How Fast Is Your Broadband?

[Commentary] There are many ways for marketing professionals to bamboozle customers into believing they are getting a better deal than they actually are — notable among them "as low as" pricing come-ons and offers that promise to deliver "up to" some standard of service. The Internet is no stranger to this sort of gauzy offering, but it has become too central to the way Americans communicate to rely on dubious metrics.

A consistent federal standard is needed to determine the speed at which Americans navigate the Internet so consumers can make informed choices about their service. Broadband providers argue that their dazzling promises of "up to" speeds are not a gimmick. The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, a lobby group, is protesting a Federal Communications Commission report that says the typical speeds experienced by American consumers are less than half the "up to" speed advertised. But broadband providers have not supplied the F.C.C. with their own measure of speed. And regardless of what may be slowing downloads, from the point of view of consumers, the advertised "up to" speed is often pointless, if not outright misleading.

The F.C.C. wants to develop a measure of broadband speeds that can function like the miles-per-gallon standard used to gauge fuel economy across all the nation's cars and trucks. It hired a company to measure speeds in a sample of homes in a more standardized way. It is calling on industry and consumer groups to help find a common method to crunch the data into metrics that can be deployed nationally for all devices that are plugged into the Internet. The objective should be federally mandated standards of measurement and disclosure that consumers can rely on when deciding which online service to use.