Less than half of Americans surveyed by PC Magazine report they are very satisfied with the broadband speed delivered by their Internet service provider.

PC Magazine released a comprehensive study this month on speed, provider satisfaction, and consumer opinions about the state of broadband in their community.

The publisher sampled more than 17,000 participants, checking their actual broadband speeds, and questioned them about their overall satisfaction with their online access.

The findings indicate consumers live with what provider they can get.  Even lower rated providers scored “satisfactory,” in part because consumers don’t have many choices with which to compare.

In the war between coaxial cable modem vs. copper wire DSL technology-of-the-1990s battle, PC Magazine declared the cable industry the winner, consistently delivering faster speeds more reliably than possible with telephone company DSL.  Overall, the average cable speed was “688 Kbps, while the average DSL lets you surf at just 469 Kbps—cable connections, on average, are 47 percent faster.”  Those speed measurements are based on actual web page and content delivery, not on marketed available speed.

In fact, users rated DSL an unsatisfying service, with only 20% of rural and suburban customers very impressed with DSL.  But for many who have no other choice, 50% think it’s good enough.

Or better than nothing.

One DSL provider did extremely well speed-wise in PC Magazine‘s survey, however.  Frontier Communications was rated as the fastest DSL provider in the nation, averaging “real-world” speeds of 724 Kbps, according to the survey.  But even they could only score a 20% customer satisfaction rating, with 30% dissatisfied.

There was one technology that did much, much worse.  Satellite broadband, the last possible choice for many Americans between dial-up and going without, is provided by companies like HughesNet and WildBlue, and they are unmitigated disasters in consumers’ eyes.

Just 6% of Hughes customers were satisfied, with a whopping 74% dissatisfied.  That’s because satellite broadband is extremely slow, averaging just 145 Kbps, heavily capped, and very expensive.  But for some rural Americans who live too far away from their local phone company central office, and will never see cable television, it’s likely their only choice.  Even mobile broadband signals won’t reach many of these consumers.

So what is the good news from all of this?  There is one technology that, hands-down, beats all of the rest — fiber optics to the home.  The nation’s top-rated ISP in PC Magazine’s survey is Verizon FiOS, with 71% satisfied, and just 6% dissatisfied.  Other fiber optic providers, mostly smaller local, regional, or municipal systems, scored 61% satisfaction.  Just one cable company matched that rating – Cablevision’s Optimum Online.

AT&T, with a combination of DSL and their newer U-verse platform, did considerably worse, with 38% satisfied and 24% dissatisfied.

Clearly, subscriber satisfaction comes highest from fiber optic broadband.

In statewide rankings, it all boils down to where you live.  The more populated states and those with large cities often scored higher than those with lots of wide open rural areas.  The larger the community you live in, the better the chance for fast, quality service.  In states like Wyoming or South Dakota, where more than 57% of customers reported dissatisfaction, it’s more about living with what you’re stuck with.

Astroturfers like Scott Cleland got all excited yesterday about another misinformed piece about broadband usage caps from George Ou, a technology blogger who previously gained infamy from his strident opposition to Net Neutrality and his ridicule of the “scare-mongers” who predicted throttled speeds, multi-tiered broadband service, penalties and blocks for using Voice Over IP services, and providers trying to control what you see on the net.

Back in 2006, he wrote a three-pager on ZDNet lambasting Save The Internet, MoveOn, and other Net Neutrality proponents who didn’t agree with Ou’s position that this was simply a technology issue.  He accused the groups of hysteria at a fever pitch over their concerns Net Neutrality opposition was much more about politics, profit, and protection of the providers’ business models.

With positions like that, Ou need not ever worry about job security because his rhetorical stars are in perfect alignment with big telecommunications companies.  I’m sure as long as he joins the broadband tug of war on the side of AT&T and other big providers, some policy institute, astroturf group, or other industry-friendly job would always be there for him to take.

Oh wait.  He has.  But more on that later.

These days, Ou has been pondering broadband usage caps, our bread and butter issue on Stop the Cap!

You do not get a cookie if you guessed he’s all for them, because that would be too easy.

Ou decided that the recent comparison between broadband usage caps in Japan and the United States by Chiehyu Li and James Losey of the New America Foundation, was… problematic.  That usually means we are about to get a technological-jargon-cannon barrage in an effort to suggest those folks at the New America Foundation ‘just don’t understand how the Internet works.’

