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)

Illinois politicians raked in more than a half-million dollars in campaign contributions from AT&T, yet claim the money had no influence on their decision to let AT&T reduce investment in its landline network, still serving three-quarters of residences and businesses in the state.

Not a single “no” vote was cast in either state legislative body over the latest deregulation bill — a combined vote of 177-0 in the Illinois House and Senate.

But many lawmakers said “yes” to hefty campaign contributions from AT&T.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch counted the money:

The AT&T legislation relaxes state rules on the company regarding its maintenance of basic land-line phone service, essentially allowing it to focus more fully on its wireless business. The bill also gave the company more flexibility in changing the packages it offers to customers without awaiting regulatory approval.

The company presented the measure as crucial to the unfettered advancement of the wireless market. Critics worried that land-line users and others would see a reduction in service from the company, and safeguards were negotiated into the bill with the consumer organization Citizens Utility Board and others. Gov. Pat Quinn signed it into law June 15.

Citizens Utility Board (CUB) Executive Director David Kolata says his group is still worried that land-lines users, rural customers and others may end up left behind as a result of the legislation. He stopped short of blaming AT&T’s heavy campaign donations for the company’s success at getting most of what it wanted from the legislation, but he noted: “Those of us who had concerns about the bill really had no money on our side.”

AT&T gave about $594,000 to state-level Illinois politicians from Jan. 1, 2009, through June 30, 2010, according to the most recent data compiled by Kent Redfield, a political scientist and campaign finance expert with the University of Illinois at Springfield. That puts the company among an elite core of high-powered donors — including Ameren, ComEd, the Illinois State Medical Society several major unions — who gave more than $500,000 during that time.

Lawmakers who receive significant money from donors, while helping usher their bills through Springfield, invariably maintain the support is a matter of shared goals, not a quid pro quo.

“They’ve been supportive of me for the last three or four terms,” state Rep. Kevin McCarthy, D-Orland Park, said of AT&T, which has given him more than $10,000 since 2006. McCarthy was the chief House sponsor of the telecom bill.

“I’m a pro-business Democrat,” he said. “I think it was a great bill for the people of our state. I appreciate their support.”

If only it were that simple.  AT&T’s contributions ebb and flow depending on legislative action items before the state legislature.  For instance, nothing provoked a bigger blizzard of AT&T money than the 2005 purchase of AT&T by SBC Communications.  Seeking regulatory approval for the merger, SBC/AT&T kicked in more than $1.17 million dollars to state legislators. Less than half that amount was handed to legislators the year before.

Money buys attention to legislative issues and can move a low priority agenda item to the front burner, especially if contributions are likely to arrive from all sides of an issue.

AT&T’s latest legislative accomplishment has bought the company the right to focus its attention on its wireless business, with financial requirements to maintain landline service quality eased.  While that might help urban residents in northern Illinois achieve better cell phone service, it could leave many rural, elderly and poor residents with deteriorating basic phone service at potentially higher prices and no broadband.

That is because AT&T’s deregulation campaign left the company off the hook for a requirement it deliver broadband to 90 percent of its landline customers outside of Chicago.

The Moline Dispatch and The Rock Island Argus had a problem with that:

CUB’s biggest objection, which we share, is that the measure as written lets AT&T off the hook from a state order to ensure that its network provide high-speed Internet access to 90 percent of its customers outside Chicagoland — including folks here in the QCA and just about every corner, and the vast middle, of the state. Telecom companies would have you believe that their industry is truly competitive. But in many areas it is not, particularly outside of large urban centers. Adds Mr. Kolata, “This should be of particular concern to residents of central and southern Illinois, as state regulators recently concluded that many areas in the land of Lincoln are ‘grossly underserved.'”

Ask any company, including this one, which has tried to get the monopoly service provider to cooperate in upgrading high-speed Internet access, or at least to get out of the way of others who would, what they think and you’re liable to get an earful. They know from experience that AT&T has shown little interest in any meaningful upgrade or expansion of its facilities in the Illinois Quad-Cities.

The telecom giant and its big communication company allies are calling this a jobs bill, but saying it doesn’t make it so. Indeed, the rewrite will have the opposite effect if it does not require the corporate giant to provide critical technology outside of Chicago.

AT&T’s landline rate plans force many Illinois residents to overpay for their phone service.  The CUB has a consumer fact sheet to help AT&T customers potentially save hundreds of dollars a year.

Windstream CEO Jeff Gardner told a cable news audience Tuesday that the rural phone company already supplies broadband to 100 percent of its service areas where the service is “economically feasible” to provide.  Any additional expansion will only come with the assistance of the federal government’s broadband stimulus program.

“We’re in 23 states — mostly rural markets, so broadband reach is incredibly important to us,” Gardner said on CNBC’s Fast Money program.  “We’re getting to 90 percent of our customers today; in fact, we’ve built out to every customer that’s economically feasible, so the broadband plan that has been announced by the administration is critical to us getting to that last 10 percent.”

In 2006, when Windstream was created from the spun-off landlines Alltel used to own, broadband and business customers represented 35 percent of Windstream’s revenue.  Today that number has jumped to 53 percent.

That’s not surprising to many telecom analysts who suggest broadband will be key to the survival of rural landline phone companies, especially those adjacent to larger communities where cell phone providers extend coverage.

Windstream has applied for $238 million in broadband stimulus money and claims it is in the best position to spend that money to extend broadband to its most rural customers.  It also has a captive customer base in many areas, where no cable competition exists and wireless service is spotty.

Gardner promotes the results of their de facto monopoly, noting that while Verizon and AT&T lose up to 11 percent of their landline customers each year in certain areas, Windstream has lost just three percent.

Still, many think landline phone companies are ultimately a dying business and a real bad investment.  Except Gardner admits the most important reason why people buy stock in his company is the huge dividend payout.

“Most importantly, what people buy our stock for is our dividend,” he said. “We pay $1 dividend — an 8.5 percent yield, so our cash flow is something our investors are always tuned into.”

One of the show hosts acknowledged the huge dividend, but suggested that may be troublesome down the road.

“The dividend is interesting, but it’s getting to the point of where it might be a little too interesting, if you know what I mean,” said Guy Adami.

Adami may be referring to the practice of paying out a larger dividend than a company earns in revenue, something that can rapidly spiral a company into bankruptcy.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC Windstream CEO Jeff Gardner 7-27-10.flv[/flv]

Windstream CEO Jeff Gardner appeared on CNBC’s Fast Money program to talk up Windstream’s prospects for broadband, especially if the government delivers on the company’s request for $238 million in stimulus funds to extend service to its most rural customers.  (4 minutes)

Tim Conway's "Old Man" character from the Carol Burnett Show would be right at home using the Internet in these areas.

Nick Saint at the Business Insider has been sifting through some of the raw data released last week by the Federal Communications Commission regarding broadband service in the United States.  He’s managed to identify the 10 worst counties in America for broadband service based on statistics from 2008.  But two of those probably should have never been on the list.  More on that later.

Harrison County, Mississippi — A single pond in Harrison County is the only known habitat of the critically endangered dusky gopher frog.  It doesn’t have broadband, and neither do most of the residents of this beleaguered part of southern Mississippi.  The cities of Gulfport and Biloxi are in Harrison County, an area torn up by hurricanes from Camille to Katrina.  Now, the beaches are coated in BP oil.  Harrison County can’t get a break. Cable One and AT&T are the primary providers.  Cable One’s dreadful service only reaches well-populated areas and AT&T has taken its sweet time expanding DSL service in the area.

Imperial County, California — The nation’s lettuce basket, Imperial County communities live on a very low fiber-optic diet.  While the soil is rich for crops, the people who plant and harvest them are not.  El Centro, the biggest city, has some broadband available, but with the city having the nation’s highest unemployment rate (27.3 percent), many can’t afford it.  Once in farm country, cable doesn’t offer service and DSL is hard to come by.

Corson County, South Dakota — Representative of the pervasive problem of broadband unavailability on Native American lands, a large part of Corson County includes the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.  Saint notes the FCC found just 12.5 percent of Native Americans subscribe to broadband service, compared to 56 percent of the rest of us.

Ector County, Texas — Odessa’s hometown America-charm was put on display for all to see on NBC’s Friday Night Lights, which celebrated small town high school football.  The reality is less exciting.  Like Harrison County, Ector residents are stuck with Cable One, which loves Internet Overcharging schemes and spied on its Alabama broadband customers.  Good ole AT&T grudgingly provided DSL, if you could get it, until mid-2009 when U-verse finally started to show up.  Now large parts of the county outside of Odessa can’t get that either.

San Juan, Puerto Rico — Usually considered an afterthought by American telecommunications companies, Puerto Rico has long suffered with low quality service.  Caribbean Net News: “Puerto Rico’s broadband penetration rate is unacceptable, with less than 40% of households subscribing to broadband services”, said Carlo Marazzi, President of Critical Hub Networks. “While there are many factors at play, broadband in Puerto Rico is simply too expensive and too slow, when compared to the rest of the nation.  Broadband Internet service in Puerto Rico is 60% more expensive and 78% slower than the United States national median. In a report published this year by the Communication Workers of America (CWA) which ranked broadband speeds in the 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico was ranked in last place (52nd place).

