Comcast Gave False Map Data To FCC (arstechnica.com) 82
Matthew Hillier can't get Comcast service at his home in Arvada, Colorado. But that didn't stop Comcast from claiming it serves his house when it submitted data for the Federal Communications Commission's new broadband map. From a report: Comcast eventually admitted to the FCC that it doesn't serve the address -- but only after Ars got involved. Comcast will have to correct its submission for Hillier's house, and a bigger correction might be needed because it appears Comcast doesn't serve dozens of other nearby homes that it claimed as part of its coverage area.
When Hillier looked up his address on the FCC map, it showed Comcast claims to offer 1.2Gbps download and 35Mbps upload speeds at the house. In reality, he makes do with CenturyLink Internet that tops out at 60Mbps downloads and 5Mbps uploads. Hillier -- an engineer with 30 years experience who previously worked for several telecom firms, including Comcast and Charter -- submitted a challenge to the FCC in mid-November, telling the commission that Comcast doesn't serve his address. Correcting false data is important because the map will be used to determine which parts of the US are eligible for $42.45 billion in federal grants to expand broadband availability. Program rules require ISPs to respond to challenges within 60 days, and Comcast's first response to Hillier's insisted that it actually does serve the house, which is on a street called Quartz Loop. "The provider subject to your challenge has disputed your challenge," the FCC told Hillier in an automated email on January 21. Comcast admitted to the FCC that it doesn't offer service at Hillier's home in Arvada on February 3, one day after Ars contacted Comcast's public relations department.
When Hillier looked up his address on the FCC map, it showed Comcast claims to offer 1.2Gbps download and 35Mbps upload speeds at the house. In reality, he makes do with CenturyLink Internet that tops out at 60Mbps downloads and 5Mbps uploads. Hillier -- an engineer with 30 years experience who previously worked for several telecom firms, including Comcast and Charter -- submitted a challenge to the FCC in mid-November, telling the commission that Comcast doesn't serve his address. Correcting false data is important because the map will be used to determine which parts of the US are eligible for $42.45 billion in federal grants to expand broadband availability. Program rules require ISPs to respond to challenges within 60 days, and Comcast's first response to Hillier's insisted that it actually does serve the house, which is on a street called Quartz Loop. "The provider subject to your challenge has disputed your challenge," the FCC told Hillier in an automated email on January 21. Comcast admitted to the FCC that it doesn't offer service at Hillier's home in Arvada on February 3, one day after Ars contacted Comcast's public relations department.
Where's the TEETH? (Score:5, Insightful)
Without the FCC or anyone else having TEETH to bite ISPs who lie about this, it's a dog and pony show.
Re:Where's the TEETH? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have money you can do illegal things right in public and never face consequences.
For example, plenty of jobs are seeking "young" people, which is explicitly illegal as age is a protected characteristic. It's exactly as illegal as seeking "white" people, and on the same basis. The ads are blatantly illegal and posted publicly but nobody gets held accountable. Remember when Facebook was selling housing ads with filters that were illegal? Nobody there did jail time for willfully aiding and abetting illegal activity, nor for using those filters in illegal ways.
We The People don't matter unless we have The Money
Corporatists pulled them starting in the 1970's (Score:5, Interesting)
You want some teeth? Larger fines, a percentage of profits before any taxes/expenses/costs. Now if someone turns you in they get 10% of that fine tax free.
Not only that but all C-Levels in a company are fined a percentage of their total compensation package (cash, stock options, housing / car / flight allowance / et al.) for each offense. Start at 20% of total compensation.
Each time it happens the fines double each time for both the company and the C-Levels.
On the third offense the company is broken up and sold. The C-Levels are barred from working at, or sitting on the board of, any company doing business in the US for a decade.
Never pass. Could you imagine the whinging from companies actually facing consequences for bad behavior. Not to mention it would screw with the stock market short term.
Re: (Score:2)
We're talking about "dozens" of customers - seriously? You think as a corporation they decided to deny/lie about serving a few dozen houses?
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We're talking about "dozens" of customers - seriously? You think as a corporation they decided to deny/lie about serving a few dozen houses?
No we're talking about 2.6 million customers.
https://www.fcc.gov/document/f... [fcc.gov]
Yes as a corporation they chose to lie about serving 2.6 million addresses.
(Link right in the summary)
They did it to steal federal grant money to cover rural areas, and to prevent being forced to share their right-of-way permits with competing providers.
More profits, less expenses, less competition, and no consequences.
It would take a complete moron NOT to do what they did.
Re:Corporatists pulled them starting in the 1970's (Score:4, Interesting)
We built a house in a new neighborhood a few years ago, where 3 different broadband providers were supposed to be installing to serve all houses in the neighborhood. Our street was supposed to have service months before the house was finished... but we still didnt have service from anyone when we closed. Nor for months after. I was a sys admin at the time, and the available maps all showed we were served by all 3. Finally, one of the techs introduced me to a senior engineer for our area, who looked into it. I found out that they had stopped planting new cable in the neighborhood six months before, and had no plans to restart because there was "too much competition".
I networked a little, and got in touch with a senior engineer for ISP #2, and lo and behold, they had also stopped planting cable in the neighborhood because of "too much competition". Called around a little more... so had ISP number 3. There was NO BROADBAND in the new section of the development. None. We had to get the developer involved, and they STILL didn't want to start up again. The developer had to threaten to evict them from **all** of their developments to get them to start planting again. It took another 2.5 months for them to run cable 250 feet down a street with one house on it, from a header that had been there all along.
Initially, I considered it incompetence - but I dont believe that any more. There is no mechanism to update the map database. No one we talked to, at any level, could correct the coverage map - and the guys who ran the NOC genuinely tried to push it through for us. I am defacto tech support for rural family as well, and you run up against the same garbage. "We have 50/10 service, but our netflix quality sucks. Test the throughput, it's 10/1 on a good day. Call support - nope, 10/1. Show them the test, they dispatch a tech, and whaddya know, this header only supports 10/1. Still the same header, two years later. If you call service, they now say it should be 100/60.
And those are just the ones Ive run into personally. They have no incentive to be honest or transparent, and there are no consequences to engaging in malignant neglect by simply making it impossible to fix the "mistakes" in the coverage maps.
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You think this is a simple mistake or over-site? It was done on purpose and it's only the tip of the iceberg. There are tens of thousands or perhaps hundred of thousands locations that are incorrectly identified. Nobody knows because no one bothers to check.
Corporate America lies about everything because they know they won't get caught, and even if they do they will still come out ahead. They cheat the government and consumers because it's the easiest way to make money.
This wretched state of affair
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I should also note, the fine I listed above should be based on INCOME before any taxes or other expenses. Can't let magical accounting make the profit vanish in a whirlwind of cross-billing shenanigans.
Can you imagine the reaction on Wall Street if AT&T (or any company really) lost 20% of their income to a fine? You can bet your "betters" (the Corporatists) would be apop
Re:Where's the TEETH? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ethics and legality don't factor into business decisions.
What matters is - will this generate more profit than it costs?
If the answer is yes, then it will happen. If you don't do it, your competitors will and it will give them an advantage over you.
The only way to prevent businesses from conducting unethical or illegal activities is to make those actions not financially viable.
Re:Where's the TEETH? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the consequences is that if you claim you offer internet on an address you must deliver it within 7 days of the order no matter the cost for the ISP and it must not be reflected to the customer.
If it's not done then the FCC could allow anyone to take on that and the offending ISP has to take the whole bill.
That would probably cause a lot of maps to get updated fairly quickly.
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If the consequences is that if you claim you offer internet on an address you must deliver it within 7 days of the order no matter the cost for the ISP and it must not be reflected to the customer.
If it's not done then the FCC could allow anyone to take on that and the offending ISP has to take the whole bill.
That would probably cause a lot of maps to get updated fairly quickly.
This. This would fix the problem immediately. Make it a legal obligation to serve anyone you say you are going to serve. While we're at it, how about enforcing false advertising laws against these ISPs for all the hidden fees and other abuse.
We have plenty of laws to fix these problems already, such as fraud charges, false advertising, etc. Why isn't the government using them? Oh, yeah That's right. They're too busy arguing about what rights to strip away from the people who aren't wealthy enough to
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Because these laws aren't criminal laws. There's never jail time, unless contempt of court gets involved. Police don't get involved. Instead it means that if you sue then the law is on your side. Because it's expensive to sue, it's rarely done. Federal and state agencies can also sue, but they're often overworked and under staffed so those suits tend to be spotty and done as warnings to others.
The Republicans defanged them (Score:2, Insightful)
Voters keep putting right wing, pro-corporate politicians in charge, largely because of social issues, and this is the result.
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"If you work hard, you can make it as well" You will get further in life kissing ass than working hard.
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Hur, hur! I'm such a brave coward! And such a wicked, sick burn towards another user! I'm so impressed.
Jesus Fucking Christ...the cowards on Slashdot who have nothing relevant to say so they hide behind further anonymity? Do you work for Comcast and you're upset about the article? And you're sticking up for them by anonymously commenting against people that seem to be anti-corporation?
