U.S. ISP's

'low-ball' capping
of Internet speeds

(2010 Jun blog post)

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INTRODUCTION:

Most U.S. ISP's ( Internet Service Providers ) --- like ATandT, Comcast, Cox Communications, Time-Warner, Verizon --- in their ads, advertise 15 Mbps download speed, maximum (in 2010) --- in their basic plan.

I get ads from Verizon in the mail and newspaper every week in which they advertise the 15 Mbps limit --- for about $40 per month.

What 15 Mbps means:

15 Mbps = 15 Megabits per second. Since there are 8 bits in a byte, 15 Mbps is a little less than 2 MBps (MegaBytes per second).

Actual speeds may be quite a bit less than this, like less than 60% of this speed --- especially if you are in a neighborhood with many connections to users who download lots of videos.

To put 2 MBps in perspective, it is 2,000 KBps (KiloBytes per second).

A medium sized web-page image will typically include about 10 KiloBytes of text (about 200 lines with about 50 characters/bytes per line) and may include about 500 KiloBytes of images (about 10 images averaging about 50 KiloBytes each, say) --- for a total of about 510 KiloBytes per web page.

So you can download about 3 to 4 such medium-sized web pages in about a second on a 2,000 KBps (KiloBytes per second) internet connection.

    Pages that load much slower than this on 15 Mbps are typically poorly written. They 'fetch' files from 'third party' host machines on the internet. Blame the web programmer --- and/or the company that they work for.

Since many web pages nowadays are overloaded with images, many of these pages download in multiple seconds.

In terms of videos, a 2 minute video file is typically about 6 MB (MegaBytes) in size. At a (little less than) 2 MBps (MegaBytes per second), it would download in about 3.5 to 4 seconds.

South Korea high speeds --- and
we should have no caps during low traffic:

This 15 Mbps limit really irks me for at least two reasons:

1)
South Korea is typically getting about 100 Mbps, according to newspaper accounts in the past year or so (around 2009).

South Korea is reported to be way ahead of the United States in Internet speeds.

Note that 100 Mbps is about 6 times faster than 15 Mbps.

Verizon is trying to sell us 15Mbps-capped service for about $40 per month.

Does that mean that Verizon will want about $240 ( 6 x $40 ) per month if we get speeds like the South Koreans get?

You can bet that the South Koreans are probably paying no more than $40 per month for their 100 Mbps service. $240 per month would be unaffordable for most customers.

2)
One really ridiculous aspect of 'TIERED' CAPS is that, say you are using the Internet about 2AM in the morning and there is very little traffic along the internet pathways that you are using.

You could be getting download speeds much higher than 15 Mbps --- but you are being throttled down to 15 Mbps by your ISP, for no good reason --- except to make them rich.

'Fixed caps' versus 'Dynamic caps'

The issue here is a 'bandwith cap' issue, which is discussed in this link to a Wikipedia page.

This page says "Critics have charged that it is a method to charge consumers more by introducing tiered bandwidth caps."

I am one of those critics.

This 'white lies ISPs tell about broadband speeds' 2009 article (at netequalizernews.com) explains some of the issues --- and has some links to further information.

A WEB SEARCH on keywords such as

internet speed test

can be used to find sites that offer speed tests for your connection. But, as the link just above points out, these figures may be far faster than your actual download and upload speeds are.

Doing a WEB SEARCH on keywords like

network download speed cap isp

provides many more articles on this topic.

For now, I am against FIXED tiered-bandwidth-caps --- BUT I AM for DYNAMICALLY putting caps on bandwidth hogs, AS THEY OCCUR --- and when routes are clogged with internet traffic.

    Example data hogs:
    People downloading video file after video file.

Conclusion

Since the 15Mbps bandwith cap at $40 per month seems to be quite restrictive compared to what South Korean ISPs must be offering, I am inclined to say that ISPs, like Verizon, are just more greedy b*stards like the people we see on TV, advertising everyday, especially at night --- 'free' credit reports, reverse mortgages (boy, I'll bet THEY are on the up-and-up), debt consolidators, etc. etc. etc.

The FCC and Congress need to assure that regulations do not result in low, capped internet speeds when internet routes can handle much more traffic.

For more info

To get some more info on this subject, you can try a WEB SEARCH on keywords such as:

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low-ball capping of Internet service speeds by U.S. ISP's.

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Page history:

Page was posted 2010 Jun 23.

Page was changed 2013 Apr 18.
(Minor format changes.)

Page was changed 2018 Nov 09.
(Added css and javascript to try to handle text-size for smartphones, esp. in portrait orientation.)

Page was changed 2019 Jun 09.
(Added WEB SEARCHES section at bottom of page and some section headings.)