[Bloat] Fwd: Broadband Bias

Sat Oct 22 09:21:32 EDT 2022

especially when all the rates are 'up to'

David Lang

On Sat, 22 Oct 2022, David Collier-Brown wrote:

> Yes, I'd tend to flatten my prices unless I could show end-user customers a 
> really easy-to-detect improvement from the high-speed offerings.
>
> My across-the-road neighbor was talked into upgrading by Bell Canada to a 
> higher-priced package, and ended up in a 'spirited discussion" about whether 
> they were /obtaining money from him upon a false and fraudulent pretense/ 
> (;-))
>
> --dave
>
> On 10/22/22 09:02, David Lang wrote:
>> long distance phone plans used to be tiered as well, nobody misses those 
>> days.
>> 
>> eliminating tiers could just mean that people are getting the best service 
>> available in their area (the car analogy they are trying to use breaks down 
>> because you can't get Porsche service in a location with Chevy 
>> infrastructure)
>> 
>> IMHO, flattening tiers is good as it gives the ISPs more incentive to use 
>> the tools that we've developed here to prevent the traffic from one 
>> individual from interefering with the traffic for another, making life 
>> better for everyone.
>> 
>> David Lang
>> 
>> 
>>  On Sat, 22 Oct 2022, David Collier-Brown via Bloat wrote:
>> 
>>> Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2022 08:56:14 -0400
>>> From: David Collier-Brown via Bloat <bloat at lists.bufferbloat.net>
>>> Reply-To: David Collier-Brown <davec-b at rogers.com>
>>> To: bloat at lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> Subject: [Bloat] Fwd: Broadband Bias
>>> 
>>> Here's an interesting "rantlet" on inequity in price and service by big 
>>> ISPs, which of course makes me wonder
>>> 
>>> * if end-users fixing bloat is enough to mitigate lack of IS investment
>>> * if the markup's research team should be talking to the speed-test
>>>   sites to collect actual-performance and observed bandwidth data
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --dave
>>> 
>>> reference:https://themarkup.org/show-your-work/2022/10/19/how-we-uncovered-disparities-in-internet-deals 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -------- Forwarded Message --------
>>> Subject:     Broadband Bias
>>> Date:     Sat, 22 Oct 2022 12:02:07 +0000
>>> From:     Julia Angwin <newsletter at themarkup.org>
>>> To: davecb at spamcop.net
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Broadband Bias
>>> Poorer and less White neighborhoods get slower speeds
>>> Hello World <https://themarkup.org/>
>>> Hello World
>>> Dispatches from our founder
>>> 
>>> Hello World
>>> 
>>> 
>>> This Week
>>> Broadband Bias
>>> 
>>> 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 
>>> <https://themarkup.org/still-loading/2022/10/19/dollars-to-megabits-you-may-be-paying-400-times-as-much-as-your-neighbor-for-internet-service>that 
>>> was published this week.
>>> Reporters Leon Yin and Aaron Sankin analyzed more than 800,000 broadband 
>>> plans 
>>> <https://themarkup.org/show-your-work/2022/10/19/how-we-uncovered-disparities-in-internet-deals>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.
>>> Chart: Providers offer different speeds for the same price.
>>> 
>>> 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.
>>> Map: In most cities, poorer neighborhoods were offered worse internet 
>>> plans more often.
>>> 
>>> 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 
>>> <https://pcrd.purdue.edu/the-real-digital-divide-advertised-vs-actual-internet-speeds/>—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 
>>> <https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-initiates-inquiry-preventing-digital-discrimination>“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 
>>> <https://www.digitalinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NDIA-Tier-Flattening-July-2018.pdf>.”
>>> 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.)/
>>> 
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>