Please sign this petition to tell the FCC to investigate data caps.
Public Knowledge is calling on all ISPs who use data caps to suspend them until an outside auditor can certify that their data usage meters are accurate. ISPs have no business imposing data caps on consumers without the ability to accurately determine how much data consumers are actually using.
Today, Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOM reported that an auditor of the broadband meters for major ISPs could not certify that five of seven clients were capable of accurately measuring customer data use. This news follows earlier reports of inaccuracy measured by independent network engineers, and ongoing consumer examples of inaccuracies covered and reported in forums such as DSLReports.
Public Knowledge has raised numerous questions about the use of data caps, but the debate has generally been based on an assumption that, at a minimum, ISPs could count. At this point, it is clear that assumption is no longer valid.
No ISP should impose a data cap on consumers until it can prove – to an independent technical expert – that it can accurately measure consumer data consumption. We look forward to a discussion about the proper role of data caps on broadband deployment, but that discussion is entirely hypothetical without a basic assurance that the measurements are correct.
In light of that, it is the responsibility of all ISPs to suspend the use of data caps immediately.
As a first step, please sign this petition demanding that the FCC investigate data caps.