I don't understand. Maybe I'm missing the joke that Slashdot has become?
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Voters keep putting right wing, pro-corporate politicians in charge, largely because of corporate ownership of both sides, and this is the result.
FTFY...you're welcome
Re: (Score:2)
a bigger correction might be needed because it appears Comcast doesn't serve dozens of other nearby homes that it claimed as part of its coverage area.
And the "service area" is how big? I presume it is at least a political boundry (city(s), county(s) or maybe even a state), and the fact that "dozens" might not be served is what we used to call "a rounding error" not an evil conspiracy by a malificent cabal of ISPs trying to avoid offering high-dollar services to willing customers.
How many of these "dozens" are edge cases like the fellow with the house in a neighborhood where all his neighbors had internet connections, but his previous homeowner declined/r
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How many of these "dozens" are edge cases like the fellow with the house in a neighborhood where all his neighbors had internet connections, but his previous homeowner declined/refused to have the property wired, and to add it after the fact was going to cost several thousand dollars?
The house getting wired with cable is a couple hundred.
I should know. I was one of these edge cases.
Story time - my house is in the middle of the block. All the houses to the left of me are serviced by one run of cable, all the houses to the right are serviced by a run of cable from the opposite direction.
There's a wild section next to me, basically the land is so split up and owned by a number of random people that no development is going to happen there in my lifetime. So the next neighbor is a couple
Re: Where's the TEETH? (Score:2)
With no teeth it is worthless.
Maybe the penalty should be equivalent to the property purchase price (or a large percentage of it), since there are cases where people have made property purchases based advertised internet availability?
If there is no penalty, then an ISP has no incentive to get things in order.
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Maybe the penalty should be equivalent to the property purchase price (or a large percentage of it), since there are cases where people have made property purchases based advertised internet availability?
Actually, I'd keep it simpler/cheaper. You say you service the address/area, you have to service the address/area. Even if it costs you $100k to run the service out there.
The guy's story is basically the same as me. I called and verified that they offered service at the address before I bought the house. They didn't change their mind until AFTER the installer came out and discovered that the closest tap was too far away.
The neighbors on all sides of me all had service. It was just my place.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, I'd keep it simpler/cheaper. You say you service the address/area, you have to service the address/area. Even if it costs you $100k to run the service out there.
The guy's story is basically the same as me. I called and verified that they offered service at the address before I bought the house. They didn't change their mind until AFTER the installer came out and discovered that the closest tap was too far away.
The neighbors on all sides of me all had service. It was just my place.
Maybe go hybrid? Force them to install it or pay the equivalent value of the home?
This is what the media is supposed to do: (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not possible (Score:2, Funny)
The only real solution is to strip them of that power. That means taking their money away, because that's where their power comes from.
The problem with *that* is convincing the public that just because you took away 98% of Bill Gate's money (leaving him with only a few tens of millions of live off of, poor guy) doesn't mean you're going to take their house & car and make them drink soy milk and go V
Not very often at all (Score:2)
Holy Hell, I just checked my address (Score:5, Interesting)
I just checked my address in rural michigan where only AT&T is available for 10/1. Comcast is advertising 1200 down and 10 up. I submitted an FCC challenge. This is bullshit.
Re: Holy Hell, I just checked my address (Score:3)
Rural California. Mediacom is saying they serve 1GBps cable, lol.... no.
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If they claim that they provide it, they should be required to pony up.
Call them up, order the service that they told the FCC that they provide.
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Ah, but they do provide it, once you pay the $50,000 fee to get the lines dug to your house...
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Replying to undo mod.. I tried for "funny" and clicked on "informative" instead. I miss the days when you had to click a button to actually moderate.
Re: (Score:2)
I miss the days when you had to click a button to actually moderate.
Switch to "classic discussion system (d1)" like I did.
They lied about coverage that can grant them free (Score:5, Insightful)
This should be looked at as a possible lawsuit. You don't make such glaringly obvious mistakes like this and go "whoopsy doodles" when you are dealing with government funding, let alone in the tune of millions+.
Let me guess, instead of a lawsuit, Comcast will be told to keep the money they got for this fraud, and pinky swear to maybe not do it again.
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It's the opposite actually - when the established companies claim service in an area they don't actually serve, that keeps competitors from getting government grants to build out in that area. It's a way for the established companies to block potential competition - once a competitor builds out in an area not served by the established company, they're likely to continue building into the established company's footprint and take away customers.
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Let's think about that for a minute. You said:
If their claimed coverage is used to determine how much government money they are given to expand broadband, wouldn't this be considered fraud against the government? And fraud valued over possible millions of dollars?
