FCC to Cablevision: "Good Job Bro" - that was the headline I wanted. But it helps to have headlines that make sense; at least, that's what my editor says.

So, on Monday, the FCC released some follow up data to their March 2011 study Measuring Broadband America, which basically looked at how Americans get and use broadband. One of the things they found was that Cablevision's high speed Internet was … not very good:

[d]uring March 2011, subscribers to Cablevision's 15 Mbps service were receiving average download speeds during peak hours of only about 50% of the advertised speed. By comparison, average users across all companies other than Cablevision were receiving download speeds during peak hours of 89% of the advertised speeds.

However, Cablevision did the right thing. As the FCC notes:

During October 2011, the most recent month for which data is available, subscribers to Cablevision's 15 Mbps service were receiving average download speeds during peaks hours at over 90% of the advertised speed.

That's pretty cool. This is the essence of good government regulation: a company is doing a bad job, gets called on it by a regulating body, and improves to exceed the competition. So, a "goodjobbro" to Cablevision for improving their service.

Post script: David Byrd of Broadvox, writing for Channel Partners, took this as an encouraging move from Cablevision (his blog also alerted me to this report). He mentioned, specifically, that it was encouraging to see Big Cable improve their connection speeds and improve their product - and then he mentioned how overpriced various cable-phone offerings were.

Some things don't change. I think that the high prices offered by Traditional Telco/Cable Companies are a result of their ability to monopolize their markets - there's no alternative to bring down prices. As VoIP becomes more popular, those prices will continue to go down.

Post post script: I'm not sure what the FCC is saying about Cablevision here. Is Cablevision getting people greater than or equal to 90% of their advertised download speed during peak hours (so, 13.5 Mbps in their peak hours)? Or are they getting users 90% over their advertised rate (so, 28.5 Mbps)?