US telcos' best pal – yes, the FCC – urged to dump its dodgy stats, crowd-source internet speeds direct from subscribers

A bipartisan group of US senators are trying to force the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to face up to the reality that its statistics for broadband speeds across America aren't worth squat. A letter from 11 legislators, including Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and James Lankford (R-OK), strongly urges Ajit Pai, boss of …

[whoseyourdaddy]

""Municipalities such as Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, have been notorious for their use of speech codes in the terms of service of state-owned networks, prohibiting users from transmitting content that falls into amorphous categories..."

Yeah, in Dumbfuckistan(Bible Belt), using taxpayer-funded networking to access PornHub is no bueno. May as well be using the work WiFi through a proxy.

Too bad we can't build a wall separating the red states from the sane people further north.

[Gene Cash]

I really don't see how this would pass a First Amendment (free speech) challenge.

Work, as a private institution, can dictate this sort of thing. Government bodies, such as the above municipalities, can't.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how blocking porn on a government network is a problem, especially considering the amount of bandwidth it can consume. I mean really, who cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because censorship is never abused

Let's watch municipal networks in Alabama block stuff critical of Trump, or those in California block Trump's tweets, and see how people feel about it then?

If we had net neutrality regulations (and made sure there wasn't a loophole exempting municipal broadband) then we wouldn't have to worry about stuff like this. If people are burning through too much bandwidth surfing porn, force the heavy users to pay for a bigger cap.

Though I suspect it will be people who stream all their TV that are the heavy users these days, most people don't have the stamina to surf porn for as many hours a day as they can watch Netflix :)

[ratfox]

I don't see how blocking porn on a government network is a problem, especially considering the amount of bandwidth it can consume. I mean really, who cares.

Aah, the Schrodinger porn traffic. The one that consumes so much bandwidth (10-30% depending on estimates), and yet nobody cares about.

Anyway, it's good to see the FCC cares about net neutrality!

[EnviableOne]

so in other words, they cant do it, but the other ISPs can....

The clause they're worrying about has some decent legal prescidence defining the terms obscene, threatening and abusive

Anyway, the main part that is not trying to drag us down a rabbit hole, YES the US.gov should crowd source actual speed data, and Its not that hard, and you can even pay someone to do it for you, or even access dta they are already collecting.