For the last few months, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has been working together with SamKnows, researchers from a number of academic institutions and over 13 major ISPs to evaluate the state of the U.S. broadband industry and how well broadband providers in the U.S. perform. Today, this group published its first report based on data collected by almost 7,000 routers the group distributed to homes all across the country. This project is part of the National Broadband Plan and a hardware-based version of the web-based Consumer Broadband Test the FCC launched in early 2010.

Fiber: Faster Than Advertised While DSL Providers Still Overpromise

The researchers specifically looked at how well the three main access technologies (cable, DSL, fiber) did in terms of matching the speeds the ISPs advertise. While just a few years ago, most providers overpromised and underdelivered, things have thankfully gotten better now.

Sustained upload and download speeds for fiber customers during peak hours was generally better than advertised. For cable customers, download speeds were about 93% of the advertised rate, though upload speeds were often faster. DSL providers, on the other hand, still can’t quite match their advertised rates.

Still Some Black Sheep

What matters more than the general numbers, though, is how well individual providers perform. As the graph below clearly shows, there are still some providers who clearly promise far better speeds than they deliver. The worst offender among the providers represented in this survey is Insight, a relatively small cable company based in the Midwest.

Here are a number of other interesting results from this study:

• On average, during peak periods DSL-based services delivered download speeds that were 82 percent of advertised speeds, cable-based services delivered 93 percent of advertised speeds, and fiber-to-the-home services delivered 114 percent of advertised speeds.
• Latency was lowest in fiber-to-the-home services, and this finding was true across all fiber-to-the-home speed tiers.
• Fiber-to-the-home services provided 17 milliseconds (ms) round-trip latency on average, while cable-based services averaged 28 ms, and DSL-based services averaged 44 ms.
• Burst speed techniques increased short-term download performance by as much as 52 percent during peak periods for some offerings, and as little as 6 percent for other offerings.

If you are interested in taking a look at more of the data, you can find the full report here.

Specifically, CNN is working with AT&T, Comcast, Cox, DISH Network, Suddenlink and Verizon. As long as you are subscribed to one of their products, you can access the “live video” tab on CNN’s new online video player and in its mobile app. If you are not, you are out of luck.

I would happily give CNN a few dollars every month to get access to their streams, but as of now, I don’t even get the choice to do so. Thankfully, though, CNN will continue to provide free access to up to four live streams from breaking news events and on-demand access to video clips.

Innovation? Nope…

It’s hard not to look at AT&T’s site and wonder what it’s going to do that’s different from its competitors. Judging from what’s on the site right now, the answer is: zero. “The deals of the day are about solving everyday needs. Offers that make it easier to take the family out to dinner at that cute new diner. Finally dry-clean your wedding dress. Or get your car detailed after last month’s disastrous coffee run.”

Indeed, none of the recent Groupon clones have improved over the original model or brought any meaningful innovation to this space besides expanding the general concept into new niches (travel, shoes etc.). Facebook’s service is a bit more social (though that really only means it’s easier to share deals on Facebook), Google Offers is about as direct a clone as it could be, but in general, the idea is still the same and the sites often still hold up the pretense that these are “group-buying” sites and not just straight-up deals sites.

It’s hard not to imagine that consumers (and merchants) will soon get tired of this and restrict themselves to two or three general sites (Groupon, LivingSocial and maybe Google’s or Facebook’s offering) and another one or two niche services.

Here are the most interesting results of the survey: 44% of Verizon Android users are very likely (19%) or somewhat likely (25%) to buy an iPhone on February 10. About 26% of AT&T iPhone owners are either very likely (8%) or somewhat likely (18%) to get in line for a Verizon iPhone on day one.

Now, given the huge demand for Verizon iPhones, there can be little doubt that it will be a huge hit for both Verizon and Apple. I’m not doubting that at all. What I do doubt, however, are the survey results from uSamp. Here are some of the problems I see with this survey and the way it’s currently portrayed:

• How does uSamp recruit panelists? That one was a bit harder to find out, but as far as I can see, panelists are recruited through Opinion Place – a service owned by the same company as uSamp that pays panelists in Paypal credits, Amazon gift cards and American Airlines frequent flier miles. Basically, these people take surveys to make a buck – not exactly a trustworthy methodology.



