MSE News: Advertised broadband speed claims are 'false'

Former_MSE_Helen · 27 July 2011 at 11:45AM

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

"Many consumers will be left frustrated as the difference in advertised and actual broadband speed has grown, says Ofcom ..."

Read the full story:
Advertised broadband speed claims are 'false'

KevinG · 27 July 2011 at 11:50AM

I have always understood what "up to" meant and, living a long way from the exchange, knew I would get nowhere near it. The estimates of actual speed that the BT checker (which most ISPs use before you sign up) gives are usually very pessimistic as well, so you normally get MORE than this. I'm lucky because Fibre to the Cabinet came to my village a few months ago, so I now get around 37Mb on an "up to" 40Mb service.

kwikbreaks · 27 July 2011 at 12:01PM

MSE_Helen wrote: »

"Many consumers will be left frustrated as the difference in advertised and actual broadband speed has grown, says Ofcom

A complete non-story IMO.

More people are taking the upto 20Mbps packages so there is far more scope to miss out on getting the headline speed. Many lines which can get 8Mbps on ADSL won't get anywhere near 20Mbps on ADSL2+. The theoretical 24Mbps possible on ADSL2+ is virtually never achieved and I think some packages are sold as upto 24Mbps.

In fact the average speeds achieved have consistently risen since the first survey.

neneromanova · 27 July 2011 at 12:16PM

You'd all love my speed. We're meant to get up to 10mb I think it is and we get a maximum of 600kbps

Luckily OH's work pays for it so we're not losing money. Like us, it just depends how close to the exchange point you are. We are miles from one so hense we get carp speed.

Hopefully it'll speed up when the southwest get the apparently internet boost (not holding my breath though)

magyar · 27 July 2011 at 12:44PM

Agree this is a complete non-story. Firstly, I can't think of any other way to describe it other than 'up to'. It's not exactly complex lawyer-speak; if you can't understand 'up to' doesn't mean 'you will get' then I'm not sure you should be allowed out on your own.

Secondly, most companies do actually tell you what you'll really be likely to get. I'm with O2 and prior to signing up to their "up to 20MB" package they ran a speed check and told me I'd get 4-5MB. And I do.

lininjim · 27 July 2011 at 1:09PM

We signed up to o2 in the days when they offered an "up to 8mb" package as we knew we wouldn't get enough for the "up to 24mb" alternative.
They advised us we would get around 4mb against BT's proposed 1.5mb, we actually get 6mb.

As in all things it pays to do your research first, if you go blindly in then you will certainly be surprised or disappointed by your results.

KevinG · 27 July 2011 at 1:12PM

neneromanova wrote: »

We're meant to get up to 10mb I think it is and we get a maximum of 600kbps

You are getting "up to 10mb". That's the point!

Mark_In_Hampshire · 27 July 2011 at 1:21PM

Thing is, people aren't getting the message. How many people - thanks in part to the recession - pop up on here asking whether they should change from 20Mbps cable broadband to 20Mbps Sky broadband believing they're equivalent and that the latter will perform similarly to the former, when Sky will only be faster in perhaps 1% of cases?

I genuinely think that a fair chunk of people think the "up to" means that everyone will get 20Mbps at least some of the time.

davethorp · 27 July 2011 at 1:29PM

A lot of ADSL providers now only advertise an up to 20Mbps speed with no different packages for different speeds. Its fairly common knowledge that the majority of customers wont get anywhere near that.

We get about 5Mbps on our up to 20 Mbps package from sky. Which incidentally is no slower than what virgin media would throttle our 20Mbps connection to once we attempted to use it

kwikbreaks · 27 July 2011 at 1:36PM

davethorp wrote: »

We get about 5Mbps on our up to 20 Mbps package from sky. Which incidentally is no slower than what virgin media would throttle our 20Mbps connection to once we attempted to use it

Once you exceeded 7GB between 9am and 3pm and/or 3.5GB between 4pm and 9pm. If you think you would regularly exceed those limits take 50Mbps instead as there is no downstream STM on that. P2P and NNTP are throttled though on all products from 5pm til midnight.

dodger1 · 27 July 2011 at 2:49PM

I actually don't think the adverts are misleading. The words "up to" mean precisely that, somewhere between slow and the maximum advertised. It's just the same as shop sales when they state "up to 50% off". Surely people don't think that everything is actually 50% off. Now if the maximum advertised figure isn't obtainable then that's a different matter.

MSE News: Advertised broadband speed claims are 'false'

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free