U.S. Broadband Access Providers Score Well on Peak Hour Performance

There’s good news for most broadband suppliers in the latest Federal Communications Commission study of peak-hour speeds.

In the September 2012 testing period, ISPs on average delivered 97 percent of advertised download speeds during peak periods, statistically equivalent to the last report, which found that the studied ISPs were able to deliver 96 percent of advertised speeds during peak hours of use.

On average, during peak periods DSL-based services delivered download speeds that were 85 percent of advertised speeds, cable-based services delivered 99 percent of advertised speeds, fiber-to-the-home services delivered 115 percent of advertised speeds, and satellite delivered 137 percent of advertised speeds, the FCC says.

This compares to July 2012 results showing largely the same performance levels: 84 percent for DSL, 99 percent for cable, and 117 percent for fiber. These results suggest that many ISPs are meeting established engineering goals for their respective technologies.

                        Average Peak Period and 24-Hour Sustained Download Speeds
                                                    (% of advertised rate)
On average, satellite services delivered 161 percent, fiber-to-the-home and cable-based services delivered 108 percent, and DSL-based services delivered 99 percent of advertised upload speeds. These compare with figures from the July 2012 Report of 110 percent for cable, 106 percent for fiber, and 103 percent for DSL.

As was the case for the prior July 2012 report, “the majority of ISPs continue to closely meet or exceed the speeds they advertise, although some ISPs fell short of delivering speeds that matched their advertised rates,” the FCC says.

The latest study also shows that the average subscribed speed is now 15.6 Mbps, representing an average annualized speed increase of about 20 percent. Note that this represents an increase of 20 percent in service tiers purchased by end users, not speeds offered by suppliers. The ability to purchase a service is important, but arguably less significant than the fact that people actually buy.

For the first time, satellite broadband is included in the analysis. “In our testing, we found that during peak periods 90 percent of ViaSat consumers received 140 percent or better of the advertised speed of 12 Mbps,” the FCC says. “In addition, both peak and non-peak performance was significantly higher than advertised rates.”

Frontier Communications also substantially improved its performance 13 percent from the last reporting period.

Latency was lowest in fiber-to-the-home services, and this finding was true across all fiber-to-the-home speed tiers.

During the September 2012 testing period, fiber-to-the-home services provided 18 ms round-trip latency on average, while cable-based services averaged 26 ms, and DSL-based services averaged 44 ms. This compares to figures from the April 2012 testing period of 18 ms for fiber, 26 ms for cable and 43 ms for DSL.

But there is an interesting bit of data among the test results. Faster speeds do provide better web browsing experience, but only up to about 10 Mbps. Beyond about 10 Mbps speeds, latency and other factors begin to dominate and limit performance, the FCC says.

That is not to say higher speeds are not useful, though. Higher speeds “may provide significant advantages in a multi-user household or where a consumer is using a specific application that may be able to benefit from a higher speed tier,” the FCC says.

The data also suggest the perhaps 80 percent of “fiber to home” or “cable” users consume 100 Gbytes a month, or less. Some 80 percent of DSL users consume 60 Gbytes or less.

In contrast, perhaps 80 percent of satellite users consume 18 Gbytes a month, or less.

                 Cumulative Distribution of User Traffic, by Technology