ISPs Found Charging the Same for Internet Plans With Big Speed Disparities

In our annual Fastest ISPs story, we ask our readers to test their internet speed to see if they’re getting what they pay for. For 2022, Sonic and Verizon Fios took the crown. Our analysis, however, doesn’t factor in the exact location of the testers and whether certain areas are getting faster speeds for the same price as neighbors experiencing painfully slow service. 

A new report from The Markup(Opens in a new window), however, alleges that some of the top US ISPs are doing just that, often to the detriment of lower-income and predominantly non-white neighborhoods. The ISPs questioned by the site deny any wrongdoing, and blame the disparities on the cost of maintaining aging infrastructure as well as upgrading existing networks.

But The Markup analyzed more than 800,000 internet package offers from AT&T, Verizon, Earthlink, and CenturyLink in 38 US cities “and found that all four routinely offered fast base speeds at or above 200Mbps in some neighborhoods for the same price as connections below 25Mbps in others.”

Those living in poorer neighborhoods were more likely to receive the offers with slower service, according to The Markup, which said the practice is tantamount to “digital redlining.”

Surveyed cities include Las Vegas and Minneapolis, which are served by CenturyLink, as well as Detroit, where AT&T customers in certain neighborhoods report slow service or prolonged outages. But The Markup found similar practices in Salt Lake City, Charleston, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

The ISPs took issue with the report; CenturyLink and AT&T called it “flawed,” with AT&T saying it didn’t take into account its participation in the Affordable Connectivity Program, which offers free 100Mbps service to qualifying households as part of last year’s infrastructure bill. But as The Markup notes, only about a third of eligible households and have signed up for that, and many use the stipend to cover mobile service, not fixed broadband.

That same infrastructure bill allocates $65 billion for a US broadband rollout. Most of that will be distributed via a program called Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD(Opens in a new window)) that will give $42.45 billion to states, territories, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. But before that happens, officials need to know what they’re working with and create comprehensive broadband maps, and that effort could take awhile.

This all comes as the Federal Communications Commission looks to raise its official definition for minimum broadband speeds from 25Mbps to 100Mbps. The commission declined to comment to The Markup on its report.

Curious about your own ISP? Check your own internet speed here.