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Exede Tells The Truth… Excedes Truth In Advertising Statistics (Satellite Services)

[SatNews] Statistics that would make many envious…90 percent of subscribers received 140 percent better than advertised speed.

Exede Satellite Internet service from ViaSat Inc. (NASDAQ: VSAT) became the first satellite provider ever to be included in the annual Federal Communications Commission (FCC) benchmarking study of broadband speeds, and it debuted in the top spot for exceeding advertised speeds.

The FCC released the 2013 Measuring Broadband America: A Report on Consumer Wireline Performance in the U.S. The new report is a nationwide study of U.S. residential broadband performance that measures the actual service performance for thousands of broadband subscribers. The program represents an innovative public-private partnership between the FCC, its contractor SamKnows, and ISPs representing 80 percent of the residential market. The FCC report includes results for four ISP delivery technologies—DSL, cable, fiber and satellite—and evaluates services from 14 of the nation’s largest broadband providers.

“In our testing, we found that during peak periods 90 percent of ViaSat consumers received 140 percent or better of the advertised speed of 12 Mbps (download speeds),” the report stated. “In addition, there was very little difference between peak and non-peak performance.”

“Our goal has always been to give our Exede customers the most consistent broadband experience, and it’s good to have objective data showing we delivered on our promise to deliver great speeds,” said Mark Dankberg, ViaSat CEO and chairman. “It’s especially important to us that the data was collected from Exede subscribers and that the FCC offered us the opportunity to be ranked side by side against DSL and cable services.”

Highlights from the report include:

  • On average, Exede Internet (the only satellite service provider included in the study) delivered 161 percent of advertised upload speeds. This compares to 108 percent for fiber-to-the-home and cable-based services and 99 percent for DSL-based services.
  • Exede service had the least amount of variation in performance based on the time of day, consistently ranking at 130 percent and above of advertised speed.
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A full copy of the report, issued by the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology and Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau earlier today, is available at.