Are You Getting the Internet Speeds You’re Paying For? Here’s How to Read the Fine Print

Most of us pay more than $60 a month for home internet, which makes it all the more aggravating when it feels like our internet service providers are selling us short. ISPs have consistently been some of the most loathed companies around due to shady billing practices, the abundance of junk mail they often send out, the lack of high-speed infrastructure in rural areas or the way the monopolistic structure of the industry means that people in some regions are stuck with only one or two service providers to choose from.

Read more: Best internet providers in 20 | Best mesh Wi-Fi system of 2019 

So what gives? There’s no easy answer. Internet connections are complicated things affected by common headaches like network congestion, gating, the capabilities of the different networks your signal needs to traverse to fetch your data and all sorts of other variables. And a lot of that is beyond your ISP’s control.

To that end, the Federal Communications Commission requires that broadband providers disclose information about their plans in easy-to-read broadband labels, but the way they manage them and the different variables that might affect the way they perform. You can learn an awful lot about each provider by digging through that data if you’re so inclined — but let’s be honest, most of us aren’t itching to parse paragraph after paragraph of fine print.

Lucky for you, that’s where I come in. Here’s a breakdown of what I learned from reading through the disclosures of each of the five largest ISPs in the US by market share: Comcast, Charter Spectrum, AT&T, Verizon and Cox Communications. I also window-shopped each provider to get a sense of how customer-friendly their websites are.

Yes, your speeds may vary

Most internet providers prefix their speed claims with language like “up to,” because there are lots and lots of factors that can affect your connection. And while some are more detailed than others, most of the broadband disclosures for the major ISPs start by explaining what these factors are. 

They typically include things like the capabilities of your internet-connected devices, the limitations of whatever networks your signals are traveling along and overall congestion or heavy traffic to specific sites and services. It’s also important to remember that advertised speeds are typically based on wired connections to the modem. Speeds will dip a bit once you start wirelessly beaming an internet connection throughout your house with a Wi-Fi router.

Those caveats aside, there’s actually decent data in support of ISP speed claims — namely from the FCC, which periodically tests the various speeds each ISP offers. The most recent FCC speed tests, run in September 2022, found that most ISP top speeds were more or less as fast as advertised. For most providers — particularly cable and fiber — users actually receive more speed than they’re paying for.

“Most customers using cable and fiber technologies experienced median download speeds that were fairly consistent; i.e., these ISPs provided 100% or greater than the advertised speed during peak usage period to more than 80% of their panelists for more than 80% of the time,” the FCC report reads.

Picking a plan is a pain

The chart above lists the details of the introductory broadband plans from the top five providers. Over the past few years, providers have generally increased the speeds on their starting plans significantly. Spectrum, for example, raised the download speeds on its cheapest plan (without low-income requirements) from 100Mbps to 500Mbps in the past year.

Providers don’t always make it easy to understand what your bill is going to look like as you’re shopping. Most will try to get you to submit your home address and contact info before they’ll show you the specific offers available in your region. Squint at the fine print and you’ll probably notice terms like these, from the Cox Communications website:

By clicking “Get Free Quote” above, I consent to receive from Cox and any party on Cox’s behalf telemarketing calls using an autodialer or pre-recordings and SMS text messages at any time, which could result in wireless charges, at the number provided. I understand that consent is not a condition of purchase.

At any rate, try to avoid “free quote” buttons like those if you can. Providers are now required by the FCC to show basic information like speeds, fees and contracts in a nutrition label format, so comparing your options is a lot easier than it used to be.

You might still have a hard time figuring out how much you’ll be paying once the promotional period is up. For instance, Charter Spectrum offers a flat introductory rate of $40 per month for internet speeds up to 500Mbps, but you’ll have to look on the broadband label to find out that this is a “12 month introductory rate…The post-introductory rate is $80 and subject to change.”

Like I said, my advice is to avoid providing your personal info until you’re relatively sure you want to sign up for service. Adding your name to your provider’s “Do not call” and “Do not mail” lists is probably worth doing too. The companies will need your address in order to verify that their services are actually available in your home, but there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to provide a basic overview of rates for services available in your ZIP code.

Understand the fees

Most internet plans come with fees on top of the monthly rate. Here’s a quick rundown of what to look for:

Modem/router rental fee: Just like it sounds, most providers will charge a monthly fee to let you “rent” their modem or router hardware (you might also see them listed under “equipment fees”). These fees range from $10 a month for a router from Charter Spectrum to $15 per month for the Comcast Xfinity Gateway, a combination modem and router. In most cases, your ISP will let you skip this fee by using your own router, but you’ll need to make sure that it’s certified by the ISP as a compatible device.

Installation fees: These vary from provider to provider, and some will charge less if you bundle your internet with other services like phone or TV. In a lot of cases, the ISP will waive these fees altogether as a way to sweeten the deal and earn your business.