Jasper County, Missouri — Saint noted 18 percent of Jasper County lives below the poverty line, which is not exactly attractive to broadband investment.  Jasper County’s broadband needs are barely met by a cable provider, AT&T, and for some, an electric utility operating a Wireless ISP, providing service where cable and DSL don’t go.  For Jasper County residents, the challenge can be cost as much as access.

Appomattox County, Virginia — Every student known Appomattox was the last stand of Confederate leader Robert E. Lee during the Civil War.  Today, residents there are worked to their last nerve because they can’t easily obtain high speed Internet.  There is no DSL service from the phone company and only limited cable service.  But at least the county is trying.  Let’s let John Spencer, assistant county administrator, tell you in his own words what Appomattox County is doing to deliver broadband for its 14,000 residents:

Bristol Bay Borough, Alaska — The epitome of rural America, large swaths of Alaska are dependent on subsidies paid from the Universal Service Fund for basic telephone service.  Outside of large cities, cable television is a theory.  Telephone company DSL service and wireless are the predominate broadband technologies in rural, expansive Alaska.  For many areas, both are awful.  Bristol Bay Borough is known as the “Red Salmon Capital of the World,” if only because there are far more salmon than there are fishermen to catch them.  Internet access for many of the area’s 953 residents means a trip to the Martin Monsen Library, which offers free Wi-Fi for limited access. If you want Internet at home, it will cost you plenty:

Kyle "What Broadband Problem?" McSlarrow

In Kyle McSlarrow’s world, the only broadband problem is the one invented by the Federal Communications Commission when it claims that service is not being deployed to all Americans on a “reasonable and timely” basis.  The head of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the cable industry’s lobbying group, has declared today’s broadband a U.S. “success story that keeps getting better.”

Writing in the group’s “CableTechTalk” blog, McSlarrow tells his readers that 95 percent of Americans already have broadband service available to them that meets the 4Mbps minimum speed standard proposed by the FCC, so where is the big problem?

McSlarrow’s interest in the economics of rural broadband is ironic considering the cable industry routinely bypasses rural Americans.  Where cable lines do predominate, meeting the FCC’s anemic 4Mbps minimum speed standard is not the biggest problem — cost is.  Where cable lines don’t reach, speed is an issue for many wireless and DSL subscribers.  For others, broadband service is not available at any price.

McSlarrow plays cable’s advantage on speed issues to promote minimum speeds higher than those sought by phone companies like AT&T and Verizon.  Of course, cable broadband does not rely on antiquated copper wire telephone networks.  In rural areas, many of these networks are held together with minimal investment.  DSL at any speed can be a luxury when available.

McSlarrow’s recognition that most of rural America will continue to be served by telephone companies doesn’t stop the cable industry from seeking an advantage over their nearest competitors by advocating for reduced subsidies for rural areas and policies that guarantee no potential competitor can ever see a dime in government broadband money.

Because the report plainly acknowledges that there is no reasonable business case to be made for extending broadband facilities to many of the unserved homes.  So instead of viewing the report’s finding as an indictment of broadband providers, it’s  perhaps better read as a statement of principle by the Chairman and two commissioners that, in their opinion, broadband already should be universally available, and, if there is no business case for that universal deployment, the government may have to step in to achieve it. So far as that goes, we agree.  For example, we support the report’s call to action on specific items that will speed broadband deployment to unserved communities.  Immediate FCC action on Universal Service Fund (USF) reform and pole attachment policy is critical to connecting unserved areas.

As explained in comments we filed last week, our industry strongly supports the USF reforms recommended in the National Broadband Plan (NBP).  To fund the FCC’s broadband USF proposals, we recommend adopting our proposal – filed in a November 2009 rulemaking petition – to reduce subsidies in rural areas where ample phone competition exists.  The sooner the Commission reduces unnecessary funding in the existing high-cost support program, the sooner it can direct funding to broadband deployment and adoption.

McSlarrow’s comments neglect to tell the whole story about what the NCTA actually wrote in its comments filed with the FCC:

The 4Mbps/1Mbps standard reflects today’s marketplace reality that most consumers choose not to purchase the highest speed tiers that are offered by their broadband provider. By setting a standard based on the services actually purchased by consumers, the Plan strikes the appropriate balance – not so low that it deprives consumers of the ability to purchase a service that meets their needs and not so high that it will require a significant infusion of new government funding.

Second, based on this definition of broadband, the Plan found that the vast majority of Americans – 95% of households – already have access to broadband, and that 80% of those consumers live in geographic areas served by two or more providers. For these areas where broadband has already been deployed, there is no basis for any increase in support; indeed, as NCTA has demonstrated, in many of these areas there is no basis for any high-cost support at all.

