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 Technology News | November 2006 
Not Always Full Speed Ahead
 Matt Richtel & Ken Belson - NYTimes
| | Analysts and consumer advocates say consumers often do not need the high speeds that companies are pitching to them. |
What is a megabit worth? And what the heck is a megabit anyway? These questions are hard to avoid for consumers trying to make sense of the fast-growing menu of options for high-speed Internet access.
More than ever, the nation’s phone and cable companies are trumpeting the speed of their Internet connections with ads that pitch “blazing broadband” at “up to 100 times faster than dial-up.” But as with so many consumer services, the devil is in the fine print.
In more densely populated areas, many Americans now have not only a choice of broadband providers but also a range of different speeds to pick from. As the options proliferate, consumer advocates say it is getting tougher for people to tell what service is best for them — and which packages promise more than they deliver.
Confusing matters, broadband lines are increasingly being bundled with television and phone services, making it difficult to determine how much the high-speed connection actually costs.
The offers, consumer advocates say, are not always straightforward. With few exceptions, they include language that says consumers will get “up to” a certain speed, typically expressed in megabits per second. (An MP3 song file that takes 12 minutes to download over a dial-up line would take 27 seconds on a 1.5-megabits-per-second broadband line, and 8 seconds on a 5-megabit connection.)
In many cases, consumer advocates and industry analysts said, customers do not get the maximum promised speed, or anywhere near it, from their cable and digital subscriber line connections. Instead, the phrase “up to” refers to speeds attainable under ideal conditions, like when a D.S.L. user is near the phone company’s central switching office.
“They don’t deliver what’s advertised, and it’s inherently deceptive,” said Dave Burstein, editor of DSL Prime, a newsletter that tracks the broadband industry. “ ‘Up to’ is a weasel term that should be taken out of the companies’ vocabulary.”
The companies argue that their marketing is not misleading because the speeds they promise can actually be reached.
Steve Howe, vice president for voice products at EarthLink, said his company’s use of the term “up to” was accurate even though the speeds actually provided depended on other factors. The maximum is “a number that you very much can get to,” Mr. Howe said.
Eric Rabe, a spokesman for Verizon, acknowledged that the maximum speed promised was what was available “under optimal conditions.” He argued that advertising those numbers was not disingenuous because the optimal speed at least provided a benchmark for comparison. Verizon cannot control, among other things, how quickly Web sites can deliver information that is requested by users.
“Once you get on the public Internet, all bets are off,” he said.
While Mr. Rabe defended his company’s advertising policies, he said he could not do the same for competitors, particularly in the cable industry.
“We deliver the full speed or close to it more often than our competitors,” he said. But Mr. Rabe said he did not have statistics that would back up that contention.
Determining the speeds consumers are actually getting is tough to measure. Cable speeds can vary if many people in one neighborhood are online at the same time, like after dinner. Access over phone lines can be slower if the customer is far from the switching office, where the Internet signal originates.
Consumers may end up with slower browsing speeds if they use computers with older processors or visit crowded Web sites, things that are beyond the control of the cable or phone company.
In a survey last summer in which 12,000 readers of PC Magazine downloaded software to test their connections, the magazine found that the average speed provided by major broadband companies during surfing of popular Web sites was typically less than half of the advertised speed.
DSL Reports, a news and discussion Web site for broadband customers, keeps track of the results of speed tests that its users perform on their connections. In one recent week, the average speeds of major providers included 5.97 megabits a second for Comcast and 2.84 megabits for BellSouth. But those numbers can include results from customers who are paying for different speeds of service.
Given all the variables, “it’s getting more tricky to know what speed you’re really getting,” said Justin Beech, the founder and operator of DSL Reports. But Mr. Beech said he felt providers were getting more reliable with their speeds, in part because all the speed-test sites were enabling people to verify if they were getting what was advertised.
“In general, an I.S.P. that advertises a speed and doesn’t provide it will get crucified online until they fix it,” he said, referring to an Internet service provider. “The vocal minority will check the line — sometimes daily.”
Upload speeds, the rate at which information is sent from the subscriber’s computer, are often far slower than download speeds. This is typically only a concern for customers who often need to upload photos and other large files, or those doing tasks where split seconds count, like online gamers and day traders.
