angered the majority of CNET’s readers, who now find themselves labeled as crazed Internet online freedom fighters — net fundamentalists who want absolute protection against big Internet Service Providers tampering with their Internet Experience.

Where can I get my membership card?

Reardon’s “debunk” consists of her narrow, inaccurate definition of Net Neutrality pounded into a pre-conceived notion of what is and is not possible in a competitive broadband marketplace.  In short, she’s satisfied we can all move along… there is nothing to see here:

What Free Press and Public Knowledge don’t seem to realize is that AT&T and Verizon already offer differentiated services today with enhanced quality of service to business customers. Verizon’s Fios TV and AT&T’s U-verse TV services are also examples of managed Internet services that are delivered to consumers. And the last time I checked, no one, other than their cable competitors, has complained about AT&T and Verizon offering competition in the TV market.

The truth is that if Verizon and AT&T wanted to cannibalize their broadband business with premium broadband services, they’d already be doing it. But they aren’t, because there hasn’t been a market for it.

The reality is that consumers are in control of what type of services are offered. If the public Internet can adequately deliver a service for free, then there’s no need to pay for it. But if someone can provide a better service over a dedicated network and there are consumers willing to pay for it, then why shouldn’t it be offered? Isn’t that why some people subscribe to a 768Kbps broadband service for $15 a month, and others pay $100 for a 50Mbps service?

So let’s debunk the debunk.

First, Net Neutrality is not about stopping broadband providers from offering speed-based tiers of service.  In fact, that’s the Internet pricing model we’ve all come to know and love (although those prices are just a tad high, aren’t they?)  Free Press and Public Knowledge do not object to ISPs selling different levels of broadband speed tiers to consumers and businesses to access online content.

Net Neutrality isn’t about stopping ISPs from selling some customers “lite” service and others “mega-super-zippy Turbo” service — it’s about stopping plans from some ISPs to establish their own toll booths on the Internet to charge content producers twice — once to upload and distribute their content and then a second time to ensure that content reaches a particular ISPs customers on a timely, non-speed-throttled basis.  Consider this: you already pay good money for your own broadband account.  How would you feel if you sent an e-mail to a friend who uses another ISP and that provider wanted to charge you 20 cents to deliver that e-mail?  Don’t want to pay?  That’s fine, but your e-mail might be delayed, as paying customers enjoy priority over your freebie e-mail.

A lot of broadband customers may never understand the implications of giant telecom companies building their own toll lanes for “preferred content partners” on the Internet because they’ll just assume that stuck online video or constantly rebuffering stream is the fault of the website delivering it, not their provider intentionally pushing it aside to make room for content from companies who paid protection money to make sure their videos played splendidly.

Second, Reardon need only look to our neighbors in the north to see a non Net Neutral Internet experience in Canada.  There, ISPs intentionally throttle broadband applications they don’t want users running on their networks.  They also spank customers who dare to try what Reardon insists Verizon would never stop — using their broadband service to watch someone else’s content.  With the application of Internet Overcharging like usage limits and consumption billing schemes, cable companies like Rogers don’t need to directly block competitors like Netflix.  They need only spike customers’ broadband bills to teach them a lesson they’ll not soon forget.

Within days of Netflix announcing their imminent arrival in Canada, Rogers actually reduced the usage allowances of some of their broadband customers.  If you still want to watch Netflix instead of visiting Rogers pay-per-view cable menu or video rental stores, it will cost you plenty — up to $5 per gigabyte of viewing.

Reardon seems to think giant providers like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast care about what their customers want and wouldn’t jeopardize the customer relationship.  Really?  She herself admits she hates paying for hundreds of channels she never watches, yet providers are deaf to complaints from customers demanding an end to this practice.  What about the relentless price hikes?  Wouldn’t that drive off customers?  Perhaps… if customers had real alternatives.  Instead, with an effective duopoly market in place, subscribers pay “the man,” pay an almost identical price from the “other guy,” or go without.