If ISPs are given money to expand their service area (and they are), what would be the effect of lying about your coverage area?
By over-reporting their coverage area, they are under-reporting the need, and thus limiting the amount of money they can get from the government
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I took it as if you've expanded to X area that wasn't being serviced/had limited/low quality service and brought it up to a certain threshold, then you would receive Y amount of money as payment for investing in those areas. Like reimbursement for having done it, not incentives to expand to those areas.
If this were the case of how it worked, then over-reporting their coverage area would get them more money.
Boo Hoo! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Being stuck on 1.6 mbps forever that was my first gut reaction as well; 60 mbps down is a LOT.
But that said it's still a blatant lie about what they provide and it absolutely should get them slapped around.
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We're talking about "dozens" of possible mis-reported homes - not cities, homes. the scale of this "crime" is monumentally small, but please, rage on about how high-speed internet is a human right, and this error is a crime against humanity - or something.
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It sounds like you have a list of all affected addresses if you have a number. Care to share it?
Beyond that, that's such weird logic. Where's your threshold for when it's too many affected houses? 50? 100? 1000? 10000? Does it have to pass a full million? Does it only get to be too many if you're personally affected by it?
They really just have no idea (Score:2)
My parents recently moved into a condo that is served by Comcast. I went to a local brick-and-mortar Comcast store to set up their service, and the people there insisted Comcast did not serve that address. When I told them that there were over a hundred residents there currently receiving Comcast service, their answer was simply "No there aren't,"
I called 800-Xfinity and set up service with no problems. After it was up and running I went back to the Comcast store and they continued to insist I was lying.
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Yes people assume that the false data submitted to the FCC is malicious, but in many cases it's just due to incompetence. Clearly their records about where they can actually offer service are inconsistent and in many cases wrong.
Would IRS accept that answer on your taxes? (Score:2)
There are way too many and too persistent errors for this to be excusable errors. Malicious or incompetence are both violations and top Executives of the corporations should do 1 day in jail for each individual lie.
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Simpler than that, treat a declaration to the FCC that you're able to provide service in an area as an obligation to do so within a specific (short) timeframe such as 2 weeks to any customer in the stated area.
That way anyone in an area where service is claimed, can order the service and expect for it to be operational within 2 weeks. If they fail to do so, require them to provide equivalent alternative service (eg deploy a fibre leased line) at their own cost and provide hefty compensation for any delays.
Re: (Score:2)
That's cute.
Where did "two weeks" come from? You can't just make up dlivery response times.
Where do you think the money comes from when your proposed remedy "starts costing them significan amounts of money"? It doesn't come from the telco/isp pockets, it becomes a cost of doing business and everyone's rates go up.
In reality, when confronted with just such a situation, what prevents the ISP/Telco from simply declaring your home unservicable and submitting a correction to their earlier coverage area submissio
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If those addresses have already declined service, then they would have records of that.
If the service is physically present in the street but hasn't been wired in to a particular property then it's not too difficult to hook them up.
2 weeks is a typical lead time for installation of service in an area where the provider already provides service. If the cabling is already present in your property then it can be activated remotely in a matter of minutes, if the cable runs past but doesnt connect to your proper
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It doesn't matter whether it's malice or incompetence. It's not a perfect analogy, but it's like trying to get out of a traffic ticket because you "didn't know you were speeding."
Not an excuse, and made worse in this case because it involves public infrastructure and government grants. I like the idea proposed above where if an ISP says they serve an area, they are required by law to make good on that promise at no extra cost to the customer.
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When you take the coverage maps down to the smallest detail - a single residence - you can run into any number of unique conditions that could cause inaccuracies.
Image the homeowner that refused cable TV and ISP hookups when theiy built their own home on private property - back then they were happy with OTA TV and dial-up modems, then they died, a "work from home" family moves in and orders the same internet service every neighbor has on their street, only to find out because of the previous owners declinin
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The local stores are often independents that only have a loose label. AT&T does this also, and we'd have to drive further away from my mother's closest AT&T store to get to one that could actually make necessary changes.
They curb competition (Score:1)
Make the maps equal to contracts. (Score:4, Insightful)
If a company falsely claims they offer service somewhere (even just on a publicly displayed map) and someone calls them on it, then that company should be required to provide the service. Claiming the area implies they've already cabled the area, so no charging the customer for it again. And they'd have to pay a fee to the ISP that actually covers the area, for poaching one of their customers.
