
AT&T drops out of FCC speed-test program so it can hide bad results - close04
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/att-drops-out-of-fcc-speed-test-program-so-it-can-hide-bad-results/
======
snek
> "Sometimes providers boost speeds for households during the actual FCC
> speed-testing period," the Journal wrote. "Comcast a few years ago upgraded
> speeds in some regions without notifying the FCC, making test results look
> stellar, people close to the FCC program said. The FCC discovered the
> changes after spotting anomalous data and adjusted the numbers."

This whole thing is frustrating. It is made to sound like some kids pulling
some harmless pranks or something. What the heck. These companies are
deliberately lying and confusing government agencies.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
When Volkswagen did it it was a scandal. We just expect our telecom overlords
to be evil I guess.

~~~
glandium
There is a difference between pollution and internet speeds.

~~~
Cougher
True, but there isn't a difference between fraud and fraud.

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kryogen1c
The company i recently started managing it for previously went through some
business and personnel changes and so doesnt have a good hold on their IT
budget. Ive been discovering and recording bills from only at&t for days now.
Highlights:

1300$/month for IT support

800% difference in per month rate vs 1 year contract rate

Different departments cant talk to each other and have separate accounts. I
have att.com accounts and businesscenter.att.com accounts. Is AT&T
BusinessCenter different than AT&T BusinessDirect? You fuckin tell me

Before i started, we were paying over $10k a month to only AT&T, right now
we're <$7k and I'm not done. We have an account manager that i havent talked
to. Clearly hes either incompetent or malicious, no desire to loop him in.
Never before have i wanted to killdozer a company so badly. I have better
things to do than review bills (although clearly not).

~~~
dennnis
Wow, can't change providers?

~~~
xnyan
lol. You are from SoCal or Europe, right? Sorry, not trying to be an asshole.
Those are (almost) the only two places where people on hackernews have more
than 1.5 internet choices.

~~~
omgwtfbyobbq
Even SoCal has plenty of areas with only a single broadband provider. :/

~~~
arcticbull
SF is finally starting to get competitive between gigabit options from Sonic,
MonkeyBrains and WebPass. There's also of course Comcast, AT&T and Verizon.

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zbrozek
Comcast told me they'd be able to add my house to their service - no big deal,
we promise - until I actually bought the place and called their bluff. New
story is that they want $500 for a site survey. And no word on whether it'd be
possible to run service. If it is, I get to pay for the wire to buy the
privilege of paying them for service. And I wouldn't own the wire. Others a
few blocks away were quoted $13k per home. High enough, I thought, to make it
obviously-stupid to pay for a survey. Three out of five of my neighbors have
Comcast gigabit service.

I can get AT&T DSL. It's not cheap; sticker is $50/mo, and it has more
asterisks than a mail-in-rebate form. It's not fast; 20 mbps download max.
Who-knows-what upload. So why shouldn't that be included as a data point? It's
my only wired option, despite decades of subsidies towards universal service.

Instead I opted for a 4G modem, but now I don't have a public IP address.
Didn't expect that, and it's honestly pretty annoying to be unable to ssh
home. I just moved in, and this weekend will be getting set up on some hosted
VM to work around this shortcoming.

I work for Alphabet in Mountain View. I live less than five miles from my
office. You'd think I'd be able to do better.

~~~
lainga
How's the ol' internet balloon coming along?

~~~
zbrozek
Beats me! But I suspect even if the answer were, "super awesome!" that it
would not be helpful here. I think their mission is to try to go from
absolutely-nothing to basic-cell-service. I've got decent cell service, so
things aren't awful. They're just lame and disappointing.

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vallismortis
Every encounter with AT&T has felt like a scam to me. I tried a mobile hotspot
two years ago on a 14 day free trial. One bar of signal, so I returned it the
same day I received it. It took them 14 days to "process" the return, and I
ended up with a $285 bill (activation fee, two months service). Last year, I
was trying to find a carrier that would work with my Sierra Wireless WLAN
card, and ended up repeating the same horrible experience - this round cost me
$180. Next, I tried Cricket Wireless, which uses the AT&T network. No
activation fee, $35/month, works flawlessly. Its not the network, its the
company.

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dylz
I am not a fan of AT&T, but it appears what they didn't want included was
their ADSL1 speeds, which are probably utter rubbish for obvious reasons. The
problem here is that there are people still on those plans.

~~~
zmzrr
How come speeds are not segregated depending on technology? Seems like a
shortcoming of this "speed-test program". No wonder they left.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
They fought to have anything faster than ISDN classified as "broadband". Now
they get to pay the price for letting the copper rot.

~~~
zmzrr
Broadband has always meant "faster than dial-up".

~~~
tastyfreeze
The FCC has defined broadband as 25/3 Mbps since 2015. Prior to that it was
4/1 Mbps. The first FCC definition of broadband was established in 1996 as
200/200 Kbps. You can't really play loosey goosey with the definition. The
service is either fast enough to be considered broadband or it isn't. The
delivery method is irrelevant.

~~~
dylz
Honestly, by 2018 it should be something like 50/50 or 100/50 as a minimum.

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chiefalchemist
Good to know, but only if you have a choice of carriers. While I hate to drag
the free market into this, having choice (read:competition) would expose this
issue and be more likely to solve it.

~~~
fallingfrog
Right but the end result of competition is that one company wins and eats the
other, or they divide the market geographically, either way you end up back in
the same place.

~~~
distances
Any competition without local loop unbundling [1] won't be a solution. Without
it you simply will never have proper competitive markets.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-
loop_unbundling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling)

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pgnas
Government is for sale, no longer are they for the people , by the people.

What good is the FCC if it allows for the truth to be shown? It is no longer
useful and has become corrupt.

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swiley
Just today they were killing my ssh connection repeatedly while I was editing
a config file.

We should just stop licensing cell companies and make it a free for all like
WiFi.

