CenturyLink Among Those Concerned by FCC Broadband Measurement
CenturyLink is among the ISPs with concerns about FCC broadband performance measurement, an issue attracting some industry attention in recent lobbying of the agency and during gatherings of program participants. The Measuring Broadband America program, for consumers to learn about ISPs' services including those from the telco, has "test sampling that understates the quality of DSL providers’ service," the company said representatives told FCC Chief Technology Officer Scott Jordan and officials from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs, Wireline and Wireless bureaus. Some of these ISP concerns aren't new, but have arisen again because Jordan was discussing other related issues with stakeholders, said an industry official.
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CenturyLink worries about "reliability of data from Measurement Lab servers," and said "the collaborative nature of program -- with sharing of information between Commission, participating ISPs, and others -- has been key to testing integrity and the program’s relative success." The MBA broadband program has had issues of collection of industry data (see 1511300030), and M-Lab works on some testing. Cable heavy hitters including NCTA and members such as Comcast also recently told the agency of concerns about M-Lab server platform problems (see 1511270041). M-Lab told us Friday the problem has been fixed.
CenturyLink's lobbying of the commission also cited net neutrality ISP performance disclosures, linking some of them to the MBA program finding regional reporting wouldn't be cost effective, and cautioning "against requiring highly granular disclosures" in a filing posted Friday in docket 14-28. NCTA, too, in its and its members' Nov. 23 meeting on MBA with Jordan and others at the FCC said the program "considered reporting results at a regional level but rejected that approach because of the significant expense it would entail." The cable operators and association "have some continuing concerns about the program (e.g., periodic failures on the Measurement Lab test server platform resulting in flawed and inaccurate test results)," said a filing in the docket. "Overall the program continues to serve the public interest." CenturyLink and NCTA officials had no further comment Friday.
M-Lab in late October fixed the problem, which it learned about in August and was causing the program to improperly measure the speed of residential broadband connections above 100 Mbps, said M-Lab researcher Collin Anderson in an interview Friday: "That is a model of successful communication." The hardware and software problem had to do with a limitation on how a switch interacted with TCP, or transmission control protocol, said Anderson. M-Lab "has been a strong partner of the FCC since the outset of the MBA," he said. "From this incident, we’re looking toward the future and how do we measure the next generation of broadband and how do we do so reliably," he said of super-fast connection speeds.
Anderson had no comment on CenturyLink's concerns about DSL and MBA, referring us to the FCC. Commission officials declined to comment Friday.
M-Lab was founded by Google, the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute and others that helped set the lab's policies, says its website. It says supporting partners include data center firm Internap, SamKnows, which has worked with the FCC on broadband speed measurement, and Cision/Vocus, a public-relations software company that on its website said its clients include Microsoft.