Providers understand their power and leverage in the marketplace.  Until serious competition arrives, it would be a disservice to stockholders not to monetize every possible aspect of broadband service in the United States.

The check against this naked aggression on consumers’ wallets is from consumer groups who are fighting against these big telecom interests.

Before dismissing Net Neutrality “zealotry,” Reardon should experience the Internet in Canada and then get back to us, and more importantly those consumer groups she flicks away with disdain, and join the fight.

Dream On: WildBlue's home page shows a user thrilled about an Internet experience she'll never truly enjoy with a monthly usage limit at low as 2.3GB. Exceed it and face the consequences: WildBlue's Time Out Corner: a speed throttle delivering 128kbps downstream and just 28kbps upstream.

When is broadband not broadband?  When it is delivered by hopelessly overloaded and underpowered satellite providers that annoy their subscribers with high prices and low usage allowances.

For many customers of WildBlue and HughesNet, getting high speed Internet access remains a far off dream. No broadband Internet service is more rationed and speed throttled than satellite “fraudband.”

Most satellite broadband customers live in America’s most rural areas, literally miles away from the nearest telephone exchange and often hundreds of miles away from a town with cable broadband.  Even wireless Internet providers can’t find enough customers to justify the costs of delivering service.

For America’s most rural, there are three choices:

1. Go without.
2. Use dial-up service.
3. Choose the least annoying satellite provider you can afford.

Just over one million Americans have stuck it out with choice number three, paying twice as much wired Americans pay for broadband and getting just a fraction of the speed and use.

But both providers claim that is all about to change.

WildBlue and HughesNet are in a hurry to launch brand new satellites with dramatically improved capacity that will deliver, they claim, “speeds as fast as fiber.”

For Stop the Cap! reader Adele in a rural part of Arizona, she’ll believe it when she sees it.

“As Stop the Cap! has said all along, anyone who thinks satellite ‘broadband’ is a useful alternative to DSL or cable Internet should be condemned to use it,” she writes.  “Everyday brings a new frustration, especially with so-called ‘Fair Access Policies’ that effectively restrict your use to web page browsing and e-mail.”

HughesNet explains how their satellite service uses your satellite dish to send and receive Internet data. (click to enlarge)

For many people running Microsoft Windows, the company’s monthly gift of bug fixes, service packs, and updates is just a minor nuisance. For satellite Internet customers, it can sometimes mean the “day of no Internet.”

Adele explains:

If you have multiple computers and Microsoft determines it has a lot of screw-ups to fix, the monthly updates can easily run into the hundreds of megabytes when every computer receives their individual updates.  HughesNet’s “budget” Home and Pro Plans cost up to $70 a month and only include a daily allowance of up to 300 megabytes.  It’s no trouble at all to exceed that usage on increasingly large web pages loaded down with video advertising, pop-ups, and other content.  Now deal with Microsoft Update Day and in our house, that means you get a good book and stay offline.

If she doesn’t, HughesNet inflicts a stinging punishment — 24 hours in the time out corner with barely dial-up speed penalties for exceeding the limit.

But both satellite providers promise better days ahead when their newest satellites are launched into space.

The New York Times notes WildBlue’s next generation of satellites will bring 10 times the capacity of its three current satellites combined.  That opens the door for faster satellite broadband, according to both companies, without price increases.

HughesNet believes satellite broadband’s best days lie ahead, especially as a contender in the rural broadband market.

“One advantage satellite has is ubiquity,” Arunas G. Slekys, vice president for Hughes Network Systems, said. “The cost of reaching you with a satellite dish is independent of where you are. Fiber or cable is labor-intensive and dependent on distance.”

As to satellite’s potential in rural regions, “clearly, there’s an unserved market,” Mr. Slekys said. “And it’s not as though they have terrestrial or satellite. They only have satellite as a choice.”

Can a new generation of satellites save satellite broadband?

