As we mentioned overall the broadband companies in the US are doing well. DSL providers hit their target about 91% of the time, cable about 102% of the time and satellite 138%. Not too bad right? Well it seems that the numbers for cable companies is being held up by Comcast, Time Warner and Cox. They pulled off 113%, 101% and 110% (respectively). The other two in that category AT&T and Verizon only hit 79% and 80%.

Those last two numbers are pretty bad to see especially since Verizon has been complaining that Netflix is unjustly pointing the finger at them for service issues. It would seem there could be some problems on the Verizon network that is not even allowing them to reach their advertised speeds. This little fact makes their claims that there is nothing wrong with their network ring very hollow indeed. It also brings their claims that the issues with Netflix are because of the connections used between Netflix and Verizon. It seems far more likely that Verizon is simply not able to maintain the speeds required to handle the amount of traffic that today’s content hungry market demands.

Instead of working to improve their network they have pushed for the right to charge content providers extra to maintain proper speeds. Even with that money they are still not going to have what they need until sometime next year. So the next time you hear Verizon trying to shift the blame and calling for the right to charge for access you might think about sending them a message asking them to provide what they are already charging for before asking for more…

In fact FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler has made it pretty clear what that they are going to do that saying:

“I’ve directed FCC staff to write to the underperforming companies to ask why this happened and what they will do to solve this.”

Read the report here.

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