MSE News: Broadband speed advertising code 'disappointing'

Former_MSE_Guy

This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:

"Broadband providers have been told to only advertise 'up to' speeds if at least 10% of users can can get that performance ..."

Read the full story:
Broadband speed advertising code 'disappointing'

bod1467

It's a step in the right direction, towards fair advertising, but I'm not holding my breath on this improving things to any significant degree.

ashleypride

"In addition, communications providers, including phone and broadband companies, can only use the term 'unlimited' to describe service where it truly is unlimited."

This at least is good news, I find it quite annoying that the likes of Tesco for example get away with advertising mobile 3g access as unlimited, when you are charged over 500mb.

JC_Derby

yeah most of the advertising isnt right....unlimited....apart from your fair use policy...unlimited will hopefully just be what it says.

tacotaco

MSE_Guy wrote: »

"Broadband providers have been told to only advertise 'up to' speeds if at least 10% of users can can get that performance ..."

I'm going to call BS on this statement.

100% is at least 10%... so if 100% of customers could reach an advertised speed, according to this statement they would still have to use the words 'up to'.

wozearly

The "up to xx speed" ruling is a much better situation than where we are currently, although allowing providers to cherry pick their top 10% of actual (or example) users is still a bit of a charter in favour of the current confusion marketing approach.

Accepting the technical difficulties, it would be better if there were more requirements around giving a "typical" speed range as well as an "up to". If that means that companies start advertising differently to different areas (e.g. cities vs remote countryside) then so much the better in terms of clarity.

The "unlimited" ruling is much more positive - I never understood how companies felt they could get away with applying explicit limits on an "unlimited" plan.

However, my expectation is that providers will attempt new ways to apply limitations. The "fair use" policy on most broadband providers tends to involve throttling connections at peak times, or for heavier users. I wonder if mobile providers will take a leaf out of the same book (ie, you can download as much as you want, but after 500MB we'll make our servers limit severely limit the speed at which you can do this in order to contain our costs and discourage you).

wozearly

tacotaco wrote: »

I'm going to call BS on this statement.

100% is at least 10%... so if 100% of customers could reach an advertised speed, according to this statement they would still have to use the words 'up to'.

Its unlikely they'd want to advertise at speeds that worked for the lowest common denominator.

No, what they want to do is advertise the speeds that apply for those in brilliant situations (e.g. living right next door to the telephone exchange) and imply that everyone else can get those marvellous speeds (even if they can't get anywhere near them).

It is, however, an improvement on being able to use "up to" speeds based on a theoretical maximum speed that virtually no-one can actually achieve.

Old_Wrinkly

"As well as the 10% measure, the Committee of Advertising Practice (Cap) says firms must also state that a significant proportion of customers will get nowhere near such speeds, if appropriate."

I can just see them including :
"Of course, a significant proprtion of our customers will get nowhere near this speed." in their advertising material ...

Should be interesting to see what wording they do come up with.

propertyman

How about being honest-ish the average speed and woe to those of us who trust such outlandish claims of 100mbps, without delving further.

Reaper

The Cap guidance states 'unlimited' can only be used if "the user incurs no additional charge or suspension of service as a consequence of exceeding a usage threshold".

Unfortunately this only seems to apply if charges are involved. So the companies are free to throttle your download speed to that of a dead snail if you exceed your cap and yet are still able to claim their service offers "unlimited" downloads.

Clearly their definition of the word "unlimited" is different to mine.

As for download speeds, how about forcing them to advertise the AVERAGE speed their customers are getting, and ban using the maximum possible figure. Simple.

Willow92

Our broadband is advertised as 30mb but sometimes we struggle to get 1mb! We have to keep turning it off and on to get it back up to about 15-20mb