You decide:

Li and Losey point out that while Japanese ISPs caps the upstream; they are generous with unlimited downstream while American ISPs are beginning to cap both the upstream and downstream.  But this is a flawed analysis because capping the upstream effectively cuts to total downstream peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic to the same levels.  And because P2P is one of the most heavily used application on the Internet accounting for the vast majority of Japanese Internet traffic, cutting upstream usage greatly reduce all P2P traffic and all Internet usage which was necessary because their Internet backbones were severely congested.  I’ve argued that it is far more efficient to manage the network but until then the caps are needed.

Another problem with Li and Losey’s analysis is that it only looks at the usage cap without an analysis of the duty cycle and its ramifications.  When we compare the usable duty cycle between ISPs in Japan compared to ISPs in the U.S. derived from Li and Losey’s data, we see a completely different picture.  By splitting the U.S. ISP usage caps (some of these caps are only in proposal phase) into an upstream and downstream cap proportional to the upstream/downstream connection speeds, I was able to generate Figure 1 below.  What it actually shows is that U.S. broadband providers have usage caps that allow users to use their Internet connection far more frequently than users in Japan.  So while a user in Japan is capped to 40 minutes a day of upstream Internet usage, which indirectly caps download speed because it severely trims the number and generosity of P2P seeders.  AT&T’s proposed DSL usage caps (similar to other DSL providers) allow for 1111 minutes of usage per day on the upstream and 97 minutes on the downstream per day.  So broadband consumers who are dissatisfied with their tiny Time Warner usage caps can simply switch to their DSL provider.

I guess that wraps that up.  Or not.

Ou wants us to assume quite a bit in his own analysis.  His contention that the “vast majority” of Japanese Internet traffic is peer-to-peer is “proven” by linking to an earlier article… written by him… saying just that.  But let’s grant Ou the premise that peer-to-peer is at the epicenter of bandwidth congestion in Japan.  Ou defends Japanese providers for specifically targeting the upstream traffic, pointing out stingy torrent users that don’t give as much as they get will automatically be speed limited during downloads (Bit Torrent’s way of equal sharing).  But he never extends the upstream cap argument to the United States, where he implies a similar traffic overload is occurring.  Instead, he merely acknowledges that domestic providers are experimenting with caps that limit both uploading and downloading, impacting every broadband user, not just those “problem” peer to peer users.

Caps.  The necessary evil?

Ou is okay with the equivalent of dealing with a pesky fly in the kitchen by setting the house on fire.  Doing that might solve the fly problem, but makes living there unpleasant at best in the future.

In fact, the impetus for dealing with the peer to peer “problem” in Japan turns out to be as much about copyright politics as bandwidth management.¹

I also have no idea why Ou would spend time developing a “duty cycle” formula in an effort to try and convince Americans that those generous looking caps in Japan are actually worse for you than the paltry ones tested in the United States.  His formula is dependent on the speed levels offered by Japanese vs. American providers to work.  But then Ou tries to debunk the speeds on offer in Japan as more fiction than reality, and throws his own “duty cycle” formula under the bus as a result:

Li and Losey also paint a dire picture that Japan has 10 or more times the connectivity speed as the US, but the most accurate real-world measurement of Internet throughput in Japan according to the Q1-2009 results from Akamai’s State of the Internet report indicates that Japanese broadband customers only average about 8 Mbps.

Ou then exposes he is completely clueless about the state of broadband in some of the communities that actually cope with usage caps, or were threatened with them.  Ou’s suggestion that unhappy Time Warner Cable customers could simply leave a capped Road Runner for DSL service from the phone company leaves residents in Rochester, New York cold.  For them, that means coping with an Acceptable Use Policy from Frontier that defines 5GB per month as appropriate for their DSL customers.  In Beaumont, Texas, the limbo dance of caps last left residents picking between a cap as low as 20GB with AT&T or a 40GB “standard plan” from Time Warner Cable, before Time Warner dropped the “experiment” for now.

Ou should have just suggested customers in western New York and the Golden Triangle just pick up and move to another city.  It would have been more realistic than his “if you don’t like them, switch” solution.  It also presumes there is a viable DSL service to switch to, as well as whether or not the service can provide a sufficiently speedy connection to take advantage of today’s broadband applications.

