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Comment by snek | Hacker News Reader

> "Sometimes providers boost speeds for households during the actual FCC speed-testing period," the Journal wrote. "Comcast a few years ago upgraded speeds in some regions without notifying the FCC, making test results look stellar, people close to the FCC program said. The FCC discovered the changes after spotting anomalous data and adjusted the numbers."

This whole thing is frustrating. It is made to sound like some kids pulling some harmless pranks or something. What the heck. These companies are deliberately lying and confusing government agencies.

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The word you are looking for is fraud. People should go to jail.

They're too busy rolling out IPv6 support-in-hardware and gigabit fiber upgrades everywhere nationally and obsoleting data caps, instead of taking software IPv6 shortcuts and enjoying regulatory capture and turning peering agreements into weapons and maximizing "shareholder value" (which of course we all agree isn't the real value at hand).

Only if.

>confusing government agencies

pretty dry humor

Seriously though, ATT was a government entity that got its huge advantage from being a monopoly. After they were forced to "split up" (wink wink nudge nudge) they then shed all their unprofitable business and recombined again as new "ATT".

At no point have they ever really become a customer-focused company and all their decisions are steeped in monopolistic style thinking.

I have had AT&T Gigabit Ethernet for 3 years. It’s $70 a month, no extra fees, no caps, and I consistently get 900+ u/d.

Compared to cable companies it’s a dream. Comcast has a maximum upload of 35Mbps on their highest plan, it’s more expensive, less reliable, heavily over-provisioned and the bills are full of junk fees.

Even at the new price of $60/month, AT&T Now was still a better deal than Comcast’s cable offerings - again with junk fees, hard to cancel service and cable box rentals.

I’m using Hulu Live Tv now though.

> Compared to cable companies it’s a dream.

AT&T is a cable company (U-verse) that owns WB, DC Universe (Superman, Arrowverse, Wonder Woman) HBO and more.

I’m thinking of a cable company as one that has a local monopoly that you have to use to get internet. I don’t care about a random content company.

As far as Uverse, it’s so irrelevant it’s not worth discussing. AT&T is trying to force people off of it.

https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/att-hides-u-verse-tv-on-its-...

When Volkswagen did it it was a scandal. We just expect our telecom overlords to be evil I guess.

There is a difference between pollution and internet speeds.

True, but there isn't a difference between fraud and fraud.

The telecoms are also the content providers in many cases. There will be no mainstream scandal.

Their hilarious pranks are linked to them receiving many billions of dollars from the government. Perhaps one of the largest dollar amount frauds out there today.

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