Edhat Staff
(stock photo)
By edhat staff
Cox Communications is among the list of broadband companies accused of pushing the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) to omit unflattering data on speed tests, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports.
Measuring Broadband America is a nearly 10-year-old program for the U.S. government to gauge whether home internet-service providers are actually providing the speeds they advertise to their customers. Another WSJ article from August determined paying more for “faster internet speeds” is not worth it.
“Companies wield tremendous influence over the study and often employ tactics to boost their scores, according to interviews with more than two dozen industry executives, engineers and government officials. As a result, the FCC’s report likely gives consumers an unreliable measure of internet providers’ performances by overstating speeds,” the article states.
Broadband providers are informed by the FCC of the customers will be part of the speed tests which allows the company to provide better service during the test. They’ve also persuaded the FCC to remove unflattering data by blaming faulty equipment. Many representatives from the companies denied doing so, according to the article.
WSJ spoke with Goleta resident and Cox Communications customer Marcia Pearson who pays for 30 Mbps (megabits per second). She used Cox’s online tool to test her internet speed and it only registered speeds of 3.6 Mbps.
“It is annoying that one has to pay for something that is falsely advertised,” she said to WSJ who then followed up with Cox. The company stated it discovered outdated equipment in the network connecting to her home and fixed it, which Pearson said improved the speed.
Last year an FCC metric stated Cox’s speed “consistency” was 37% of what it advertised. “Cox officials denied responsibility, arguing to the FCC that a congested link to an internet middleman had lowered scores for some of its Arizona customers,” the article stated.
In an FCC report published in December 2018, the consistency of Cox’s speed is omitted from a comparison chart and only added as a footnote where it stated the company’s consistency score would have been 85% if the contested results were not counted.
Both Cox and the FCC stated most speed tests occurred over the congested internet link which carried less than 3% of Cox’s web traffic.
A former executive of Charter stated internet providers can detect government speed-test data on their networks and essentially open more bandwidth for a customer for the duration of the test. Another telecom consultant stated it’s a well-known practice and makes the FCC results almost meaningless.
A follow-up WSJ report shows Americans in low-income neighborhoods and rural areas get slower broadband speeds but pay similar monthly prices to those in wealthy and urban areas.
The authors analyzed address-level competition for more than 2,000 internet bills from across the country and found that 68% of the households don’t have the option to switch to a second high-speed broadband provider (cable or fiber).
For households with stand-alone internet service, the median speed in our analysis was 100 megabits per second, or Mbps. The median monthly internet cost was $66, including internet-related fees.
The article states a Cox customer in a low-income area of Baton Rouge, La., pays $80 for a speed of 300 Mbps with an additional $10 internet-related fee while another household near a wealthier Laguna Beach, CA, pays $55 for the same speed from the same provider without a fee.
A spokesperson from Cox told WSJ the pricing differences were probably due to promotional offers or discounts and confirmed their standard pricing is now consistent across markets nationwide.
For those living in Santa Barbara, the broadband options are largely limited to Cox and Frontier with Cox dominating the market giving consumers no other choice.
Why can’t we get the city of Santa Barbara to stop this monopoly? Has COX paid them off? Shouldn’t we make this a litmus test for anyone running for city office? Can we use a voter referendum to end the monopoly?
Cox suckers is my password…
Monopolies are inherently EVIL. Santa Barbara has always chosen their favorites to support. Cox is one of the worst.
Where do we get a refund? I paid COX an up charge for high speed Internet that WSJ confirms my suspicion is slow.
Internet access has become what telephone access was in the last century, should be classified and treated as a utility and broken up as ATT was. The only excuse for this is political corruption at every level.
So what can we do to end the monopoly. City government wants to keep it. We either need to elect representatives committed to end it or put the issue on the ballot. Can we do that folks? First can someone volunteer a legal note on our options?…please
Cox is a monopoly. I wrote congressman Carbajal about this. The last I checked he receives $10,000 a year for his campaigns. Nothing has ever been done how about this Monopoly. It is discrimination when the internet costs money. Internet access should always be free. It is a necessity for survival in today’s world. No politicians, local, state or federal, have ever done anything to stop this cash cow Monopoly. It’s a shame how the real issues are completely ignored by government.
Ha ha ha! As we all argue and bitch about Cox while USING THEIR SERVICE TO DO SO! Want to make a difference? Go off the grid. And guess what — it won’t matter; won’t make a difference. Corporatocracy rules.
I thought the excuse was capitalism. It took decades to break up AT&T, and in my limited understanding, there were slightly separate or area companies already, that could be spun off. I could easily be wrong.