The question of just how fast your home internet service is seems pretty straightforward. Unfortunately, how the broadband industry gets at the answer is messy and complicated, and over the last few weeks, that’s caused controversy. 

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published an investigative article accusing several broadband companies, including AT&T, of trying to make their services look better by manipulating information in the Federal Communications Commission’s Measuring Broadband America report, which is supposed to show whether broadband service performance matches advertised speeds. AT&T has denied the claim. 

This comes less than two weeks after the FCC reworked a $4.5 billion subsidy program for rural mobile broadband service because it found that several wireless carriers had grossly overstated their coverage. Add to all this the FCC’s ongoing struggle to produce maps that accurately show where fixed broadband service is and isn’t, and you might reach the same conclusion some experts have, namely that much of the data the agency is using to set policy is questionable.

More at CNET.