And here is where you can draw lines between the special interests, astroturfers, industry-connected folks and actual real, live, consumers.

Ou brings out the shiny keys, waving them in consumers’ faces telling them to look somewhere else for answers:

So the reality is that usage caps isn’t what Americans should be focusing on and the priority should be to encourage more next generation broadband deployment.

Internet Overcharging schemes that charge consumers up to 300% more for their broadband service, with no corresponding improvement in service, is not the problem for Ou, but it certainly was for Time Warner Cable customers in several cities chosen for their Overcharging experiment.  The need to encourage more broadband deployment is fine, but American broadband customers will be broke long before that ever happens without some other pro-consumer solutions.

Ou has a problem though.  He has a new employer.

A corporate restructuring at ZDNet in the spring of 2008 meant Ou was free to pursue other professional interests, and wouldn’t you know, he turned up as Policy Director of “pro-commerce” Digital Society.  That’s a “free market think tank” website whose domain name is administered by one Jon Henke in… you guessed it, suburban Washington, DC (Arlington, Virginia to be exact).

The sharks are in the water.

Henke, Executive Director of Digital Society, and presumably Ou’s boss, has quite the agenda of his own, and it’s not consumer driven.  He has a long history of involvement in conservative politics, which brings new questions about how Henke would approach “encouraging next generation broadband deployment.”  Does he favor broadband stimulus money?  How about municipal broadband competition?

In addition to his work with Digital Society, Henke also runs something called the DC Signal Team.  What’s that?  Let’s see:

DC Signal is a strategic intelligence and communications firm specializing in new media consulting. Based in the Washington, DC area, we work with a range of clients — corporations, trade associations, campaigns, and individuals — to craft and execute an effective online strategy.  We provide timely intelligence and analysis, as well as communications that can reach and resonate with key opinion makers, policy experts, and elected officials.

Our expertise in new media communications sets DC Signal apart, allowing us to filter out the background noise on the Internet to deliver just the most relevant information, make creative, appropriate recommendations based on that information, and target communications directly to the most influential audiences.

I love the smell of plastic grass in the morning.

That’s right, folks.  DC Signal is a classic PR firm that uses targeted communications to reach the most appropriate audience for their campaigns.  Need to reach consumers and sell them on a pro-industry position?  Set up a “grassroots” group to do it.  Need to baffle the media, lawmakers and opinion leaders with industry BS?  Set up “authoritative” websites to deliver carefully filtered “relevant information.”  What better way to do that than with a blog like Digital Society?

But wait, there’s more.

Henke is also working for an innocuously named group called Arts+Labs, which starts its mission statement out innocently enough:

Arts+Labs is a collaboration between technology and creative communities that have embraced today’s rich Internet environment to deliver innovative and creative digital products and services to consumers. From the early development of motion picture technology, voice recordings and radio to today’s 3D computer graphics, streaming digital movies, “on-demand” entertainment,  online games, news and information, innovative technologies and creativity have always gone hand in hand to enrich our understanding and appreciation of arts, entertainment and culture.

Then things become more ominous.

At the same time, Arts+Labs is working to educate consumers about how net pollution – spam, malware, computer viruses and illegal file trafficking – threatens to transform the Internet from an essential catalyst to safely deliver this content to consumers, into a viral distribution mechanism that will choke off the Internet for consumers and future innovators and creators alike.

I can understand the threats from spam, malware, and computer viruses — what groups out there actually advocate for these? — but the “illegal file trafficking” thrown in at the end had me wondering.

I smell industry money, probably from providers who oppose Net Neutrality and want to throttle peer to peer applications, from Hollywood content producers who want to keep their content off The Pirate Bay, the music industry who is always paranoid about piracy, and of course equipment manufacturers who sell the hardware that does the bandwidth management.

So who “partners” with Arts+Labs?

• Viacom
• NBC Universal
• AT&T
• Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI)
• Verizon
• Microsoft
• Songwriters Guild of America
• Cisco
• American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)

There you go.

Arts+Labs tries to be clever about its agenda, not so much with strident opposition to Net Neutrality, but instead promoting “consumer interests” by insisting that providers fully disclose the abuse about to be heaped on their customers.  In a press release in June, the group advocated its own national broadband strategy recommendations to the FCC:

A Safe Internet and Smart Management Will Boost Digital Society

It also said that a safe Internet must be a core part of a national broadband strategy and that the failure to protect online data and crack down on net pollution such as malware, spam, phishing and other Internet crime will erode the value of the Internet and discourage broadband adoption.

