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Comments on news posted 2006-03-24 09:33:25: Northwestern professor James Carlini wonders if broadband customers are getting what they're paying for, and if state public utility commissioners should require carriers to supply consumers with real-time speedometers."Who checks the scales and p.. ..
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 dave
Premium,MVM
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio | Oooh, oooh, another car analogy
My Honda is supposed to be able to do 'at least' 85mph.
Trouble is, I often find it unable to exceed 20mph when I travel to work.
Who can I sue for failure to deliver expected speeds? | |
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DFWSpeedy
@lmco.com
| TOS my *ss Point 1: ISP speed measurement would have NOTHING to do with congestion - EVER. It would be a speed measurement from you ISP's CO to your modem. Traffic should have no bearing on line speed. Line speed should be as advertised regardless of the amount of traffic on that line. ( and properly measured I'd bet the line speed varies very little )
Point 2: My service with SBC is a 384 - 1500 ranged service and I expect at least 384 ALL THE TIME. ( not getting it but I'm bitching )
Point 3: Comparing metering DSL to gas pumps and electricity is a slippery slope. That brings with it a per minute or per MB charging structure. I sure don't want that! | |
| Hilton Head
join:2000-11-04
Miamisburg, OH
| Shared Internet Shared Internet is all over. The speed depends on how everybody on the internet uses at one time. if you run speed test from a state so far away from you, it may show faster then the one close to you. I think ISP speedometers will not do any good except between the ISP office and your location. From the ISP office out to the internet are all out of ISP's hand about the speed issue. ISP can put a request to improve the lines between the ISP and Internet, but it can not promise anything. If you are very demanding for speed, it will cost more money, because many ISPs will have to pay for more lines improvement. That's life. | |
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J D McDorce
Premium
join:2001-12-29
Westland, MI
| PUC Authority? Since internet access is not typically a regulated service, it becomes interesting where a Public Utility Commission would obtain authority to require carriers to do anything. While Carlini makes reference to the Flint Cable Commission and Michigan Public Utilities Commission*, it certainly is not clear where regulatory authority over cable internet for either is derived from.
From there, setting aside (to a degree) the discussion regarding up to and best effort arguments associated with delivered internet bandwidth, as well as a potential disconnect between the manner in which internet services are advertised compared with the fine print contents of the TOS, multiple service tiers offer their own set of potential issues. With many providers now offering between 2 and 5 different tiers of service, situations where a subscriber pays for a higher tier while receiving bandwidth rates consistent with a lower, less expensive tier becomes somewhat problematic with regard to various consumer protection laws.
* - Not to nit-pick, but the reference should be to the Michigan Public Service Commission. | |
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viperpa33s
Why Me?
Premium
join:2002-12-20
Bradenton, FL
 ·Bright House
| I don't care I don't care what any TOS says, the ISP is obligated to provide there best effort to get you the speed you pay for. If a customer pays for 3mb speed and only getting 1mb speed for a week or more, then the customer is not getting what he paid for. If you have a high latency to where your internet is basically unusable but the ISP won't do anything cause it is in the TOS. Either case the ISP should provide a refund to the customer.
Just because it is in the TOS, it is not the final say. A TOS can be disputed to a degree. To a degree meaning if the TOS inhibits a customers rights. | |
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EGeezer
Go Bobcats
Premium
join:2002-08-04
Country!
 ·Callcentric
·RoadRunner Cable
·AT&T CallVantage
| Speed Since a connection is only as fast as its slowest links, the most direct connection from your WAN interface to the ISP is the best link over which to test.
There are several other factors, including but not limited to physical cabling, buffer sizes, file size(s) used, latency in any hop, other devices on the LAN or applications running silently on the testing PC using the connection, and server performance and latency.
At best speed tests are estimates of performance and speeds will vary from one test server to another. The ISP's service level agreement with the customer and their method of measuring the speed will be the final determinant in whether any complaint would be considered favorably by arbitrators.
Although a speed test would be a handy thing, it would also generate lots of erroneous calls from Joe User who runs PC based tests while listening to streaming audio or running (for instance) ForecastFox or other updating application - or has spyware on his system pulling popups, spewing spam or consuming CPU/buffer/disk arm activity that would affect the test results.
