FCC Urges Americans To Run Internet Speed App To Counter Broadband Data Fudging (theregister.com) 63
The FCC is encouraging netizens to use its internet speed mobile app in an effort to finally get accurate broadband data across the United States. The Register reports: In an announcement on Monday, the telecoms regulator noted that "the app provides a way for consumers to test the performance of their mobile and in-home broadband networks" and "provides the test results to the FCC." It stops far short of saying that the data will be used to make policy decisions, however, saying only that the figures gathered "will help to inform the FCC's efforts to collect more accurate and granular broadband deployment data."
The public push doesn't mean that things are going to get better soon. Big Cable has aggressively -- and successfully -- argued in the past that data provided by users over an app is not sufficiently robust to form the basis of governmental decisions. And so the FCC will have to use the results as a way to push for change rather than use the data to make direct decisions. Everybody, including numerous states, cities, congressfolk and the GAO, know that the official FCC data provided by ISPs is not worth the paper it's written on. But broader usage of the app should expose just how inaccurate official figures are, which should in turn provide enough impetus for change. The bigger question is whether enough progress is made in the next four years to make any difference.
The public push doesn't mean that things are going to get better soon. Big Cable has aggressively -- and successfully -- argued in the past that data provided by users over an app is not sufficiently robust to form the basis of governmental decisions. And so the FCC will have to use the results as a way to push for change rather than use the data to make direct decisions. Everybody, including numerous states, cities, congressfolk and the GAO, know that the official FCC data provided by ISPs is not worth the paper it's written on. But broader usage of the app should expose just how inaccurate official figures are, which should in turn provide enough impetus for change. The bigger question is whether enough progress is made in the next four years to make any difference.
Somehow I wonder... (Score:2)
... if they'll actually get away with it this time.
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Yea, but it is interesting to me that mostly they just used bullying to prevent this in the past, despite that lying would have been clearly easier and cheaper.
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I think a problem is that most of the people with poor to no internet access won't be the ones running the app.
Doesn't help in my case (Score:2)
My gripe with my single choice of wired broadband provider (Spectrum) is that the service is unreliable and somewhat overpriced. When it works, the speeds are decent enough. But I suppose it was always naive to imagine the government ever planned to do anything beyond considering (likely toothless) regulations for the shady companies that essentially have monopolies over wired broadband in their respective service markets.
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I connected spectrum cable tv and internet two years ago. It works great, except that the DVRs have the slowest, least responsive interface I have seen. The promised download speed is 400Mbps, however, when I connected a laptop directly to their modem and run oakla speed test, I am getting around 270Mbps. Oh well, I don't really care.
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The last time I tried actual cable TV was 7-8 years ago and I had the same issue, not really surprised it hasn't changed. The Samsung DVR and normal boxes had just the worst button latency. Press guide? Basically a 2 count before it popped up. Lag on every button press to scroll through things then another 2 or 3 count for it to tune the channel once selected. Beyond frustrating for something so simple.
My WiFi is the bottleneck (Score:2)
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I just read the FAQ. It's only supposed to test cellular mobile broadband, not home ISP service. My mistake.
My cellular data has been switched to "off" for over a year. When I'm home I just use WIFI, and I almost never carry my phone when I go out, unless I have a shopping list on it.
I get a whole Gb and unlimited text and calls, for $14 a month...
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That's really great. I would take that deal. I have unlimited texts and calls plus 9GB with rollover (for one month). But my monthly data usage is usually < 1 GB. So I typically have ~17 GB of data and use less than 1. I'd jump at a plan that cost $14 for 1 GB and charged me even an extra $30 for a second GB.
We just don't use that much mobile data... always on wifi at home, and especially in quarantimes, we haven't been travelling much.
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That's really great. I would take that deal. I have unlimited texts and calls plus 9GB with rollover (for one month). But my monthly data usage is usually < 1 GB. So I typically have ~17 GB of data and use less than 1. I'd jump at a plan that cost $14 for 1 GB and charged me even an extra $30 for a second GB.
We just don't use that much mobile data... always on wifi at home, and especially in quarantimes, we haven't been travelling much.
If you're in the US, it's Spectrum Mobile (really Verizon) $14 a month, no other fees or taxes, a pretty good deal so far no issues (13 months in)
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I'm sure a lot of people are in the same boat. With covid related lockdowns over the last year, people have simply gone out less and therefore use a lot less mobile data than normal.
When we had a lockdown here, i disconnected wifi and did a speedtest over mobile. The connection was faster than it's ever been, no doubt due to the fact that 99% of people were at home using wifi with whatever home connection they have.
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I just read the FAQ. It's only supposed to test cellular mobile broadband, not home ISP service. My mistake.
I made the same mistake. [slashdot.org] This time the summary is even more misleading that this is apparently only about wireless carriers. My thought was: we have gigabit fiber. How is an android app going to accurately measure that?
Slash dot readers urges beauHD to read /. (Score:2)
Re:Slash dot readers urges beauHD to read /. (Score:5, Funny)
It's not a dupe: it IS the broadband test. If you can reload Slashdot fast enough that you see only one story, you have speedy broadband. If it's so slow you can see the dupe scroll by, you should call the FCC immediately.
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So dupes are a feature.
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Net neutrality? (Score:2)
What if Cable Providers gave priority to the transfer data of said app?
Surely FCC is smarter than that...
Gamed speed tests (Score:2)
Starlink (Score:2)
I await the day when Starlink's value proposition surpasses local traditional cable/phone carriers and coverage is better than mobile cell providers.
