“New Yorkers deserve the internet speeds they pay for”, said attorney general Eric Schneiderman.
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“Families pay a huge cost already for Internet access in New York, so I will not tolerate a situation in which they aren’t getting what they have been promised”, Schneiderman said.
The letters, which were sent on Friday to executives at Verizon Communications Inc, Cablevision Systems Corp and Time Warner Cable Inc, ask each company to provide copies of all the disclosures they have made to customers, as well as copies of any testing they may have done to study their Internet speeds.
According to Bloomberg, Schneiderman’s senior lawyer Tim Wu writes in the letters that he is “specifically concerned about the disruptions to the consumer experience caused by interconnection disputes”. The study also said that issues are more often related to business relationships than technical problems.
Wu, a prominent open-Internet policy advocate known for coining the term “net neutrality”, warned the companies that actual performance of broadband service “may deviate far enough from the speeds advertised to render the advertising deceptive”. Cablevision told the New York Post, which first reported the inquiry, that its broadband service regularly exceeded its advertised speeds.
Prosecutors say a few customers who have paid for premium services may not be experiencing increased speed due to interconnection arrangements between the internet providers.
TWC acknowledged the investigation saying that it’s confident customers are receiving the speeds they pay for and that it’s “look[ing] forward to working with the AG to resolve this matter”, while Cablevision says its Optimum Online service “consistently surpasses advertised broadband speeds”.
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Unsurprisingly the companies named in the investigation, save for Verizon, were adamant that nothing fishy was going on, but we suppose we’ll just have to wait and see how the investigation pans out. The companies have a deadline of November 8 to cooperate with the investigation.