Complicating the debate, analysts and consumer advocates say consumers often do not need the high speeds that companies are pitching to them. The companies, they say, are spreading the false premise that more speed always leads to a better online experience, when in fact most online tasks like surfing the Web or sending e-mail messages can be done with more modest connections.
That is what Greg and Robin Bernstein discovered when they wanted to get rid of their dial-up connection this past spring. They chose 1.5-megabit-per-second D.S.L. service from Qwest, the phone carrier in their Minneapolis neighborhood, mostly because they already had a local line from the company.
“The priority was to get faster service,” Mrs. Bernstein said. At the same time, she said, “I wasn’t interested in a bill that would creep up. It doesn’t really matter to me as long as it works.”
Even so, telecommunications providers say many consumers respond to ads for faster connections.
Verizon, for instance, is building a state-of-the-art fiber optic network that lets it offer the fastest speeds of any major company. The service, called FiOS, now passes close to six million homes and includes broadband speeds of (up to) 5, 15 and 30 megabits per second that sell for $34.95, $44.95 and $179.95 a month.
Verizon said that about 15 percent of those who can get the service are signing up within 12 months of it becoming available, a number that analysts say is promising. The company expects to have 725,000 subscribers by the end of the year. In parts of the New York metropolitan area, Verizon this summer raised the maximum speed of the service at no additional cost, to 10, 20 and 50 megabits.
“The network is future-proof,” said Virginia Ruesterholz, the president of Verizon’s telecommunications group, noting that the faster speeds are popular with gamers and people who watch video online.
As Verizon’s network grows it is forcing competitors to respond. Cablevision, which competes head-to-head with Verizon in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, this year raised the speeds of its broadband connections after Verizon began selling FiOS in its territory.
The company now offers connections at 15 megabits per second for $44.95 a month, up from 10 megabits last year. Customers can also buy a 30-megabit line — faster than is needed by most small businesses — for an additional $14.95 per month.
Time Warner Cable, which competes with Verizon in and around New York, has also raised its download speeds. Its $39.95 plan is now 8 megabits per second, up from 7 megabits, and its $49.95 plan is now 10 megabits, up from 8 megabits.
All three companies said they were simply ensuring that their customers would have sufficiently fast connections given the growth in music and video downloading and other bandwidth-hogging practices.
“We think we’ve found that sweet spot” between speed and price, said Sam Howe, the chief marketing officer at Time Warner Cable. “If there’s a speed arms race, it will become meaningless as consumers find out they’re buying more than they need.”
Despite the rush of new offers, the United States still lags behind many countries when it comes to broadband speeds and prices. In 2005, it ranked sixth globally on a price-per-kilobit basis, according to the International Telecommunications Union. Prices were cheaper in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Iceland and Sweden, countries where the government took an active role in promoting broadband use.
If experiences overseas are any guide, Americans can expect advertised broadband speeds to continue rising and, in places where there are competing companies, promotional prices to nudge lower or stabilize, particularly for customers who sign up for bundles of services that include phone and television.
The variety of broadband speeds, price plans, discounts and technical hurdles that slow connections, have made it hard for shoppers to decide what is a good value, said Gene Kimmelman, vice president for federal policy at Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. “Go into a TV store and look at different TVs; the picture you see is pretty much what you’re buying,” he said. “But with D.S.L., do people really know what they’re buying?”
Promotional offers for service often come with strings attached in the form of yearlong commitments and penalties for breaking them.
With all the noise in the marketplace, some people shopping for broadband rely on the old word-of-mouth approach. “I’m not real familiar with the technical part of the speeds,” said Lyle Rhodes, who lives near Chattanooga, Tenn., and recently signed up for a D.S.L. line from BellSouth. “But from talking to friends who had BellSouth and Comcast, I figured it out. The numbers matter less as long as it’s fast.”
Mr. Rhodes, who previously had a dial-up line from AOL, said price was another factor. His D.S.L. line will cost only a few dollars more than his dial-up, and he received a coupon good toward a new Dell computer. Comcast offered a good promotional price for six months, but after that, he worried that the price would exceed his budget.
While added speed will not make a difference to most people, that is what the broadband providers are emphasizing, said Jim Louderback, editor in chief of PC Magazine.
“They’re definitely pushing speed more — cable providers in particular, because they need to differentiate themselves from D.S.L.,” he said.
Mr. Louderback had some simple buying advice: “Unless you’re watching YouTube, or downloading a lot of video, go with what’s cheapest.” |
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