Broadband ‘Truth-in-Labeling’
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- A tool clarifying and adding meaning to the terms and conditions of broadband services is badly needed, says the Open Technology Initiative of the New America Foundation.
With that in mind, it’s calling for Truth-in-Labeling by operators.
“Broadband subscribers are often frustrated that the actual performance of their internet access service regularly falls far below the advertised speeds, say Benjamin Lennett, Chiehyu Li, Dan Meredith, James Losey, Robb Topolski and Sascha Meinrath, going on »»»
Consumers set their expectations based on phrases like “up to 16 Mbps,” and are disappointed to learn that these quotes are worthless as assurances. Currently, there is no lawful requirement for ISPs to reveal the contents of the broadband services they are providing; customers might be harmed by the invalid or ambiguous languages.
Internet Access Providers should disclose the important facts and details of the broadband offering before subscribers sign up. The disclosure should be meaningful, and failing to meet minimum standards should be treated as an important service outage (resulting in a refund or service credit to the consumer). Where there are choices between different products or providers, the disclosure should be made in a way that allows consumers to compare them. Providing clear, meaningful, comparable disclosures ultimately spurs competition between ISPs which encourages the future development of broadband technology.
To help remedy the situation, the OTI has drawn up a sample Broadband Truth-in-Labeling disclosure.
The Broadband Truth-in-Labeling disclosure should be standardized to comprise several typical elements as indicators of broadband service quality, such as minimum expected speed and latency to the ISP’s border router (where the ISP connects to the rest of the Internet) and service uptime, says the groop, stating:
“These minimum assurances will be supported by the ISP as guarantees in the delivery of broadband services, backed by technical support and service charge refunds or credits. In addition to the description of minimums being guaranteed of the service, the disclosure should include all applicable fees, a common description of the technology used to provide the services, any service limits such as a bandwidth cap or the application of any traffic management techniques, the length of the contract terms, and a link to all additional terms and conditions.
“Requirements should be established for disclosing any highly objectionable or surprising terms such as arbitration restrictions or information or data selling.”
The Broadband Truth-in-Labeling disclosure, “must be shown to the consumer as part of the sign-up process and must be assertively presented again any time the ISP decide to alter the terms in such a way that alters the facts on the original Broadband Truth-in-Labeling disclosure,” adds the OTI.
(Cheers, Robb)
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
September, 2009
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September 26th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Well, good luck with that!!
The only way I found to get all the speed I’m paying for (I’m on Charter) was my new,
cheap wireless router! Yes I’m shocked too, havent a clue how, or why, but having this router
(a cheap ass belkin g) has boosted my through-put to actually be slightly HIGHER than
the advertised speed I’m paying for!! Best $35.00 I’ve spent in a long time!!
Now as for the truth in advertising, while i know alot of companies are screwing their
customers, I can honestly say that the service I’m getting has been within 5-10% of
advertised speeds, the only beef I have is in my area, the fasted i can buy is 10Mbs
In case you’re wondering, no I dont work for Charter. But good service is good service!!
Now if they would just drop the 100GB/month cap, everything would be cool!!
September 26th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
I don’t know for sure, but I would imagine this article is aimed at the big name broadband providers like Comcast, etc. I have to reset my modem 2 times a week. If I don’t notice that its acting up, then Not only do I not have internet, but no home phone either. Gets really old, but they are the ONLY broadband available here. If I use ANY torrent then after about 10 minutes, I have to reset my modem again. That means video game patchs (like World of Warcraft) and a couple beta’s that I got accepted for were all off limits too me.
Also my friends down in California have Astound. Even their customer service did not know that there are caps on the service based on your plan. Thats how they acted anyway.
Deceit and BS like this should be illegal since there is little to no competition to leave their company for.
September 26th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Let’s help Bell and Rogers with writing these labels for their services!