Hello,
friends,
Imagine
shopping for a car and being
told that every car on the
lot is being offered for the
same price, but you don’t
get to choose which car
you’ll get. The dealership
decides if you walk out with
a Porsche or a Chevy.
That’s
how some internet pricing in
the U.S. works. Most home
internet plans are offered
at a flat base rate, ranging
from $40 to $60 a month, but
what you get for that price
varies widely, according to
a new
Markup investigation
that was published this
week.
Reporters
Leon Yin and Aaron Sankin analyzed
more than 800,000
broadband plans
offered across the U.S. from
AT&T, Verizon,
EarthLink, and CenturyLink,
and found that the speeds
they offered varied from
more than 200 megabits per
second (Mbps) in some
neighborhoods to below 25
Mbps in others.
To
put that in simple terms:
200 megabits per second is
the recommended minimum
speed for a household that
wants to participate in
multiple concurrent Zoom
calls without interruption.
Anything below 25 Mbps is
not even considered
broadband by the Federal
Communications Commission
(FCC).
Calculated
by price per megabit, that
means customers are paying
hugely different prices for
the same service. For
example, CenturyLink offered
consumers rates that ranged
from 25 cents to $100 per
Mbps—which is 400 times
greater.
And
guess which neighborhoods
generally got the worst
speeds? Lower-income,
historically redlined areas
that were less White.
In
92 percent of cities in our
investigation where
broadband speeds varied,
lower-income neighborhoods
disproportionately received
worse deals. In 66 percent
of cities, people of color
disproportionately received
worse deals. And in 100
percent of cities where data
was available, historically
redlined neighborhoods
received worse deals.
The
amazing thing is that the
speed disparities are
probably even worse than
what we found. We calculated
these numbers based on the
speeds that the companies advertised
on their websites, not the
speeds that were actually
delivered. And as anyone who
uses the internet knows,
speeds are often quite different
from what is advertised—and
usually not in a good way.
The
telecom companies defended
their practices. Mark
Molzen, a spokesperson for
CenturyLink’s parent company
Lumen, said, “We do not
engage in discriminatory
practices like redlining and
find the accusation
offensive.”
AT&T
spokesperson Jim Greer said
that The Markup’s analysis
had ignored the company’s
low-cost access offerings
and participation in the
FCC’s Affordable
Connectivity Plan, which
provides a subsidy for
household Internet bills.
“Any suggestion that we
discriminate in providing
internet access is blatantly
wrong,” he said.
Verizon
spokesperson Rich Young
referred inquiries to the
industry group USTelecom,
which said that internet
providers can have good
reasons to charge the same
price for slower service.
“Operating and maintaining
legacy technologies can be
more expensive, especially
as legacy network components
are discontinued by
equipment manufacturers,”
said USTelecom senior vice
president Marie Johnson.
The
findings come at a time when
U.S. regulators are looking
into broadband equity. The
FCC is
currently drafting rules
“to promote equal access to
broadband across the
country, regardless of
income level, ethnicity,
race, religion, or national
origin.”
Broadband
pricing wasn’t always this
way. Companies used to
charge different prices for
different speeds, in what
were called “tiers.” But in
recent years, they have
moved toward a single price
in what the National Digital
Inclusion Alliance called in
a 2018 report “tier
flattening.”
Unlike
buying a car, however, it’s
hard for broadband customers
to know that they are
getting a Chevy and not a
Porsche when they pay that
single, tier-flattened
price.
To
buy broadband, you must
enter your address into one
of the telecoms’ websites to
see the price, speed, and
availability. Very few
people are likely to enter
other addresses into the
site to compare speeds that
their neighbors are
getting—and even if they do,
they aren’t likely to be
able to convince the company
to lower their rate.
This
lack of transparency means
that the companies have been
able to hide the stark
disparities from public
view. It took Leon and Aaron
months of work to scrape all
the prices from company
websites, then match them
with Census records to
analyze which neighborhoods
were getting which prices.
It’s
hard work, but it’s the
important work that
journalists must do to make
these hidden disparities
visible to the public.
As
always, thanks for reading.
Best,
Julia
Angwin
The
Markup
(Additional
Hello World research by
Eve Zelickson.)