“To drive adoption and build a successful digital society that reaches every American, all of us must accept responsibility for minimizing online risks, protecting users’ privacy, and ensuring data security against malicious online activity and cybercrime,” A+L said.

It also urged the Commission to embrace “smart management tools and techniques.”

“Used effectively, smart management of our networks will stimulate broadband adoption by expanding the scope of activities available to consumers, by addressing network congestion, and by defending against hacking, phishing, identity theft and other forms of cybercrime,” the filing added.

But it said network operators must not abuse management tools to interfere with competitors or consumers rights and noted:  “In a digital society, network managers owe their customers transparency about their network management practices, including proactive disclosure of new policies or innovations that may affect users’ experiences.”

A+L Urges Collaborative Effort, Says Pragmatism Should Trump Ideology

It also urged the Commission to avoid unnecessary regulatory constraints that would interfere with the ability of content providers, network operators and other Internet-related businesses to experiment with new business models and to offer innovative new services and options to consumers.

Finally, A+L urged every Internet industry and every individual who uses the Internet to work together to achieve the nation’s broadband goals.

“Building an inclusive digital society and achieving our broadband goals will require all of us to think outside of silos, to choose pragmatic and effective policies over ideology, and to drive broadband adoption by encouraging the creation of exciting content, protecting intellectual property, and ensuring that the Internet is a safe place to be.  And, the guiding principle on every issue should be to find the solution that moves broadband forward,” A+L concluded.

Broadband throttles and Internet Overcharging aren’t anti-consumer — they are “new policies or innovations.”  As long as the provider discloses them, all is well.

The ideology reference in the press release is remarkable, considering the people who involve themselves in Arts+Media represent a veritable hackathon of the DC political elite, from Mike McCurry, former Clinton Administration press secretary, Mark McKinnon, who advised President George W. Bush, to the aforementioned Jon Henke, who was hired originally to do “new media” damage control for former Virginia senator George “Macaca” Allen and then went to work for the presidential campaign of Fred Thompson.

As usual, the only people not on Arts+Labs’ People page are actual consumers.

To wrap up this party of special interests, which consumers aren’t invited to, we wind our way back to the home page of Digital Society, which features a familiar roster of recommended blogs and websites to visit.  Among them:

• Arts & Labs blog (Henke works with them)
• Broadband Politics (run by Richard Bennett, who forgot he worked for a K Street Lobbyist, actually on K Street (read the comments at the bottom of the linked article)
• Cisco Policy Blog (also a partner with Arts+Labs, has a direct interest in selling the bandwidth management hardware)
• Verizon Policy Blog (also a partner with Arts+Labs, and an interested provider in this issue)

In the beginning of this piece, I recited some of the “scare mongering” Ou accused groups of engaging in on the Net Neutrality debate back in 1996.  The first major Net Neutrality battle was with Comcast over bandwidth throttles.  The barely-conscious FCC under Kevin Martin spanked Comcast (who sued, of course) and we’ve been in a holding pattern ever since.  But the predictions have become remarkably true north of the American border, where Canada endures all of the things Ou swore up and down in 1996 would never happen.

• Most major broadband providers in Canada throttle the speeds of peer to peer applications, reducing speeds to a fraction promised in their marketing materials.
• Most major broadband providers in Canada not only charge customers based on broadband speed, but also by the volume of data consumed, causing spikes in customer bills and a reduction in usage allowances in some cases.  Customers now face overlimit fees and penalties for exceeding the Internet usage ration they are granted each month.
• In 2006, Shaw Communications in Canada tried sticking a $10 monthly fee on broadband customers wanting to use Voice Over IP telephone service.  Vonage Canada complained loudly at the time.
• As far as controlling what you see online, that’s already in the cards in the States, if the cable industry has any say in the matter.

With a pliable FCC, what exists in Canada today will exist in the United States tomorrow without Net Neutrality protections enacted into law.

(footnoted material appears below the break)

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The Communications Workers of America released their 2009 Report on Internet Speeds in All 50 States, and the results show the United States continuing to lag well behind other nations in providing citizens with advanced, fast, and affordable connections to the Internet.  Little improvement has been made in the past year, when CWA released its 2008 findings. (Stop the Cap! reader Dave passed along word the report was in.)

