Verizon is touting a PC Magazine reader survey that purports to show their FiOS Internet handily beats the cable industry’s modem service, particularly on speed and customer service.  You can read their press release here.

Golly, it sounds awfully devastating. They say that “Verizon’s FiOS connection easily surpassed even the fastest cable.” They claim that FiOS Internet was significantly faster than cable Internet speeds and customer satisfaction is better.

Well, I just had to go read PC Mag’s story for myself: Real World Testing: The Best ISPs in America. The thing is, the numbers just didn’t add up for me.

What becomes clear straight off is that it’s odd to compare one company’s offering – which happens to be very limited – to an entire industry. Cable operators are very diverse; some companies are larger than others and a variety of service levels are offered. In fact, PC Mag acknowledges this: “Debating which cable company is superior is not necessarily helpful… we found a large variation in speeds among the nation’s many networks.” In fact, even beyond comparing Verizon versus cable, it’s diffcult to reach broad conclusions. As PC Mag notes, “Not all ISPs are created equal… In fact, the best ISP in Virginia is almost certainly different from the best in Texas.” Heck, even the best in Austin, TX may not be the best in Dallas.

Which, of course, makes sense. FiOS is a brand new service. Verizon has spent thousands of dollars per household to reach their customers and deploy their product. And for all of that, as of September of 2008, FiOS Internet was being marketed to only 7% of US households (9.1 million homes). In that same timeframe, cable broadband was being marketed to 92% of US households (over 100 million homes).

Verizon touts speeds of 10-50 Mbps. Cable operators also offer a range of speeds, depending on the company and the market; these speeds have steadily increased over the years.  Verizon is quite proud of its “ultra-high-speed broadband,” which “reaches more than 10 million homes and businesses.” Of course, Comcast has deployed DOCSIS 3.0, which offers speeds up to 50 Mbps, and by year-end will be offering the service to 10 million homes.

Note also that PC Mag says that FiOS outperforms cable and DSL, a part of the quote that Verizon left out, presumably because Verizon primarily sells DSL service to the vast majority of its footprint. In fact, 65% of Verizon’s broadband customers receive DSL service.  In other words, the survey supposedly proves that FiOS beats cable and Verizon itself.

It’s probably also helpful to note that other surveys have shown satisfaction with cable’s Internet access. The J.D. Power and Associates 2008 Internet Service Provider (ISP) Residential Customer Satisfaction Study gave high marks to Cablevision, Cox Communications and Bright House Networks.

I’m not challenging the survey, even though it’s actually quite difficult to measure ISP speeds accurately and consistently. But it didn’t take long to figure out that Verizon’s claims aren’t quite as clear-cut as they claim.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Broadband. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.