Consequently, the only areas that should see an increase in the support they receive are those areas that do not have broadband and qualify for CAF support, i.e., areas where there currently is no business case for private investment in broadband facilities.

In Great Britain, speeds promised don't match speeds delivered. The FCC is studying whether the same is true in the United States.

McSlarrow is disingenuous about Americans’ interest in improved broadband.  It’s not surprising many do not choose the highest speed tiers available from telephone and cable providers when one considers the premium prices charged for that service.  Some NCTA members charge $99 for 50/5Mbps service, which in other countries like Hong Kong sells for a fraction of that price.  One need only consider Google’s plan to deliver 1Gbps service to a handful of American communities.  It’s easier to count the communities that were not interested in this super-fast service.

The cable industry can afford to relent on a 4Mbps minimum speed standard for downloading as virtually all cable broadband providers already offer “standard service” plans well above that rate.  The cable industry’s own “lite” plans, usually 1.5Mbps or less, are not exactly the industry’s most popular.  Americans will choose higher speed service at the right price.

Broadband availability figures have become an important political issue, which is why controlling broadband mapping is so important to cable and phone companies.  Being able to offer that “95 percent of Americans already have access,” a figure in dispute by the way, can make a big difference in the debate.  As Stop the Cap! readers have seen repeatedly, broadband maps that depict broadband service as widely available in many areas actually is not, especially from phone company DSL service, which depends heavily on the quality of the existing infrastructure.

Most importantly, the NCTA seeks a new, even stricter standard for broadband funding under Universal Service Fund reform that would immediately deny money to any applicant that cannot prove there is no chance for any private investment in broadband.  As we’ve seen from broadband improvement applications filed under the Obama Administration’s broadband stimulus program, cable and phone companies routinely object to most proposals, claiming “duplication” of existing broadband service even in areas they have chosen not to provide service.  The NCTA would have us set the bar even lower, allowing any private entity to kill funding projects based solely on their claimed interest in providing the service themselves.

One sensitive spot the FCC did manage to hit was taking providers to task for advertising broadband speeds they don’t actually provide to customers.  While DSL speeds vary based on distance from the telephone company’s central office, cable broadband speeds vary depending on how many customers are online at any particular moment.  The cable industry’s shared access platform can create major bottlenecks in high-use neighborhoods, dramatically reducing speeds for every customer.  While some cable operators are better than others at re-dividing neighborhoods to increase capacity, others won’t spend the money to upgrade an area until service becomes intolerable.  That means consumers sold 10Mbps service may actually find it running at less than half that during evening hours.

A sampling of British cable and telephone company DSL providers, all of which aren't giving their customers what they are paying for.

McSlarrow’s view is there isn’t a problem there either — the FCC is relying on old data:

The key statistics in the report are drawn from Form 477 data for December 2008, data that was out of date when it was released earlier this year and is now 18 months old.  Broadband providers have made two subsequent Form 477 filings (with another one scheduled in a few weeks), so the reliance on stale data is frustrating.

Equally troubling is the Commission’s repetition of the NBP’s claim that “actual” broadband speeds are only half of “advertised” speeds.   After the NBP was released, we submitted an expert technical report demonstrating that the comScore data used was deeply flawed.  Since then, cable and telco ISPs have been working constructively with Commission staff on a hardware-based testing regime that should produce more accurate results.  Given the hard work that has been devoted to produce accurate speed measurements, it is disheartening that the 706 Report chose to perpetuate the NBP’s flawed speed data conclusions.

Finally, some of the data relied on in the 706 Report is not publicly available.  The report relies extensively on a cost model created for the NBP, but that model hasn’t been released, making it impossible to validate its results.  The Commission also repeatedly refers to an FCC staff report on international trends, but that report also has not been released.

The frustration McSlarrow writes about is shared by cable subscribers stuck in overloaded neighborhoods where service does not come close to marketed speeds.  The FCC is conducting an independent speed analysis that goes beyond speedtest data, and the results will be forthcoming.  In other countries where similar speed claims have not met reality, providers were usually found culpable for promising service they didn’t deliver.

Just ask Ofcom, the British regulatory agency charged with addressing this dilemma.  Earlier today they released evidence that 97 percent of UK broadband customers were not actually getting the speeds they were promised, and the gap between marketed speed and actual speed was growing. Will things be any different for American providers who use fine print to disclaim their bold marketing promises about speed?  Time will tell.

Finally, McSlarrow’s concerns about withheld data is ironic enough to call it a “pot to kettle” moment.  As those challenged with broadband mapping can attest, nobody keeps raw data about broadband availability and speeds closer to the vest than cable and telephone companies.

Of course, the ultimate agenda of the NCTA is to defend its industry’s record in broadband service, which means reducing any broadband challenges into little more than whining by Americans who don’t know how good they have it.