May 22nd, 2007
Hey Qwest, you are NOT as fast as my Comcast
A missive from regional telco provider Qwest’s p.r. firm arrived in my Inbox yesterday.
The email contained news of a “survey” of 100 Comcast and Qwest broadband customers performing a set of outlined tasks at two identical computers — one connected to Qwest’s premium product (5 to 7 megs) and one connected to Comcast’s 6 meg product.
Connected to a 30-second tv spot campaign, the “results” showed that of those tested, 72 percent perceived the Qwest product running as fast or faster than Comcast.
But Paul at GigaOm puts the slam down on what he calls “weak, home-based statistics” used by companies such as Qwest:
…as far as the “perception” that cable is faster than DSL… maybe that’s because, in most instances, cable providers do offer faster connections, at least until Qwest and others roll out more of those mini-DSLAMs or fiber nodes to get over the physics problem that limits DSL by distance.
Paul has a better idea for a more accurate measurement: Speedtest.
I just ran it: 11.727 mbps here in Portland, Oregon.
Hey Qwest. Can’t touch this.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
