Analysis of more than 800,000 internet service offers in 38 cities found that providers routinely offered fast base speeds at or above 200 Mbps in some neighborhoods for the same price as connections below 25 Mbps in others.
This story was reported by The Markup, and the story and data were distributed by The Associated Press.Pamela Jackson-Walters stands outside her home in Detroit, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. Jackson-Walters uses her home internet connection to attend church services virtually and to pursue a graduate degree, but the service AT&T offers in her mostly Black neighborhood is much slower than in other parts of the city.
In her area, AT&T only offers download speeds of 1 megabit per second or less, trapping her in a digital Stone Age. Her internet is so slow that it doesn’t meet Zoom’s recommended minimum for group video calls; doesn’t come close to the Federal Communications Commission’s definition of broadband, currently 25 Mbps; and is worlds below median home internet speeds in the U.S., which average 167 Mbps.But that’s not the case in other parts of New Orleans.
By failing to price according to service speed, these companies are demanding some customers pay dramatically higher unit prices for advertised download speed than others. CenturyLink, which showed the most extreme disparities, offered some customers service of 200 Mbps, amounting to as little as $0.25 per Mbps, but offered others living in the same city only 0.5 Mbps for the same price—a unit price of $100 per Mbps, or 400 times as much.
None of the providers denied charging the same fee for vastly different internet speeds to different neighborhoods in the same cities. But they said their intentions were not to discriminate against communities of color and that there were other factors to consider. “Any suggestion that we discriminate in providing internet access is blatantly wrong,” he said, adding that AT&T plans on spending $48 billion on service upgrades over the next two years.
“We do not engage in discriminatory practices like redlining and find the accusation offensive,” Mark Molzen, a spokesperson for CenturyLink’s parent company, Lumen, wrote in an email.” He said that The Markup’s analysis is “deeply flawed” without specifying how. He did not respond to requests for clarification.EarthLink, which doesn’t own internet infrastructure in the examined cities but rather rents capacity from other providers, did not provide an official comment despite repeated requests.
Las Vegas councilwoman Olivia Diaz said that in the summer of 2020, she approached families where children had stopped showing up to virtual lessons the previous school year to find out what went wrong.“We kept hearing there were multiple children trying to connect in the household, but they weren’t able to,” said Diaz, who represents a district that’s predominantly Latino and on the lower end of the city’s income spectrum.
“They’ve made a decision that those neighborhoods are going to be treated differently,” said Callahan. “The core reason for that is they think they don’t have enough money in those neighborhoods to sustain the kind of market they want.” It also asked for subsidies to build high-speed internet in lower-income neighborhoods because, as AT&T asserted in its letter to the FCC, “most or all deficiencies in broadband access appear to result not from invidious discrimination, but from ordinary business-case challenges in the absence of subsidy programs.”
Deutschland Neuesten Nachrichten, Deutschland Schlagzeilen
Similar News:Sie können auch ähnliche Nachrichten wie diese lesen, die wir aus anderen Nachrichtenquellen gesammelt haben.
SpaceX aims to put 350 Mbps satellite internet on planes with Starlink Aviation | EngadgetSpaceX has revealed that Starlink Aviation can provide speeds of up to 350 Mbps for each airplane.
Weiterlesen »
Five hours' sleep is tipping point for bad healthGetting less than this may increase the risk of a multitude of chronic conditions, say researchers.
Weiterlesen »
Comcast boosting speeds for its most popular Xfinity Internet plansIn an attempt to make its internet services more appealing, Comcast announced it’s boosting the speed of more than 20 million customers across the US.
Weiterlesen »
Amazon to boost cloud computing in Thailand with $5B investmentAmazon Web Services plans to build data centres in the southeast Asian country 'that will bring advanced cloud computing services to more organisations'.
Weiterlesen »