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<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>obtaining money from him
upon a false and fraudulent pretense</i> (;-))</p>
<p>--dave<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/22/22 09:02, David Lang wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:95955sq2-s027-0583-0qpr-qr0342351745@ynat.uz">long
distance phone plans used to be tiered as well, nobody misses
those days.
<br>
<br>
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)
<br>
<br>
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.
<br>
<br>
David Lang
<br>
<br>
<br>
On Sat, 22 Oct 2022, David Collier-Brown via Bloat wrote:
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2022 08:56:14 -0400
<br>
From: David Collier-Brown via Bloat
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net"><bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net></a>
<br>
Reply-To: David Collier-Brown <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:davec-b@rogers.com"><davec-b@rogers.com></a>
<br>
To: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net">bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net</a>
<br>
Subject: [Bloat] Fwd: Broadband Bias
<br>
<br>
Here's an interesting "rantlet" on inequity in price and service
by big ISPs, which of course makes me wonder
<br>
<br>
* if end-users fixing bloat is enough to mitigate lack of IS
investment
<br>
* if the markup's research team should be talking to the
speed-test
<br>
sites to collect actual-performance and observed bandwidth
data
<br>
<br>
<br>
--dave
<br>
<br>
reference:<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://themarkup.org/show-your-work/2022/10/19/how-we-uncovered-disparities-in-internet-deals">https://themarkup.org/show-your-work/2022/10/19/how-we-uncovered-disparities-in-internet-deals</a>
<br>
<br>
<br>
-------- Forwarded Message --------
<br>
Subject: Broadband Bias
<br>
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2022 12:02:07 +0000
<br>
From: Julia Angwin <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:newsletter@themarkup.org"><newsletter@themarkup.org></a>
<br>
To: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:davecb@spamcop.net">davecb@spamcop.net</a>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Broadband Bias
<br>
Poorer and less White neighborhoods get slower speeds
<br>
Hello World <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://themarkup.org/"><https://themarkup.org/></a>
<br>
Hello World
<br>
Dispatches from our founder
<br>
<br>
Hello World
<br>
<br>
<br>
This Week
<br>
Broadband Bias
<br>
<br>
Hello, friends,
<br>
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.
<br>
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
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="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"><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></a>that
was published this week.
<br>
Reporters Leon Yin and Aaron Sankin analyzed more than 800,000
broadband plans
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://themarkup.org/show-your-work/2022/10/19/how-we-uncovered-disparities-in-internet-deals"><https://themarkup.org/show-your-work/2022/10/19/how-we-uncovered-disparities-in-internet-deals></a>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.
<br>
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).
<br>
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.
<br>
Chart: Providers offer different speeds for the same price.
<br>
<br>
And guess which neighborhoods generally got the worst speeds?
Lower-income, historically redlined areas that were less White.
<br>
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.
<br>
Map: In most cities, poorer neighborhoods were offered worse
internet plans more often.
<br>
<br>
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
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://pcrd.purdue.edu/the-real-digital-divide-advertised-vs-actual-internet-speeds/"><https://pcrd.purdue.edu/the-real-digital-divide-advertised-vs-actual-internet-speeds/></a>—and
usually not in a good way.
<br>
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.”
<br>
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.
<br>
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.
<br>
The findings come at a time when U.S. regulators are looking
into broadband equity. The FCC is currently drafting rules
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-initiates-inquiry-preventing-digital-discrimination"><https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-initiates-inquiry-preventing-digital-discrimination></a>“to
promote equal access to broadband across the country, regardless
of income level, ethnicity, race, religion, or national origin.”
<br>
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
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://www.digitalinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NDIA-Tier-Flattening-July-2018.pdf"><https://www.digitalinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NDIA-Tier-Flattening-July-2018.pdf></a>.”<br>
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.
<br>
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.
<br>
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.
<br>
It’s hard work, but it’s the important work that journalists
must do to make these hidden disparities visible to the public.
<br>
As always, thanks for reading.
<br>
Best,
<br>
Julia Angwin
<br>
The Markup
<br>
/(Additional Hello World research by Eve Zelickson.)/
<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://mrkp-static-production.themarkup.org/uploads/2021/11/support_woman_16-9-1280x720.jpg">https://mrkp-static-production.themarkup.org/uploads/2021/11/support_woman_16-9-1280x720.jpg</a>
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</blockquote>
</blockquote>
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