Report Accuses Five ISPs of Deliberately Slowing Data Traffic

Five of the major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the United States have been accused of intentionally slowing down Internet access to some web sites.

BattlefortheNet.com, a consortium of activist groups that are dedicated to an open and free Internet, launched The Internet Health Test website last month. The site encouraged visitor to run a one-minute data test that would allow the IHT to determine whether or not ISPs are intentionally slowing data speeds.

According to findings released this week, the practice in widespread among the top five U.S. ISPs. Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Verizon and AT&T are named in the report that accuses the ISPs of  deliberately slowing data traffic from certain Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). Popular web services with heavy traffic pay CDNs to help store and serve their content.

In one example from the report, Comcast provided median download speeds from one CDN of 21.4Mbps during peak evening hours. During the same time period, AT&T provided median download speeds of 0.2Mbps.

Internet users can test their own connection at the Internet Health Test web site.