“Yes sir you will get up to 20 meg on your line isn’t that great”
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That is likely to be something you have heard from someone selling a broadband service. The reality is that you probably got much less than that and the most common speed in the UK is around about 4MB.The ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) has now forced all ISPs to only advertise speeds that 10% of their customers can achieve. For example if only 5% of an ISP`s customer base can get 20MB then they will not be able to advertise it at that speed but if 11% get 15MB they will be able to advertise it as up to 15Mb. It now seems that most service providers are looking at 14Mbps as a more accurate top speed to advertise at. |
Some providers have already started lowering the speeds at which they are advertising and some have removed any speed from their advertising which could cause problems in that the end customer now has no idea what speed to expect from their provider. It is highly recommended when setting up with a new ISP that you get confirmation of expected speeds for your line if they have no advertised speeds.
The advantages & downsides
The big plus is that it is forcing ISP`s to be more honest with their customers about the speeds they will receive when they take on a new contract although the speeds you will get could still be some way off what they advertise. 10% may get 14Mbps but that means 90% are getting less and who’s to say that 50% of those people are not getting under 3 or 4 Mbps. So while this is good news and a step in the right direction it may still leave customers confused and frustrated.
Other Broadband UK News
| In a little bit of other broadband news Virgin media has started to throttle the connections of their top tier customers by halving the speed at which they can download if they download too much data. This only applies to customers on the 50Mbps and 100Mbps connections who download more than 30GB and 10GB at peak times in a single day.
With the rate that people use their connections nowadays this is an ominous sign even though the amount of data we are talking about been downloaded is excessive and is nowhere near what 99% of users will use. We use our connection for everything from everyday use to gaming and now for watching movies and TV programs online via streaming services like iPlayer and Netflix. |
Hopefully this is just a case of Virgin not been ready to support the increase in traffic when upgrading customers to a faster connection and in the future such upgrades will be better planned to avoid giving with one hand and taking away with the other.
