ARE NETWORK SPEEDOMETERS A MUST?

Filed Friday, March 24. 2006

With all the recent discussions, testimonies and other rhetoric given by spokespeople from the incumbent telephone companies, cable companies, their opponents as well as their lobbyists, we should be asking this simple question: “Are they delivering what they are charging for with these various broadband products?”

What speed are you really running at on your PC? Have you ever checked? Are you getting a half T-1 for a full T-1 price?

These would seem to be good questions to put to rest all the allegations and charges that customers are bringing forth. Some people are saying they aren’t getting what they bought. If that is the case, we have much stronger issues to resolve before moving forward to more complex issues.

Is Comcast Delivering?

Who checks the scales and pumps at the store and at gas stations to ensure their accuracy for the consumer? State and local agencies make these checks. They have been doing this for years because consumers were always leery of stores cheating them with inaccurate scales and pumps. Should we start doing the same for the Internet and network service providers?

Some customers of Comcast in Michigan are checking the network speeds they are getting and finding out that they are not getting what they have bought. Theo Gantos, a former student of mine who now lives in Flint, Mich., did several speed tests and found out he wasn’t getting what he bought. His test results and comments follow:

Here are two speed tests to Speakeasy’s speed test server in Chicago. They were done just a few minutes apart:

March 17, 2006 at 11:10 p.m.
Download speed: 1121 Kbps (140.1 Kb/sec transfer rate)
Upload speed: 344 Kbps (43 Kb/sec transfer rate)

March 17, 2006 at 11:14 p.m.
Download speed: 1792 Kbps (224 Kb/sec transfer rate)
Upload speed: 337 Kbps (42.1 Kb/sec transfer rate)

Speed test result from DSLreports. on March 17, 2006 at 11:19 p.m.:

Download speed: 1285 Kbps (160.7 Kb/sec transfer rate) (71.7 percent worse than an average user on Comcast.net)
Upload speed: 351 Kbps (43.8 Kb/sec transfer rate) (10.4 percent worse than an average user on Comcast.net)

Are the PUCs Doing Their Job?

The tests appear to show something is definitely wrong with the transmission. This is from a corresponding article that focused on his dilemma:

Gantos plans to present evidence at the upcoming quarterly Flint Cable Commission meeting this month and discuss suggestions to improve network performance and customer service for subscribers in Flint, Mich. Gantos feels that Comcast has a “major failure in its tech support escalation and resource coordination processes” that is unlike other major telecoms Gantos has worked with over the years.

He added: “Comcast does not appear to coordinate technical resources, [does not want to] discuss potential problems and is slow to post known outages for subscribers calling into tech support.” This was most recently evident during the cutover last summer to the new in-house modem provisioning system (codenamed “Bedrock”).

Quality Assurance Test

Where is the Michigan Public Utilities Commission at in ensuring quality levels of service? For that matter, where are all the state utility boards when it comes to even knowing where to find a test let alone how to run it to uncover network problems at the consumer level? What quality assurance tests do all PUCs run regularly to ensure that the network is providing what network providers are charging?

As more people go out and buy the “broadband product” from different carriers and network providers, who’s going out and ensuring that they are getting what they purchased? The average consumer doesn’t have a network operations center (NOC) running in their basement and monitoring their network connections. They are buying the service and assuming that they are getting what they bought.

Network Speed Indicators

While a “Netometer” sounds so basic, it seems as though we are taking for granted the claims and marketing hype from our carriers. With all these “next-generation services,” are they really delivering what they promise? How can you tell?

Maybe we should have network speedometers running constantly on the upper right-hand corner of your screen to show the speeds at which your lines are running. That really sounds like a good idea. Across the board, every carrier should provide a little dashboard-type icon that clearly shows a real-time readout of your network speeds.

If they did that, they might be jammed with phone calls stating that the speed was nowhere near what people bought. Instead of all the complex regulations that most people can’t understand, maybe the PUCs could require something like this so the average consumer could see whether or not the broadband service was actually performing the way it should.

They have meters on every house to show the amount of electricity used. How come you don’t have a virtual Netometer on your screen showing how much bandwidth is being used?

Carlinism: You can’t manage what you can’t measure.


Last modified on 2008-11-19 16:52
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I think regulation is needed in this industry, and I really like the idea of some sort of monitoring of bandwidth. The downside of this could be, however, that the providers may want to use this metering to bill customers for usage. This would mean that instead of a flat monthly rate, you could be billed by the amount of bandwidth used. For power net users, that could be an ugly thing.
#1 Chuck Janczy on 2006-03-25 07:38
DSL Reports picked up this article and a huge discussion discussion on it blossomed. I don't understand how some do not embrace the idea. They would rather be kept in the dark as far as network performance.
#2 James Carlini (Homepage) on 2006-03-26 22:20
Thanks for the idea! I tested my home DSL, found it to be substandard, and called SBC to have it fixed. I got a quick remedy and a refund for prior service at the substandard level. My DSL at home now hums away at 1.3Mb (should be 1.5), whereas before I was getting 384Kb. I should also state that SBC tried to deflect blame since they said they never guarantee the maximum rate - they point to the fine print where it says DSL service is always within a "range" of speeds. They will probably just be forced to highlight this more expressly if "speed meters" are utilized for regulatory purposes. If nothing else, the meters would help consumers make more informed decisions - a goal of which I am in favor.
#3 Adam on 2006-03-30 10:35
HENRYK - You are living in the Stone Age. T1s have been around since 1963 and should not even be looked at as a broadband delivery system - it's copper-based. Look into Fiber. One gigabit to everyone. That is the Model we should be looking at for today. It is you that do not understand the difference between bit b and Byte B if you are thinking DSL is the way to go. DSL should have a cap?????? DSL should not even be considered. It's a joke. You are still talking about Megabits to the user - you're way behind in technical knowledge. Better start reading about things like FTTP - Fiber to the Premise and FTTH - Fiber to the Home - that's where we should be at. Forget about spewing technical details about T1s or 10 Mbps - it's over. OC-12, OC-48s are even questionable. One gigabit is MINIMUM to a premise. You speak about International comparisons, I advised an investor that was looking at putting in some cellular service in the Ukraine just after the USSR broke up. Their phone-to-person ratio was about 1:200 and the wait was like five years for a phone line. A T1 out there is a huge leap, but here - it's nothing.
#4 James Carlini on 2006-04-02 01:00
HENRYK -- Government IS involved because all of the companies are LOBBYING government to pass protectionist legislation to protect their obsolete business model. Do not compare it to Poland or the USSR because it is very different government models. Free trade is GREAT - but that means that the company is not protected by laws that inhibit competition. If the government did not protect the obsolete business model - you would have more entities looking at putting in fiber-based or wireless infrastructure. The interworkings are very different here than it was in Poland Do you work for one of these companies? It sounds like you do. Otherwise you would agree that copper-based services are obsolete and that government should not be restricting competition by passing legislation to restrict municipalites from competing against the incumbent phone companies' business models. A flat rate pricing model - not on usage - should replace the current pricing scheme.
#4.1 James Carlini on 2006-04-03 10:47

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