Bridge Advertised vs. Experienced Broadband Service Quality at Scale

Develop a scalable methodology to measure experienced broadband service quality for Connect America Fund (CAF) addresses and quantitatively compare it against ISP-advertised plans, thereby characterizing the discrepancy between advertised and experienced service quality at scale.

Background

The study’s dataset is built from ISP-advertised plans collected via the Broadband-plan Querying Tool (BQT), which does not capture users’ experienced performance. Prior research has shown gaps between advertised and actual performance, implying that reliance on advertised data may overstate service quality for CAF users.

The authors note that reliably measuring experienced service quality at scale is challenging, and they explicitly defer tackling this gap. Addressing this open problem would enable more definitive assessments of CAF compliance and consumer outcomes beyond what advertised-plan data alone can provide.

References

Given the challenges of reliably measuring service quality at scale, we leave the exploration of bridging the gap between advertised and experienced service quality for future exploration.

— The Efficacy of the Connect America Fund in Addressing US Internet Access Inequities (2405.18657 - Manda et al., 28 May 2024) in Section: Limitations, Advertised vs. experienced service quality