The average download speed for the nation was 5.1 megabits per second (mbps) and the average upload speed was 1.1 mbps. This was only a nine-tenths of a megabit per second increase (from 4.2 mbps to 5.1 mbps) since last year. At this rate, it will take the United States 15 years to catch up with current Internet speeds in South Korea. And when compared to the rest of the world, the United States ranks 28th in average Internet connection speeds.

The CWA does have an interest in this fight.  It’s a labor union whose members work for many of the nation’s telecommunications providers.  CWA seeks a national broadband strategy that just happens to fall in line with the interests of consumers — increased speeds, more rural broadband expansion, more affordable access, and Net Neutrality protections.  CWA doesn’t take a formal position on Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps, at least not yet.

The report measured broadband speed based on more than 400,000 Americans who voluntarily participated in a speed test offered on the Speed Matters website.  The results were collected and covered a significant part of the country, illustrating real world results of ordinary consumers, not simply the speeds touted by broadband providers in marketing materials.

The CWA report calls out the inadequacy of the deregulated free market approach to deliver broadband service consistently to all Americans.  In fact, the disparity of access and the tiny incremental upgrades in speed suggest it will take at least 15 years for the United States to match the speeds enjoyed today in South Korea, which can rightly be called a world leader in broadband even while this country cannot.

South Koreans enjoy an average connection speed of 20.4Mbps (four times faster than the United States).  Japan provides residents with 15.8Mbps, Sweden offers 12.8Mbps, the Netherlands 11Mbps, and 24 others who do a better job at delivering speedy broadband than their American counterparts.

Broadband remains too expensive for the slow service we enjoy today.  That promotes a digital divide between those affluent enough to afford broadband service and those who are struggling to make ends meet (88% of those earning more than $100,000 a year have service in their homes, while just 35% of those earning under $20,000 subscribe).

Another problem highlighted in the report is the ongoing problem of rural broadband access.  While 67% of urban and suburban residents subscribe to broadband, only 46% of rural households do, assuming they can even obtain service.

Rural areas are by far the most likely to encounter slow service, typically 1-3Mbps provided by DSL from the local phone company.

Until 2009, the United States was the only industrialized country in the world without a national broadband plan.  The Federal Communications Commission is expected to release one shortly, but only time will tell whether the plan will primarily benefit consumers or the special interests, including providers seeking to protect their monopoly or duopoly market position, and get taxpayer dollars to finance broadband projects that provide slow and expensive service to consumers.

The CWA has some recommendations:

Governmental action — in partnership with the private sector — is essential to stimulate broadband investment and adoption. Other countries are far ahead of us. It is time for the United States to take action.

• Universality.  Just as government policies helped bring affordable telephone service to everyone, our policies should ensure that every individual, family, business, and community has access to and can use high speed Internet at a price they can afford — regardless of their income or geographic location.
• High Speed.  Speed matters on the Internet. U.S. policies should promote higher Internet speeds and higher capacity networks. The United States should adopt policies to get us to 10 megabits per second upstream and 1 megabit per second downstream by 2010. New benchmarks in succeeding years should expand the number of households capable of sending and receiving multiple channel high-definition video and reach the global standard of 100 mbps.
• Open Internet.  We must protect free speech on the Internet so that people are able to go to the websites they want and download or upload what they want when they want on the Internet. There should be no degradation of service or censoring any lawful content on the Internet. At the same time, reasonable network management is necessary to preserve an effective and open Internet. Most important, building high-capacity networks will ensure that all Americans have fast, open access to all content on the Internet.
• Consumer Protections and Good Jobs.  Public policies should include consumer and worker protections, should support the growth of good, career jobs, and require the public reporting of deployment, actual speed, price, and service.

Below the jump, we’ve assembled a selection of maps and graphics showing where broadband is today in three of states with our largest reader base — New York, Texas, and North Carolina.

… Continue Reading

A Broadband Reports reader from Zephyrhills, Florida was invited by E-Rewards, an online focus group, to give views on some new names and pricing for higher speed Road Runner tiers.  “Molitar,” a customer of Bright House Networks, which also markets broadband service under the Road Runner name, reports being asked impressions about new speed tiers, including faster downstream speeds of 30Mbps or more and one offering 5Mbps upload speed.

