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 <[email protected]>
Reply-To: David Collier-Brown <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
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 <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
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.)/
https://mrkp-static-production.themarkup.org/uploads/2021/11/support_woman_16-9-1280x720.jpg
<https://themarkup.org/donate?utm_campaign=DON_HW>
Support The Markup
Your donations power our award-winning reporting and our tools.
Together we can do more. Give now.
Donate Here <https://themarkup.org/donate?utm_campaign=DON_HW>
This email doesn’t track you when you open it or click on any links.
To learn more read our Privacy Policy <https://themarkup.org/privacy>.
In order to unsubscribe, click here
<https://balboai.eomail4.com/unsubscribe?ep=2&l=89ee961b-dac6-11ec-9258-0241b9615763&lc=b660c43a-e11d-11ec-9258-0241b9615763&p=31468eaf-5167-11ed-afd1-0607cdff6e39&pt=campaign&pv=4&spa=1666440002&t=1666440127&s=aafa2ff584132c80508f6ff4cd69518829e105efeeba85de762553f805249fa1>.
If you were forwarded this newsletter and you like it, you can
subscribe here <https://themarkup.org/newsletter/hello-world>.
The Markup - PO Box 1103, New York, New York, 10159, United States of
America
_______________________________________________
Bloat mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat
