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.

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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.

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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.

High speed data revenue continued to be one of the few bright spots for Time Warner Cable in the second quarter of 2009.  Time Warner Cable’s broadband division increased revenues by 10% in the six months ending June 30, from $2,026,000,000 dollars  in 2008 to $2,224,000,000 dollars in 2009, (9% measuring last quarter only) as a result of continued subscriber growth and an increase in commercial networking and transport revenues.

At the same time, the company announced further declines in most capital expenses to administer that network.  Although the company increased spending on scalable infrastructure (improvements to the existing network) for the six months ending June 30th from $258 million in June 2008 to $334 million in June 2009, the majority of that expense was related to introducing Switched Digital Video (SDV), a method of allowing the cable company to deliver additional digital television channels to neighborhoods.

Upgrade costs plummeted in the six months ending June 30th, from $147 million in June 2008 to $86 million in June 2009.

The costs for Time Warner Cable’s broadband revenue continue their rapid decline, dropping by 14%, from $77 million dollars in the six months ending June 30th 2008 to just $66 million dollars in the six months ending June 30th, 2009.

Despite the increase in revenues and decrease in costs, Time Warner Cable is still committed to revisiting its Internet Overcharging schemes going forward, with company officials admitting on a conference call this morning they are going to take a look at broadband pricing going forward.

One potential reason is that broadband is a success while the company continues to battle with revenue challenges on the video side of the business.  Most of the increasing costs facing Time Warner Cable are from programming expenses, which continue to increase.  The company also continued to face challenges from subscribers dropping cable television service, which they attribute to the bad economy.  Investors were anxious about the challenging results and from competition from telephone and satellite.  AT&T continues to be the most formidable challenger for Time Warner Cable across its service area, with continued expansion of U-verse.  Company officials downplayed Verizon FiOS’ impact on Time Warner Cable, noting expansion of Verizon FiOS seems to have stalled due to economic challenges.

Nevertheless, the company is moving foward to expand DOCSIS 3 in just one city in 2009 – metropolitan New York.

We’ll have additional coverage, including soundbites and further details coming shortly.

[Update: July 14/12:27am — Our sharp eyed readers contested the accuracy of the speed chart shown below almost immediately after publication.  Eric, who pens for Photography Bay we linked to below, replied to my inquiry about the data.  His reply:  “The speed estimates come from Verizon. I was more concerned with the upload figures; however, now that you mention it, it looks like Verizon may have the 80% calculation on the wrong side of their equation for the download portion of the chart. The upload chart looks right with FiOS at 10x faster than cable; however, the download chart shows a 20% speed increase when it should show a 5x speed increase. Nice catch.” I suppose we should let Verizon know. Thanks to our readers who caught the math error.  Hopefully their billing is more accurate.]

With the announcement by Rogers that their particular implementation of DOCSIS 3 would bring speeds of 25-50Mbps for downloads, it was curious that the company elected to only make incremental increases in upload speed.  Maxing out at just 2Mbps for uploading, Rogers continues the mindset that broadband subscribers don’t care about upload speed — just download speed.

That may have been true in the past, but today’s broadband consumer is woefully underserved with slow upload speeds, which hamper uploading pictures, home movies, and other content to share with friends, family members, or like we do here, the rest of the connected world as a whole.

In Rochester and many other Time Warner Cable cities, upload speed has remain unchanged for standard service customers for more than a decade — just 384kbps.  Paying $10 more for Turbo service, if only to get 1Mbps (which isn’t exactly “blazing fast” these days either), is the only alternative.

Fiber to the home services like Verizon FiOS and some municipally run fiber systems are changing the paradigm for upload speeds, providing customers with substantially faster service — typically far more than telephone company DSL or broadband service from the local cable operator.  A “speed test” from New York from a FiOS customer illustrates the capability:

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For photographers, among many other net users, upload speed is critically important in managing their photograph collections.

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The Photography Bay blog compiled a chart illustrating the dramatic differences upload speeds can have on your time and patience:

Verizon has announced a deal with the city of Pittsburgh to begin rolling out FiOS services to city residents by the end of this summer.

This gives the city its first wired competitor to incumbent cable provider Comcast, whose franchise renewal is due at the end of this year.

Verizon FiOS will charge residents $47 per month for 250 standard definition channels plus local high definition channels, and $11 more for several dozen HD channels and more than a dozen sports networks.

Some suburban Pittsburgh customers can already access FiOS broadband products, as the company has wired parts of Banksville, Beechview, Bloomfield, Brookline, Carrick, East Hills, East Liberty, Friendship, Garfield, Highland Park, Homewood, Larimer, Lincoln-Lemington, Morningside, Overbrook, Point Breeze, Regent Square, Stanton Heights and Swisshelm Park.  Completing agreements to send video down the network to add a “cable TV” type service is expected to be a relatively simple process, according to Verizon officials.

[flv width=”428″ height=”240″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTAE Pittsburgh FIOS Arrives in Pittsburgh 7-6-09.flv[/flv]

WTAE Pittsburgh Reports on Verizon Agreement with the City of Pittsburgh

City residents can expect to see service available within the next six years, or the company will be subjected to fines by city officials.  But Verizon should have service available far earlier, starting with most of the North Side, some South Hills neighborhoods near suburbs, the business district downtown, and parts of Lawrenceville.

In return for a franchise agreement, Verizon will mimic Comcast’s agreement with the city, handing over 5% of gross revenue.  Verizon has also agreed to install dedicated fiber optic service between some city public safety buildings, $700,000 to upgrade the city’s video equipment, in part for local government proceedings, and 52 cents from each customer will be designated towards providing the viewer with public, educational, and local government channels.  A total of five channels will be reserved: two for government, one for public access, one for educational use, and a fifth reserved for the future.

More video on this story below.

… Continue Reading

Sources say an elderly Vienna man is dead after falling down in a confrontation outside his home with a Verizon FiOS technician.

Police say 79-year-old Bill Cornelious was unhappy with the installation of a new service.

The Verizon employee left the home at about 5 p.m. Wednesday, and the elderly man followed him out and tried to block the technician’s van from leaving the driveway.

Vienna police say the man tried to reach inside the van and grab the steering wheel. It was then that he fell and suffered the injuries that caused his death. WJLA-TV reports on this tragedy which occurred in late June and was brought to our attention today:

[flv width=”320″ height=”240″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WJLA Washington – Elderly Man Dies After Encounter With FiOS Technician 06-18-09.flv[/flv]

It’s unfortunate that disputes over cable/television service can lead to these kinds of confrontations and tragic results.