One question the Times didn’t ask is whether increased capacity will mean the end of so-called “Fair Access Policies” that strictly ration the amount of browsing customers can manage before the speed throttle punishment begins.  Neither company is saying.

“When pigs fly,” Adele thinks.  “Sometimes these satellite companies think rural people are just plain stupid.  When you live this far out in the country, you learn to recognize snake oil salesmen when you see them.  Why give us more access when nobody else will provide the service?”

The sudden interest in satellite broadband in the nation’s paper of record is no coincidence.  Both HughesNet and WildBlue are upset they are not getting a bigger piece of the broadband stimulus pie.  The Times notes just $100 million out of $2.5 billion in U.S. Department of Agriculture grants for rural broadband will go to satellite companies.  Raising the question in a newspaper widely read in Washington can’t hurt your cause.

Thomas E. Moore, chief of WildBlue, said satellite technology would be able to serve thousands more rural residents than terrestrial services at a fraction of the cost. He cited a $28 million grant to a nonprofit group in North Carolina to extend fiber to 420 schools and libraries. That same grant could have instead directly served 70,000 residents in North Carolina through satellite service, Mr. Moore said.

“For every one of those people, there are literally hundreds more who won’t have access to stimulus funds,” he said.

But Joseph Freddoso, president of MCNC, the nonprofit group that manages North Carolina’s public education technology network, said satellites were not an ideal primary service for his users, who require a more reliable network for their research and data-heavy applications.

“To compare what we do with what satellite does as a service is an apples-to-oranges comparison,” Mr. Freddoso said, adding that the grant will serve one million students in 37 counties.

Adele is concerned that means even more people will fight for the limited resources satellite has until the next generation of satellites get launched, especially for rural customers trying to share a spot beam in North Carolina.

“These companies have really stopped heavily promoting themselves in parts of rural America because both are already at or over capacity in many places,” she says. “The advertised speeds for some parts of the country are straight out of Alice in Wonderland — total fiction, and with the lag time that comes naturally from sending and receiving data over a distance of 22,000 miles, it’s not getting any better.”

Adele is referring to the satellite providers’ regionally-directed signals.  Much like how satellite TV companies can deliver local stations within limited regions of the country, satellite Internet service can be divided up and delivered to certain parts of the United States.  One beam might serve rural Louisiana, another could be directed to northern California, and so on.  Once a region’s capacity nears saturation, speed and performance suffers.  In areas where capacity remains underused, the service performs better.

Regardless of the promises for enhanced satellite broadband, most cable and fiber broadband providers spend no time pondering the competitive impact, because there is none.  They plan to continue ignoring the likes of WildBlue and HughesNet for years to come.

Kevin Laverty from Verizon told the Times their FiOS fiber network is expensive to deploy but is light years ahead of satellite when it comes to speed and easy upgrades.

“Fiber optic is virtually an unlimited technology,” he said. “All you have to do is change the electronics on either end.”

A spokesman for Time Warner Cable said cable broadband speeds already easily exceed the satellite providers’ proposed new speeds, so they have nothing to worry about.

For most satellite customers, WildBlue and HughesNet are not choices, they are realities if rural Americans want to participate in the broadband revolution.

“Nobody chooses these satellite providers over DSL, cable, fiber, or even most wireless ISPs,” Adele says. “They choose satellite because of the absence of these other providers.”

Should Adele’s local phone company offer her DSL or a wireless broadband provider arrive to deliver service, would she switch away from HughesNet?