Defensive filing (Score:2)
Wonder how much of this is human error and lack of data and how much is intentional. Now that big money is on the table filings especially by larger entrenched operators are increasingly wielded strategically to keep others from encroachment upon their turf. It would be wonderful to start seeing bean counters jailed for intentionally directing such shenanigans.
Still think an aspect of this is unfair to smaller operators who spend much higher portion of their collective time doing useful work (e.g. trenchi
Re: (Score:2)
Wonder how much of this is human error and lack of data and how much is intentional.
0% for the former, 100% for the latter.
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Wonder how much of this is human error and lack of data and how much is intentional.
Your low UID suggests that you're old enough and probably savvy enough to know the answer. I get that you're trying to be objective and balanced here; but after all this is Comcast we're talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course its intentional. They think of that territory as "theirs". Sure, they don't give good service to parts of the territory, and don't intend to in the future either, but they don't want someone else coming in to compete either. So they fudge the numbers, or provide limited service to some people just so the numbers look better on paper.
A public website to collate this info would help (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The simple solution is a bounty program (Score:2)
Congress should pass a law that if a carrier says they serve an address, any resident of that address can report nonconformance and the carrier would be required to pay $1k / day until service as claimed is established to the notifier, and $1k / day to FCC to cover the costs of administering the program.The carrier would have the option to withdraw their claim and pay a sum of $1 million per claim so removed instead.
Stop accepting asymmetric speeds (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
No it isn't. Providers make upstream more expensive to prevent you from running your own servers at home, instead making you pay more for high-end synchronous 'business' service or co-location services to increase profits. Though, these days with services like AWS, a lot of their higher-profit business were rendered moot, much to their annoyance. I've worked for several ISPs in the past, though I'm not currently in the industry.
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More money pissed down the drain (Score:3)
Since the Clinton administration, ISPs and broadband providers have received nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer money to build out and make available high(er) speed internect connectivity. And what do they have to show for it? This article demonstrates it nicely.
Take the money but do nothing. At this point all providers who have ever received taxpayer money should be forced to build out as they said they would, and receive no money to do so. They've already been paid several times over to do the work, they simply refuse to do it.
Verizon (Score:1)
simple solution- disqualify anyone for lying (Score:2)
if the FCC is going to be dispersing the money, they could put in a qualifier that any telco found to be sending inaccurate information (be it intentional or not- don't care.. that's on them to get right..) is disqualified from any money for a set term of say 5years for anything within 100KM of the location they submitted erroneous information for. From what i'm hearing with the bullshit telcos are actually sending, they would end up getting NOTHING pretty damn quick.
on a side note- if i send my taxes in
delicious (Score:1)
Making false statements to the federal government. That's a felony. Maybe even fraud if there was money, grants, or tax incentives involved with these faked maps.
Scope of BooBooHood (Score:1)
The legal issue is whether it's an isolated harmless accident, gross negligence (mass slop), or an intention to deceive. I suspect a combination of the last two: there was incentive to exaggerate such that they left certain mistakes stay in the map rather than check further. That's often how big co's create plausible deniability: controlled laziness by selectively skipping quality checks.
If anyone wants... (Score:3)
You can check what is being advertised at your home and file a challenge too.
https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/h... [fcc.gov]
Make them walk the walk (Score:2)
Idea for dealing with the ISPs that lie about where they provide coverage: require that if they include an address in their data to the FCC claiming they provide service there, they must install service to that address upon request at no more than the regular rate they advertise for initial service to an area they already have wired up regardless of what's required to get that service up and running. If it happens they don't actually have the facilities in place to provide service, too bad, they have to bui
Comcast was terrible when I had it (Score:2)
I've had it at my current and previous address a few miles away. It was easily the worst cable TV and internet service I ever had. The internet went down for hours several times a year and was often slow. The cable TV service had a lot of problems too. Every time it went down they'd claim there was no outage and insisted on sending someone out and service was always restored by the time they showed up a couple of days later or in one case the cable guy told me he had the same problem at his house (that was
Bad Comcast Bad! (Score:2)
Don't do that again, it makes us all look bad! Or at least do better at hiding your fraudulent activities.
(And that's all will come out of all of this)
Easy Solution (Score:2)
Not that it would ever get past the corpo lobby, but here's the solution:
If an ISP, or any type of address-based service, at any point makes the error that they can service your address - they are then legally required to do everything necessary to fulfill that possibility. Even if they have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to build out more infrastructure to do so. Plus, fines on top of that for submitting a falsified map.
So, in this example, the FCC has the copy of the map. The FCC should have th
Fine them (Score:2)
Incident or policy? (Score:2)
Surely a check like that can be automized.