In short, it sounds great in theory, but would be messy in practice.
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Insert catchy sig line here | |
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braynes
Premium
join:2005-03-14
Waterville, ME | speed If they pot a meter the then would start charging by the Mb d/L and I for one do not want that, I have verizon and adelphia. If you speeds are so importing then I think you should get two providers.
Bruce | |
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dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
| Give me Speed! I believe if you're on the upper tier of a multiple tier provider you should get a 'mini sla' of "at least the speed of the lower tier and up to the caps of your current tier.
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example: i have cox's premiere that caps at 9000 down and 1000 up, the lower tier is 6000 down and 512 up which is the minimum i should be getting.
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You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much Bandwidth | |
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gatorkram
Spelling and Grammer impared
Premium
join:2002-07-22
Winterville, NC
clubs:
 ·Embarq
 ·linode
|  Sad days indeed
It's almost sad what the isp can get away with, because they wrote it in their TOS. They might as well just say, look, we advertise super great and fast, but in reality we can't deliver what we say, but you agree to this fact, so ha ha.
Why do they get away with it? HOW do they get away with it? Because of some of the people on this site. They say oh man, it's in the TOS, and you are only paying $X for it, so you should be happy, or go pay 10x more for a business connection. Boy do they have us trained well...
Could you just imagine buying a car like this? In the TOS it says, look man, if the car catches on fire, or the brakes fail, or anything else goes bad, and you die, it's to bad, ok? And then the same people here now saying we need a business connection saying, hey man, you should have read the TOS, or paid more for a SAFE car...
At least with the car, you could shop around and find a SAFE car. With broadband, for the most part, its just TO BAD. You either take what they offer, and except their TOS, or you don't get it.
Why is this OK? How on earth can people say it is, just because it's in their TOS?
I bet doctors wish they could have a TOS saying, if I screw up, it's tuff crap for you, instead of having huge insurance bills to protect them. And then the same idiots here saying, hey man, you should have read the TOS, or paid 10x for that other doctor with the good TOS...
If you advertise a service, you shouldn't get away with all the fine print, and 100 page TOS agreements, that let you off the hook, and screw us out of our money...
Oh man, I could go at this all day long. How on earth do you idiots think this is ok, just because it's in their TOS to say we can give you crap, ha ha you have to take it...
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Give me bandwidth or give me death! | |
| carlini7
Premium
join:2003-12-19
Dundee, IL
| READ A BOOK, READ TARIFFS, REPORTS, GET A CLUE In reading many of your comments. all I can say is P.T. Barnum was right - There's a sucker born every minute.
First of all - there are something called TARIFFS that specify in VERY detailed format what you are supposed to get. You don't get a copy of the tariff and they make it difficult for you to go read one (you can at your state public utility commission office - if you live close)
TARIFFS - remember that word, as THEY set the framework and performance parameters of what the service provided to you should deliver. Go look at them. Understand them and THEN come back and talk.
In this case service doesn't rise to the users' demands - it sinks to your lack of knowledge. Great customer base - sheep.
If you were smart - you would be demanding one Gigabit per second as anything LOWER than that is NOT Broadband and is NOT globally competitive.
We are 16th in the world on Broadbamd deployment and that is one of the reasons the job base is eroding. Get a clue - or start practicing "welcome to Wal-Mart". | |
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gwion
wild colonial boy
Premium,ExMod 2001-08
join:2000-12-28
Pittsburgh, PA
| It isn't "speed", it's "bandwidth". ... and QoS trumps raw bandwidth every time. Pile of consumer-befuddling nonsense. Are you happy with your service (Y or N)? Does it represent a value for the dollars you pay for it (Y or N)? No qulification or equivocation, answer those two questions, first... I have better things to do with my time than sitting about looking at my pipeline. I obviously have this service for a purpose, and my question isn't whether or not it delivers some hypothetical capacity benchmark, it's whether or not it provides enough bandwidth for my purpose, and whether or not I think I'm getting my money's worth. Why make something more complicated than it has to be?
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Semper Eadem
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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy...
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Six by nine. Forty-two.
That's it. That's all there is. | |
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How about getting a maximum LATENCY?