“In a shot,” she says. “I dream about throwing their dish into the biggest bonfire I can build and then my neighbors and I visit their headquarters to horse-whip them for years of horrible service and throttled speeds.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Satellite Fraudband.flv[/flv]

We’ve assembled some examples of advertising for both HughesNet and WildBlue, typically seen on networks catering to rural Americans, a brief interview with a representative from WildBlue, and some actual customer… uh… “testimonials” about the quality of service actually received.  Finally, we’ve included the most painful speed test ever encountered.  The original video was silent and some might think it’s actually stuck.  It’s not.  We’ve added some music to spice things up or to increase your pain and suffering.  You might want to get a piece of cake for this. Oh, and one last thing:  If you are using a satellite provider to access Stop the Cap!, forget about the video.  Watching it will eat almost a quarter of your daily usage allowance.  (6 minutes)

An increasing number of Verizon’s DSL customers are discovering their broadband speeds cut, sometimes significantly, by the phone company’s internal line testing “optimization” tool, designed to deliver stable DSL service over a deteriorating, aging network of copper phone lines.

Regular Stop the Cap! reader Smith6612, who is extremely familiar with the technical workings of DSL service, dropped us a note to report a disturbing trend of complaints from Verizon customers who are waking up to speed cuts that often don’t make sense.

At issue here is the highly variable nature of DSL speed and how providers manage it for customers.  Data delivery over America’s aging copper wire, meant-for-voice-calls-network has always been somewhat of a bootstrapped affair, all the way back to the days of dial-up.  Most phone companies have always included detailed disclaimers for customers relying on a phone network envisioned more than 100 years ago for 21st century data communications.  No guarantees on speed or access are among the most common, especially with DSL service which is highly distance and line quality sensitive.

In short, the further away you live or work from the phone company’s exchange (where your individual phone line eventually ends up), the lower the speeds that line can support, if it can support DSL service at all.  Badly managed wiring along the way can dramatically reduce the quality of your service.  Sammy the Squirrel could chew enough insulation off a phone cable to expose it to interference from radio signals.  Water finding its way into cables and connection boxes can turn excellent DSL service into no service at all during bad weather.  Even temperature variations between seasons can eventually corrode, degrade, or destroy fittings, connectors, or any number of vital components necessary for good service.

Unfortunately, if companies do not properly invest resources to maintain their legacy phone networks, service problems are bound to increase sooner or later.

Many DSL customers do not really have an understanding of what speeds they should be getting from their providers, much less be able to easily identify when those speeds have declined.  But they do understand service outages.  When a DSL modem runs into trouble supporting the speeds it is configured for, the unit will try to re-establish the connection.  This “sync” process can occur once a day or continuously — it all depends on what condition the line is in.

While this process is underway, anyone trying to use the Internet is likely to find their service unavailable.  That often results in a service call.

Calling to complain about a troublesome Internet connection is expensive — even when reaching one of the overseas call centers Verizon regularly uses for customer support.  Sending a repair truck to your home is even more costly.

One way to reduce these expenses, without upgrading or improving maintenance of your network, is to simply reduce the speed of the connection.

Verizon ironically calls their line testing process “optimization.”  Verizon’s software is designed to ascertain the maximum possible downstream and upstream speeds a line can continually support.  Those measurements are used as a basis for configuring the customer’s modem, placing a speed limit on how fast of a connection to negotiate, even if a customer is paying for a faster tier of service.  The goal is to stop the modem from losing a connection.

Unfortunately, sometimes customers with no service problems at all take a hit in speed along the way. For several weeks now, many long-standing Verizon DSL customers are discovering their speeds have been reduced and are finding Verizon’s “optimization” procedures directly responsible.  Some are accusing Verizon of recently configuring connections more conservatively to avoid service calls caused, in part, by years of neglect maintaining their landline network.

Bob in North Billerica, Massachusetts has experienced a speed cut himself.

Writing on the Verizon DSL forum at Broadband Reports, he noticed years of stable service at 1.792Mbps/448kbps are no more.  His maximum download speed has been cut to 1.5Mbps.

The same thing happened to Zaii in Philadelphia — despite stable service at higher speeds, he found himself cut back to 1.5Mbps as well.

