Examining Mobile Broadband Transparency

34 Pages Posted: 31 Jul 2019 Last revised: 21 Nov 2020

See all articles by James Miller

James Miller

Washington College of Law; Columbia Business School - Institute for Tele Information

Scott Jordan

University of California, Irvine - Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences

Date Written: July 26, 2019

Abstract

The 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order eliminated a number of transparency requirements regarding broadband performance that were introduced in the 2015 Open Internet Order. It also eliminated guidance that had been provided in 2016 to assist broadband providers in complying with the transparency rule. In this paper, we examine a number of policy issues that arose in the two Orders and associated guidance, as applied to disclosure of performance of mobile broadband service. We ground this analysis in two datasets of mobile broadband performance.

We examine policy issues about the methodology used to measure mobile broadband performance, the performance statistics that should be measured and disclosed, and the time of day over which broadband performance is measured. We compare the download and upload speed ranges advertised by the largest four mobile broadband service providers in the United States with the distribution of actual measured download and upload speeds. We also analyze the variation of mobile broadband performance over different geographical regions.

Suggested Citation

Miller, James and Miller, James and Jordan, Scott, Examining Mobile Broadband Transparency (July 26, 2019). TPRC 47: The 47th Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy 2019, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3428777 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3428777

James Miller

Washington College of Law ( email )

4300 Nebraska Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20016
United States

Columbia Business School - Institute for Tele Information ( email )

3022 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
United States

Scott Jordan (Contact Author)

University of California, Irvine - Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences ( email )

Bren Hall
Irvine, CA 92697-3440
United States
(949) 824-2177 (Phone)

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