Cable ISP fined $10k for lying to FCC about where it offers broadband

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/cable-isp-fined-10000-for-lying-to-fcc-about-where-it-offers-broadband/

by kelthuzad • 2 years ago

70 24 2 years ago

randall• 2 years ago

It's a small ISP, so even though 10k is probably negligible, it's still non trivial probably. I can't imagine ISPs in Toronto, Ohio, a city of 5000, (2000 households paying $60 = $120k)

teeray2• 2 years ago

Well, I guess everyone’s “Regulatory Compliance Fee” is going up by a couple of pennies this month

jeremyjh• 2 years ago

At this rate its far cheaper to pay the fines than to pay a compliance officer.

mistrial9• 2 years ago

is this seriously suggesting that enforcement of known agreements with corporations providing regulated services is not useful because it might cost the consumer?

teeray2• 2 years ago

Certainly not the intention. The intent is that opaque junk fees are prone to abuse this way and we have no way of really knowing that they aren’t.

ajford• 2 years ago

I took it that this fine isn't enough to change anything, and will likely just be added to the overhead that gets snuck into these opaque service charges.

10k isn't even a slap on the wrist. More like picking a piece of lint off the wrist.

GeekyBear• 2 years ago

It would be interesting to see if this sort of fine would also apply to ISPs that advertise connection speeds that are only seen when connecting to a speed test site.

CableNinja3• 2 years ago

So literally all ISPs then. Every one of those speed test sites are rigged. They seek the closest node, and, ISPs are obviously incentivized to run such nodes specifically because of that "closest node" fact.

That being said, theres a lot of factors that get your final speed result. A lot of your system resources will limit you long before you reach your advertised speeds (and this is assuming not even an internet, but lan connection). Compound those with things like routers outside your ISP, and toward the target, can be congested, or generally slow, and you will likely not even reach 10% of advertised with a single system.

Obviously nerds and power users might get more out, but its really pretty rare.

Those testing sites are just a general tool for troubleshooting, and even ISPs should not be relying on them to determine speeds.

If you want a proper speed test look for "(size) test bin download" and youll find sites like HE.net with 500MB-10GB files that you can direct download and gauge your speed with. While they are effectively what the speedtest sites do, they are a much better gauge in my experience

old_hat• 2 years ago

fast.com checks the speed to Netflix servers. So if they juice that, they also have to juice Netflix streaming speed unless they've figured out a clever way to fingerprint just fast.com traffic over HTTPS.

RKearney• 2 years ago

For comparison, this is roughly the cost of a pair of coherent 400G optics used in DWDM.

matt-p• 2 years ago

You're buying at 5K US per end??

Lowest I've seen is 9,500 per optic

fencepost• 2 years ago

Seems like a simple fix - require them to provide service at a normal installation fee at any location they've claimed within 10 days or be on the hook for the cost to that end user of getting equivalent or better service installed. Throw enough zeros at a different provider and they'll build out to you, and if that buildout is being paid for by a nominally-incumbent local provider? Even better.

"You don't actually have to provide fiber service within 10 days at the location you said you were already servicing - but if you don't you're going to be paying $100k+ to AT&T for their expedited buildout to that area."

rhyme-boss• 2 years ago

Less than 100x my last parking ticket.

MisterBastahrd• 2 years ago

Spectrum claims that they offer service at my address, but I've had their people out twice and they do not. They offer it to the rest of the neighborhood (which is a standard residential suburb) but never bothered to bring it to my side of the road and have no plans to do so.

LocalH• 2 years ago

Spectrum's customer relations has gone heavily downhill. If a person gets a month behind inadvertently (but is otherwise paying the bill properly), they start getting really aggressive. They don't actually disconnect service, but directly after payment they force a modem reset and then charge a "reconnection fee".

Much like genuine stupidity and incompetence is often indistinguishable from malice, sufficiently large business is often indistinguishable from scamming.

darby_eight• 2 years ago

What is the point of these fines if they don't pose an existential threat to the company?

kmlx• 2 years ago

the general idea of a fine is to discourage future infractions, not to destroy the company. fines don’t need to be existential in order to be effective.

itopaloglu83• 2 years ago

Unless the lying is systemic.

Someone making a mistake in their coverage map would be okay, but if they are systemically adding false locations for any incentive money and hoping that they won’t be found out, then it should not just scratch their back but hurt enough to cause behavior change.

tacocataco2• 2 years ago

Elect clowns, get a circus.

We need to introduce competition into the electoral process by passing comprehensive electoral reform at the state level.

Till then, enjoy the show.

goodSteveramos• 2 years ago

Every alternative voting system I’ve seen promoted my mainstream sources would make the current system worse by keeping winner-takes-all single-seat districts and making it even easier for triangulating ‘centrist’ politicians to defeat challengers. (such as Single Transferable Vote, Instant Runoff etc.)

The actual way you break the grip of the center right and center left parties fear mongering about each other to keep them both in power is with a proportional party list. “parties make lists of candidates to be elected, and seats are distributed by elections authorities to each party in proportion to the number of votes the party receives”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party-list_proportional_repr...

So it will never happen because the current centrist parties want to keep their power. Oh well lol

Cable ISP fined $10k for lying to FCC about where it offers broadband

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