Jack in Lakeland, Florida discovered his speeds has been “optimized” nearly in half by Verizon, and the company admitted it had capped his maximum speed as part of that process.  He was paying for 1.5Mbps service and received 700kbps-1Mbps service.

“The technician [sent to my house] found I could receive 2.6Mbps but Verizon had me “optimized” at 1.2Mbps because of my location,” Jack writes.  “The technician made a call and had the “optimize” cap removed and I am back to 1.54Mbps.”

It’s the same story in Ridgecrest, California where one Verizon DSL customer suddenly noticed a dramatic speed cut.  He pays for 1.5-2Mbps service and barely manages 1Mbps these days.  A Verizon technician thought even with the sudden speed loss, his speeds were still “pretty good.”

That attitude doesn’t exactly placate Verizon customers paying for more and receiving less.

Often, technicians sent to the home find their own line tests are far more optimistic about the speeds Verizon can support.  The customer in Ridgecrest, for example, learned from a technician his line can support 3Mbps, but Verizon’s corporate “optimization” software says otherwise.

A few anecdotal reports from customers listening to Verizon field technicians suggests many of these issues are being caused by Verizon’s “optimizing” software.  Once a service call commences, knowledgeable technicians manage to override the software settings and reset the connection back to support earlier, faster speeds.  But often these changes last only a few weeks before the problem returns.

Unfortunately, Verizon’s customer service department usually seems unconcerned about speed complaints.

“SDillman” in Uxbridge, Massachusetts relayed his experiences:

I talked Verizon DSL support and got them to run a line test and they confirm the data rate they are seeing is 1.216Mbps, which is exactly what I reported. Unless it drops under 1Mbps they won’t do anything because it is considered an acceptable speed.

What stinks is that up until last week my data rate was a constant 1.792Mbps and all my speed tests showed 1.5Mbps.  I even swapped out the modem today to try my backup and got the same rate.  So I’ve lost 500k for no reason at all and there is nothing I can do about it. It wouldn’t be so bad if I never had it, but losing it just doesn’t sit right with me. I might be looking at alternate providers and or mediums of broadband in the near future because that just leaves a poor taste in my mouth.

A Verizon DSL Modem/Router

Angry, motivated customers can wreak havoc on bad customer service practices, and SDillman managed to overcome Verizon’s speed throttles and shares advice for others in the same situation:

1. Visit and register for an account on Broadband Reports.  Then visit and post a message in the Verizon Direct Support forum.  Those messages are kept private between you and a Verizon technical representative.  They have enhanced skills and authority over the traditional offshore customer service people, and in the words of “SDillman,” “are amazing — after getting the runaround from everyone else, those guys had a proper repair ticket created in no time.”
2. Carefully listen to the technicians that are sent to your home.  The technician in Uxbridge was frustrated that his service visit revealed a line in what he called “pristine condition,” yet Verizon’s “optimization” speed throttle said otherwise and was directly implicated in the speed reduction.  The frustration mounted when Verizon’s own employee encountered the same roadblocks Verizon’s customers do from overseas customer service agents.  In this case, a call center employee attempted to explain the basics of how telephone lines work to a Verizon technician with over 30 years of experience.  The technician also didn’t respond any better to arguments that 1.2Mbps was a good speed when the customer is paying for a higher level of service.
3. Most of these issues are best resolved between a Verizon service technician and employees at the central office exchange serving your home or business. Encourage a direct service call and do not accept over-the-phone assertions about speed issues, particularly from call center employees a half-world away.  If the problems go unresolved, a compliant about bad phone/broadband service filed with your state’s Public Service/Public Utilities Commission may bring about a higher level of response, even if broadband speeds are unregulated.

As SDillman shares, “For now my speeds are back up, until they ‘optimize’ the line again to try to free up some of the congestion on their crowded routers and begin stealing bandwidth [again]. I don’t know if this practice is illegal, but it certainly doesn’t pass the smell test. It feels a lot like going into a gas station and filling up your tank and then finding out 30% of it is water.”