03 FEB

“Lipstick on a pig”: Time Warner Cable “deceived the FCC” in speed tests

The New York state government’s lawsuit against Charter and its Time Warner Cable (TWC) subsidiary contains some intriguing details about how TWC allegedly manipulated speed tests conducted by the Federal Communications Commission.

The FCC uses measuring equipment in the homes of more than 4,000 Internet subscribers across the US to produce its annual Measuring Broadband America (MBA) report, which compares actual Internet speeds to the speeds promised by broadband providers. But TWC played a few tricks to get better marks than it should have in the tests, according to the lawsuit (full text) filed in the New York State Supreme Court by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

According to the lawsuit, TWC used one tactic that an employee described as “lipstick on a pig.” In another case, a TWC executive wrote an e-mail saying, “We just have to make it work temporarily” in order to boost the FCC speed test scores.

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Ars Technica

Post Author: martin

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