#LetThemHaveBroadband
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I don't think it's feasible to expect Starlink to compete witht mobile cell providers. Unless they start putting up the their own cell towers. The dish required for starlink is way too big and the power requirements for transmitting to space are way too high for it to work as a mobile solution.
Also, I don't think starlink is really meant to work for urban settings. Fixed lines and towers will still be the go-to solution for high density internet solutions for quite a while.
I'd start with minimum standards (Score:5, Insightful)
The minimum standard that should be expected by carrier-grade services (which, by definition, carriers should manage) is five nines reliability.
Metronet connections should be one gigabit, minimum. Rural nets should be 10 megabits or better. Ideally a lot better.
Users shouldn't need to measure speed, the FCC should be imposing minimum conditions and policing it.
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It would mean the FCC would have to have direct access to the last mile. Possible, I suppose, but asking consumers to get that data is probably easier.
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The telecos all have tools for network analysis. They're actually pretty decent tools, for the most part. The telecos collect a lot of the bandwidth data for the last mile. All the telecos have to do is provide mean and variance per week of the data they already have for each central office. By making it for the entire CO, there's no privacy concerns, and it's ample for detecting if there's a serious issue. (You want a week to handle minor outage issues that don't seriously impact usage.)
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They likely did start with defining minimum standards. It just took providers two decades to stop stealing Federal broadband rollout funds, and actually do the rollout.
10 megabits you say? Hope that's fast enough in 2040 when it's finally installed.
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10mbit/s symmetrical. Please.
Exercise in futility. (Score:2, Insightful)
At this point in 2021, I'm willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of consumers use their internet service with wireless devices.
And most likely, much like my own service, my wireless performance isn't even close to my wired performance, and of course that speedtest in the average house will vary all based on the angsty teenager trying to run tests from the basement, and the three other people watching YouTube, streaming Netflix, and talking on Facetime.
In other words, think about the average tech ig
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Yeah, you get this a lot in smaller countries and cities where fibre installs are commonplace. Everyone has 1gbps fibre, but people are often complaining of slow connections, usually in 99% of cases it's because they are limited by their wireless setup - wether it's the edge of range, old equipment, obstacles etc. Sometimes people even complain of poor wired performance, turns out they were using a 10/100 nic, or a usb2 to ethernet adapter etc.
Connect directly with a decent gigabit ethernet card and you'll
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This is apparently about cellular ISPs - eg T-Mobile, Verizon...
The title of the TFA:
"FCC urges Americans to run internet speed app to counter Big Cable's broadband data fudging"
Please let me know when T-Mobile/Verizon/etc. started referring to themselves as "Big Cable" and why.
ISPs are as bad or worse than AT&T (Score:2)
We already tried that (Score:3)
We already tried that carriers must set " prices to a reasonable rate" thing. Then when we stopped having the government set prices, they immediately dropped 80%, then 90%. Calling from one side of Dallas to the other was 24 cents per minute under the government rates. Cross country could be almost a dollar a minute.
Then the government stopped setting the rate and immediately rates went to ten cents, then lower.
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The ISP's will just add shaping rules (Score:3)
User data is flawed... (Score:2)
If you trust users to submit data, how can you be sure that the data accurately represents real world conditions?
Users frequently complain about slow connections, only for it to turn out they were in a deep basement, or using a very old wireless access point, or a very old/lowend router, or any other of many factors within the user's control that can make the connection slower.
Where's the source code? (Score:2)
The federal government isn't allowed to create copyrighted works; this code is in the public domain by law. So where is the source code repository?
I'm not installing it until it shows up on F-Droid.
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Why an app? (Score:2)
This is something that can EASILY run in browser windows to the margin of error meaningful here.
So why another goddamned standalone app we have to wonder what it's tracking, why it wants access to x, y, z?
Wireless only? (Score:1)
Why is this only for phones? (Score:2)
There's no app for me to test the speed on my PC, which is far more important than the speeds on my phone.
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There's no app for me to test the speed on my PC, which is far more important than the speeds on my phone.
Tell that to GenZ, who is practically addicted with consuming the internet exclusively on a 5" HD smartphone screen.
(Don't ask me. I don't "get it" either.)
Here's how to test speed without anyone's 'app': (Score:1)
No, I'm not kidding. No ISP is going to 'prioritize' those packets from multiple sources, they can't possibly know all where you're going to connect. Your download rate will max out soon enough and you'll know from that your actual downlink rate.
Traffic total throttling complicates measurement (Score:2)
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Torrent something big. Especially if it's something pirated, and especially if it's something popular with many seeders. No, I'm not kidding. No ISP is going to 'prioritize' those packets from multiple sources, they can't possibly know all where you're going to connect. Your download rate will max out soon enough and you'll know from that your actual downlink rate.
Interesting, but I'm still trying to figure out how you expect to make an overall impact on broadband with the 0.001% who actually know what the fuck you're talking about.
No, I'm not kidding.
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"Fudging"... (Score:2)
It's not fudging. It's fraud.
Don't help them by using euphemism.
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It's not fudging. It's fraud.
Don't help them by using euphemism.
Good point. A judge would certainly never use "fudging" to describe a crime.
Why just a phone app? (Score:2)
Why not produce a web based speed measuring interface for PCs also?
Poor wi-fi (Score:2)
So what will FCC do when they find out that the wi-fi setup in many hopes is slower than downlink bandwidth. I recall a kind of scam when 802.11N came out, most consumer devices, including workstation class desktops came with single-channel 2.4GHz 802.11N adapter, resulting in about 70Mbps nominal connection rating, but the actual speeds being many times slower. Even after 802.11AC, these old cheap adapters kept being used for a long time..
Traffic Shaping, anyone? (Score:1)