MSE News: Broadband 'half advertised speed'

KimYeovil

'Half-advertised speed'? Shock, horror! Nearly fifty percent of customers receive a below average performance! Get out the pitch-forks.

As Surfbowl and Kwikibreaks say, "You cannae change the laws of physics, 'Com".

Stating a median range is no less confusing or 'misleading' to those who refuse to engage their noodle for five seconds.

Nilrem

One point - at least some companies offer "unlimited" which means exactly that, they don't cut you off (they may slow you though).

Personally I think the "up to" part of the speed should be much more highly emphasised, at the moment with many ISP's it's "up to" in size 8 font, whilst "20Mb" is in size 32 - but it is also worth remembering even if you sync at 20mb you won't get that sort of download from many single sources (something many people don't grasp - if the source you're downloading from only allows 100k per user your connection to the ISP won't make any difference).

The problem is, that ultimately the ISP's are trying to sell something to people who often have little or no knowledge of what they are buying (or wish to learn), and who will tend to go on the headline figure and price, which given the variables involved means that the ISP's themselves can only guess at the speed an individual is going to get until the connection is up and running.

Mind you I'm able to say this from the comfy position of being on VM in an uncongested area (hitting 48Mb on some speed tests, and up to 6MB from Steam at times).