http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390309,00.asp
Scamming Americans with Fake Broadband Speeds
A flood of stories appeared this morning proclaiming that the broadband speeds, which are advertised by ISPs, are closer to the truth today than they were in 2009.To summarize, it seems that today the advertised speeds promoted by DSL, cable, and fiber providers are up to 80 to 90 percent of what is advertised. And somehow what appears like a blatant lie, to me, is perceived as a good thing, because in 2009, these folks were way off.
I do not care if they are 10 percent or 30 percent or 50 percent off. How is this not bait-and-switch? How is this not deceptive advertising? How is this legal? The FTC is supposed to prevent false advertising. At least, that's what I thought.
I recall that when I was a kid, the FTC cracked down on Campbell's Soup for taking photos of a bowl of soup whereby the soup was poured onto a bowl of glass marbles. This trick would lift the vegetables to the top, making it look like there were a lot more vegetables in the soup. A real bowl of the same soup would have a bunch of vegetables at the bottom, unseen. While I thought this was a clever idea, the action against Campbell's made me think that these FTC people were seriously on the ball and that here in the U.S., we could trust advertisements to be honest, or else!
Well, that doesn't seem to be the case with telecom companies. The FCC study indicates that the bullcrap speeds we are promised are closer to the truth in 2011 than in 2009. This tells me that the telecom companies have been advertising products they cannot deliver. It's false advertising. It's bait-and-switch. It should be illegal. As far as I'm concerned, if I am buying 10 Mbps and I'm delivered 9 Mbps, then I'm getting ripped off.
The telecom companies have managed to infiltrate and lord over the FTC since day one. You can see it in all the deceptive practices they employ, from phony fees that are not supposed to be collected to dubious connection promises. Slamming the hapless long-distance subscriber was a plague for years because the FCC and the FTC basically turned a blind eye until someone complained. Then they handed out a slap on the wrist that made slamming a profit center.
These shameful agencies will instead go after some small fry the way the SEC went after Martha Stewart while Bernie Madoff was ignored. Who benefits from this sort of enforcement? Big corporations. Essentially, these agencies have become protectors of big telecom companies. They are protected from actual competition. The public is not even in the picture any more. Just look at the overall scam involving the use of 4G as a marketing term to bamboozle the public.
To make matters worse, these sorts of articles extolling the fact that “golly, they are getting close to honesty” as some great hopeful future are all penned by journalists who do not seem to notice that they are talking about lies, lies, and more lies. They seem ok with it. Maybe there was a critical argument in those articles, but everything I read was pretty much saying “The great company has been stealing money from the public for years. Isn't it great that it is stealing less money? Hooray!'
Personally, I don't get it.
I remember back in the early 1990s when the big deal was to get a T1 line. People would brag about it. Then I heard about the quarter T1 or the eighth T1. These were still sold as T1 lines but were shared on some mysterious basis. Nobody seemed to think twice about it because they were sold as T1 lines.
That was only the beginning of the shenanigans. Now we have what is apparently blatant false advertising, much like the use of the word “unlimited.” How can an unlimited plan be capped? They are all capped in one way or another, but the FTC allows the use of the word "unlimited" when it is clearly NOT unlimited.
What is the reason for these agencies if they allow this?
The FTC should be shut down, and enforcement of these various laws should be done by aggressive states with the purpose of seriously cracking down on these companies with the revenue collected going to the state coffers rather than the Federal black hole.
According to the FTC, the main two public complaints are identity theft and third-party collection agencies. Identity theft could have been nipped in the bud years ago by preventing credit card spammers from sending out millions of “pre-approved” credit card applications willy-nilly. Banks should have been fined for letting it get out of control.
And what does it take to put a stop to onerous debt collectors? You fine the companies that hired them.
I see the FTC has taken action against those smokeless e-cigarettes. Doesn't it have better things to do with its resources? Apparently, not. This is an agency that has outlived its usefulness. And now that it is involved in this telecom bandwidth study, I'm more convinced than ever that it should get out of the way and shutter.