• If you read all the way to the end of the survey, you see that a lot of people have “second thoughts about switching.” Once asked about these second thoughts, the number of switchers from AT&T to Verizon suddenly drops from 26% to 15%. Same for Verizon RIM and Android customers. The number of potential switchers drops from 54% to 25% after the survey asks if they still plan to switch, no matter the cost of switching, concerns about network speeds and the possibility that lots of iPhones could slow down Verizon’s network. This once again makes me wonder of the panelists who took this survey.
• Related to this: I never trust a survey that asks consumers about future purchase decisions (see the ChangeWave iPhone survey from January for an example and more explanation). Saying ‘yes’ about buying something in the future is very easy. Doing it is a lot harder (especially if early termination fees play a role).
• as far as I can see, this is only the second survey uSamp’s published under its own name. That doesn’t have to be a negative, but one could argue that uSamp doesn’t have a lot of experience in running its own surveys. The first survey – about consumer sentiments ahead of the holidays – seems quite reasonable, but maybe those questions were more in line with topics the paid uSamp panelists knew something about…

But I’m having a few issues with these numbers that make me think that this survey is ultimately too flawed to be trusted:

• This kind of self-reported data about future purchase decisions is notoriously unreliable. Just look at the numbers. Almost 30% of those who said they would switch don’t even think they would switch within the next year. But those who answered the survey (and we don’t know enough about the methodology here to begin with) could have had lots of different reasons for telling ChangeWave why they wanted to switch (social pressure, “sticking it to AT&T” etc.). Notice how ChangeWave’s numbers about dropped calls are also self-reported.
• The group of people ChangeWave interviews is highly self-selected. This data is not based on random phone interviews but on a survey of “credentialed professionals who spend their everyday lives working on the frontline of technological change. Nearly 3 out of every 5 members (53%) have advanced degrees (e.g., Master’s or Ph.D.) and 91% have at least a four-year bachelor’s degree.” These people opted to be part of the ChangeWave Alliance for the sole reason of being a part of these surveys.
• The survey was conducted before Verizon had even announced the iPhone for its network. Even today, we don’t know critical information about how much Verizon plans to charge for its data plans, for example. We also haven’t seen any speed comparisons between AT&T’s and Verizon’s networks yet.

Let’s come back in a few months and see what the real numbers are. I’m sure if this many people really switch, Verizon will be more than happy to tell us.

Now it’s just up to AT&T and friends to actually support this feature and enable them on the carrier side. Given how long it took AT&T to actually support a basic feature like tethering, I’m not holding my breath.

Other new features (mostly for the iPad) according to those who’ve actually seen iOS 4.3:

• swipe up to open the multitasking tray
• swipe left and right to switch apps
• 4 and 5 finger gestures – though I’m not quite sure what those will be used for, yet
• the iPad side switch can now be set back to bein an orientation lock (Apple turned it into a mute switch in the last update)
• AirPlay streaming from third-party apps
• fullscreen iAds

AT&T is “Evalutating” This Feature

There is nothing specifically “Verizon” about this feature. Technically, AT&T’s network is just as capable of supporting this feature as Verizon’s and there are already third-party apps for jailbroken iPhones out there that offer this capability and that work reasonably well. The Verizon iPhones that were on display in New York today ran iOS 4.2.5, a currently unreleased version of the iPhone’s operating system. On Verizon’s iPhones, turning on the hotspot feature is as easy as going to the settings menu and turning the feature on. It’s integrated directly into the OS.

The good folks over at the Business Insider asked AT&T if this feature would make its way to their iPhone as well and a company rep told them that AT&T is “evaluating” this feature but has “no plans to announce today.”

Just a Question of Time?

So will AT&T support mobile hotspots once Apple releases the next update to the iOS? My personal guess is that it will take the company a bit longer before it releases this feature to its users. After all, it took AT&T years before it even officially allowed tethering and the hotspot feature would put even more of a strain on the company’s network. For now, I’m guessing AT&T will start offering this feature once the next generation iPhone is available and it will surely charge a hefty fee for this feature as well (we don’t know anything about Verizon’s pricing plans for the iPhone yet, so the price could turn out to be a non-issue). Overall, though, it will only be a matter of time before AT&T users will get this feature as well.