Overage fees: Some internet providers cap your monthly data usage — if you go over that cap in a given month, you’ll have to pay a fee. Of the top five broadband providers, only Comcast and Cox use data caps, while AT&T, Spectrum and Verizon don’t. For the two that do, the monthly cap is 1.2 to 1.25TB of data, with a fee of $10 for every 50GB you use after that. More on fees like these in just a bit.

Early termination fee: Most internet plans offer a discounted promotional rate for new customers, typically for a period of 12 months. After that, the price goes up to the standard, month-to-month rate. In most cases, if you cancel your service before that promotional period is up, you’ll have to buy out the remainder of your contract with an early termination fee — typically either $10 or $15 for each remaining, unused month of the promotional period.

Keep in mind that providers will often try to tempt you to switch from your current provider by offering to pay the early termination fees for you. If nothing else, that should give you a good sense of what your business is worth to the company if you’re trying to negotiate a better deal on your plan. If you don’t have early termination fees that they can pay off for you, see if they’ll waive the installation fee or bump you up to a faster speed tier during the promotional period instead.

Notes on network management

Something else you’re bound to read about in these broadband disclosures is “network management,” which is the umbrella term for all of the ways that ISPs exert control over your connection in order to manage speed and network performance for everyone. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for doing this — blocking spammers and dealing with Denial of Service attacks, for instance — but it’s still a somewhat thorny issue in part because of something called throttling. That’s the term for when a website, a device or an internet provider puts a limit on your speed that’s lower than what your setup is actually capable of.

Comcast garnered its fair share of unflattering headlines for the practice in 2008, when the company was caught throttling traffic to peer-to-peer file-sharing service BitTorrent. The FCC ruled that Comcast was violating Net Neutrality laws and ordered the company to disclose its network management practices moving forward. Those rules are now in political limbo with a Republican FCC incoming, but most ISPs have discontinued the practice on their own.

Ten years after the FCC ruled against it, Comcast announced that it was ending its congestion management system altogether. Here’s what the company told CNET when it made the change:

Our network and consumer devices have evolved to a point that our old congestion management system is no longer necessary. The system has been essentially inactive for more than a year. With well over 99 percent of our Internet customers using more modern DOCSIS gateways and modems, congestion on individual channels is no longer an issue that needs to be managed. We took the opportunity to formalize this change while we were updating our other customer disclosures.

That falls in line with other providers, all of whom go out of their way in their network management disclosures to indicate that they don’t throttle traffic for specific users or to specific sites. That said, most providers also leave language in the fine print that would seem to allow wiggle room for some degree of throttling.

For instance, Charter Spectrum’s disclosure explains that it follows “a variety of reasonable network management practices” that are designed to “protect customers from activities that can unreasonably burden our network or compromise security.” Note that it’s up to Charter to determine what constitutes an unreasonable burden on the network.

Cox Communications puts it similarly: “At times of congestion, standard network algorithms may be employed to ensure that available bandwidth is equitably allocated to competing users. Cox regularly monitors data usage, congestion and capacity to decide where additional capacity in the network is needed.”

I give some extra credit to Verizon’s disclosure, which actually calls out throttling by name: “Verizon Online does not affirmatively manage congestion on the network through mechanisms such as real-time throttling, blocking or dropping of specific end user traffic based on source or content.”

That brings us to one last connection consideration…

Broadband data caps: Annoying but workable

Data caps can be a real pain if you’re using a basic, DSL-type internet plan with top speeds of less than 10Mbps, because plans like those are often structured around light internet usage — designed for people who just log on once or twice a day to check their email, for instance. Accordingly enough, the caps for basic plans can be very tight, which isn’t good if you need more.

Even if you’re paying for a faster connection with a higher data cap, the practice feels a bit unfair. After all, if you’re already paying more for faster speeds, why should you pay more a second time when you actually use those faster speeds?

The good news is that the data caps for broadband connections are a lot more generous than those for slower connections. Of the five providers I looked into for this post, AT&T, Spectrum and Verizon don’t cap your data at all, while the other two — Comcast and Cox Communications — each cap it above 1,000GB per month, with a fee of $10 for each 50GB after that. 

That’s more than a whole terabyte per month, which is a pretty huge amount of data. For example, I live with a roommate who works from home and makes regular use of the internet each day. I use a variety of smart home gadgets that keep a steady connection to the router, and we also often use streaming TV services and play video games online with friends. Our typical data usage comes in at about 0.5TB per month, tops.

Recent findings in an OpenVault report from the second quarter of 2024 found that the average US household uses 586GB of data each month, up from 534GB in the same quarter of 2023. 

Most providers offer usage trackers that can help you understand how much data your family typically uses, so it’s a good idea to keep an eye on that info to get a good sense of your home’s needs. If you have a lot of internet users in your home, particularly ones who do a lot of downloading, then you’ll want to consider switching to a provider that doesn’t use data caps at all. If that isn’t an option, spending extra for an unlimited data plan might be worth it.