At least five different names were offered, with consumers invited to give their impressions.  Among the names: Road Runner Flash, Road Runner Extreme,  and Road Runner Lightning. “Molitar” preferred Road Runner Extreme.

Also asked: what kind of pricing customers would be willing to pay for the new premium speed services.

Assuming the facts were as the reader reported, this would likely impact residents in New York City first, where DOCSIS 3 upgrades are well underway. As upgrades begin in other cities, presumably such speed tiers would also be introduced. Those reported speeds would not likely be offered in areas where upgrades have not taken place.

Time Warner Cable has been one of the more stingy providers with upstream speeds. Many cities, including Rochester, New York have never seen a speed increase for standard Road Runner service since the product was introduced more than 10 years ago. At just 384kbps, uploading large files has been painfully slow. Road Runner Turbo, a $9.95 monthly add-on, is coveted for uploaders if only for the increase in upstream speed to 1Mbps, at least in Rochester. But many other Time Warner Cable markets offer Turbo upload speeds of 2Mbps.

Speed based tier pricing is welcomed by Stop the Cap! We are supporters of providing customers with the choice of different pricing levels of service based on different speeds. “Heavy downloaders” and other “extreme” users of broadband service will gladly pay premium pricing for better service, providing enhanced revenue for operators like Time Warner Cable and bringing positive goodwill from customers who are anxious to see speed increases and are willing to pay to get them.

What we oppose, of course, is Time Warner Cable introducing consumption-based billing which curtails innovation, punishes subscribers for using the service as it was marketed to them in the first place, and sets up scenarios for massive profit-taking from consumers subjected to overlimit fees and penalties.

Time Warner Cable’s latest investor conference call featured company executives touting their initiative to give Time Warner customers access to as much content as they want, when they want, and where they want to see it. If they intend to honor that commitment, punitive consumption-based pricing denies customers the ability to access as much content as they want, makes them think twice about getting it out of fear of running over their “allowance,” and will drive customers to look elsewhere for broadband service, if not also taking their video and telephone business to another provider as well.

As for me personally, I’m not thrilled with any of those product names. Road Runner “Flash” does nothing for me at all, except reminisce about Roscoe P. Coltrane’s lazy basset hound with that name from the TV series Dukes of Hazzard (Friday night in our household growing up didn’t provide me with remote control privileges). Road Runner “Extreme” is already overused as a concept, and I frankly thought it was already in use. Road Runner “Lightning” reminds me of Frontier Communications’ older name for DSL service: Lightning Link.

I suppose Road Runner Max might be better, perhaps supplemented with the download speed as a suffix. Road Runner Max 30 for 30Mbps downloading, and so on.

Share your ideas in the comments section. Maybe we’ll offer it to them if they promise to honor the fact gas gauges belong on automobiles, not on broadband service.

Verizon issued a press release this morning celebrating the availability of DSL service to nearly 200 new lines in Albright, West Virginia.  They even pinpointed the service expansion to “areas along Coal Lick Road near the intersection of Route 22 and 26.”

While that presumably makes residents on Coal Lick Road happy, vast areas of West Virginia remain unserved by DSL or any other broadband service option, except for prohibitively expensive satellite Internet.  Preston County has 30,000 residents spread 0ut over 651 square miles, and is typical of many sparsely populated counties in West Virginia.  The nearest large city is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Verizon has stopped referring to its broadband solution for copper wire telephone networks as “DSL,” now marketing it as “Verizon High Speed Internet” instead.  Speed is in the eye of the customer, however.  Like most rural areas with Verizon DSL, the entry level tier offers speeds only up to 1Mbps downstream and 384kbps for the upstream.  Customers willing to pay more can select the “premium” service offering up to 3Mbps downstream and 768kbps upstream.  In larger towns and smaller cities, service up to 7.1Mbps may be available.

“Verizon is enabling more residents and businesses across West Virginia to make the high-speed connections that are important to them,” said B. Keith Fulton, president of Verizon West Virginia.  “Verizon’s investment in the Albright area means that more customers have access to affordable High Speed Internet service, backed by the reliability and security of Verizon’s network.”

Verizon is also demonstrating its commitment to West Virginia by leaving the state, intending to sell off its telephone service to Frontier Communications, a deal still pending regulatory approval.

For West Virginia, broadband expansion to just a few hundred homes, warranting a press release, demonstrates the incremental, slow progress of broadband expansion outside of urban America.