News UK ISPs under fire for false advertising

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/08..._advertising/1

A recent survey has revealed that the UK's Internet service providers are not delivering the broadband speeds they're promising to punters.

[whisperwolf]

Im guessing that the 9 out of ten people who said they didn't expect to get 8mbps speeds thought they should be getting at least 6mbps. you kinda think that if its advertised at up to 8Mbps you should be getting at least two thirds of that speed or be paying less for the service

[Seraphim Works]

I'm on AOL (long story, but suffice to say, I pay very little), on the silver plan which means up to 2Mbps.

What do I actually get? 0.5Mbps. It's not the fault of my ISP, but due to the fact I live right on the very edge of where the exchange reaches. Another few hundred yards, no broadband for me.

All I can say is to haggle prices with your ISP if you can't get full speeds, tell them you'll leave etc, and almost all will give an incentive to keep you.

Mind you, least we're not still stuck with dial-up. *shudders*

[samkiller42]

Im with BT with a 'Up to 8mb' connection, but its barely been over 1mb since it was installed 2months ago, and we are paying near £25 a month for this service. I my self am a heavy user, with alot of Downloading and BF2, there are 2 Xbox 360's in the house and both on xbox live, im surprised we dont get so much lag when we are in games.

My connection speeds:
DownStream Connection Speed 896 kbps
UpStream Connection Speed 448 kbps


Sam

[iwog]

I got the full 10meg from my ISP, admittedly it was with the then NTL now virgin so it had "other" problems. But atleast speed wasn't one of them, nor was the 24/7 near max speed use of the line.

@samkiller42 you're getting near 8mb. Remember the company gives you speeds in bits and your connection software will measure in bytes. 10meg from NTL = 1.1mbs of the web max.

[otispunkmeyer]

im assuming they never tested cable based internet like Virign media's broadband service? (previously NTL)

i dont really know too much about the differences other than our virgin broadband enters the house on a big chunky coax cable and goes to a cable modem and a equivalent ADSL service comes in through shitty bell wire used for the telephones.

isnt NTL's cable split off from a optical cable or something like that? there must be some reason why i get near as makes no difference the 4Mbps we pay for every month (except when we go over that new limit virgin imposed where they chop your connection to half speed for the night....not that its much of a hinderance at that time like).

if i can find a decently fast server i can usually max out my connection at around 450 to 480kb/s. in theory 4mbps should give 512kb/s a second but obviously every system has in-efficiencies.

[iwog]

Otis, yeah NTL/Virgin/those cable b*****ds, use fiber optics which dont slow down, its been part of their big ad campaign over the past few months. Run a few speed tests at speedtest.net and see what speeds you get. You may be surprised that you can normally get better speeds from the sweedish server than the closer London one. And its especially fun when you choose some dodgy server and can upload faster than you can download.

[SteveyG]

We get the full 8mbps on talktalk's free broadband service. Surprisingly, they have been absolutely spot on in terms of service...

Originally Posted by iwog

I got the full 10meg from my ISP, admittedly it was with the then NTL now virgin so it had "other" problems. But atleast speed wasn't one of them, nor was the 24/7 near max speed use of the line.

@samkiller42 you're getting near 8mb. Remember the company gives you speeds in bits and your connection software will measure in bytes. 10meg from NTL = 1.1mbs of the web max.

8mbps would be a connection speed of 8192kbps not 896kbps. He's getting about 1/10 of the advertised speed.

[mashles]

i get 7.6mbps with nildram, but i am 400m from my exchange.

[Tim S]

I'm less than 100m from my exchange and I've never had more than 6.5Mbps from Eclipse

[Pimp Daddy]

At least most of you are on BT lines. I leave just outside Hull so I'm a victim of the Kingston Communications monopoly. Yes, there speeds have got better recently, but there not always as fast as they should be and the customer service is dubious at times.

I always thought that monopolies were illegal - but obviously not in Hull!

[Blademrk]

I'm on Pipex Homecall and it varies around 6mb/sec before 4/5pm and around 0.4mb/sec after 4pm til around 11pm.

BT have also switched the line over in the village to 21CN for calls about 2 months ago, although I din't think they're activating the broadband side of it until later on

[Seraphim Works]

Woot, just spoken to AOL after checking my line attenuation, and got them to pop my speed up to 1Mbps. Admittedly still poor compared to the 8Mbps some of you can get, but it's still 100% faster than what I'm on now!

If you're connecting through ADSL, check your line attenuation in your router:
60db and above = 512kbps
41db and above = 1 Mbps
Below 41db = 2Mbps and faster.

I can't remember what the attenuation figures are for 4Mbps, etc.

Speed Calculator, pop in the figures from your router, it'll give you a ballpark figure. If you connect a lot lower than this, it's time to talk to the ISP.

[jjsyht]

So why not advertise "Broadband with up to 10Gbps"?

[kenco_uk]

I'm with Plusnet and although the sync speed is fine and speed tests appear ok-ish, actual download speeds vary greatly. Anything from nearly 800kBps down to bugger all, really. When I was on 2Mbps, I could point my mouse anywhere and download at an average of 220kBps. On maxdsl, some stuff downloads quick as you like, whereas other stuff (Winamp, Linux distros for example) simply crawl along. Despite me raising the issue twice, nothing's apparently been done at all. My main fear about changing is, could the service become worse with a different supplier?

[DougEdey]

meh, 20mbps for £19 does me fine

[Nikumba]

"A BT spokesman told BBC News that “Virtually no-one will get [8Mbps broadband]. The laws of physics start applying as soon as it leaves the exchange and you would have to live on top of the exchange to get the full 8 megabits.� Interestingly, only one in ten of the Which? members surveyed thought that a broadband service advertised as “up to 8Mbps� actually thought they’d get that speed."

Pah I get 8mb and I dont sit on the exchange, am about a mile or so away at least I am able to download at over 800Kb/sec with no issues

[alextwo]

Originally Posted by jjsyht

So why not advertise "Broadband with up to 10Gbps"?

Because that would be false advertising. The current ADSL equipment is capable of speeds up to 8mb/s though. It's not the ISPs fault really just a limitation of the technology available.
I'm just looking forward to FTTH/FTTC

[AlexB]

I'm with Tiscali '8mb'.

Fastest download i've ever had was 3mbs.

But, as i'm a High Use user, and download over their 'fair' use policy, I get my bandwidth further resctricted during 5-11pm every day.

So, I get download speeds of 20kbs between those hours.

The annoying thing, They sent me the letters saying I was a high use user after being with them for only 1 week of the 12 month contract, and I actually had only downloaded 1 xbox live 600mb demo in that week - as my PC didnt even work! - so hardly un-fair.

I'll be leaving as soon as the contract is up.

[LeMaltor]

Since my NTL BB has swaped over to Virgin ive had problems, slow speed, awful customer service and now nightly caps :S