Pot calls kettle black: AT&T accuses Cable of exaggerating advertised speeds

If AT&T and the cable guys weren’t so even in the most unlikeable company sweepstakes, I’d be calling foul on behalf the cable guys. AT&T may have a valid point that in some instances they will deliver better throughput even wih a slower local loop, be the fact remains, most subscribers get significantly less than either parties advertised “up to” speed. Before you can rightfully accuse your competitor of stretching the truth, you need to put your own house in order.

AT&T’s Group President John Stankey spoke at Merrill Lynch’s Communications Forum today in New York, in the process taking a shot at cable broadband networks (webcast here). Stankey says that AT&T went into one of their cities, purchased cable broadband service for some 150 users (from the speed tiers cited, they appear to be Comcast connections), and then tested network performance.

The company poked and prodded the network for a period of several months. AT&T claims they found that peak downstream speeds were between 3-4Mbps, while average downstream speeds for the users ranged between 300kbps and 400kbps, significantly less than the advertised rate of six to eight megabits per second. Some Stankey comments we transcribed from the webcast (hat tip to IP Democracy): (from Broadband Reports)