Britain’s broadband is not up to speed

Posted on Thursday 2nd August 2007 at 9.36 pm . Filed under Technology 1 comment . Leave a trackback from your own site.

You may have seen the ads in the newspaper, on TV or on the billboard hoardings at the side of the roads, “Super fast broadband for only…”, “Up to 8Mbps broadband” etc. Having had broadband for some time now I think I have a good grasp on the technology used to deliver broadband internet access into the home and I know that it is very difficult for a provider to supply internet access anywhere near the 8MB advertised.

It seems that the consumer group, Which? have also realised this and have conducted their own speed tests. Following tests performed by 300 broadband users, the average speed measured in at a meagre 2.7Mbps falling short of the 8Mbps advertised by a large margin. Now I know that the various broadband providers use the phrase ‘up to’ to protect themselves against tests like these, however Which? are unhappy with the way that they are abusing the phrase and have asked Ofcom and Trading Standards to investigate the state of UK broadband.

Over the past two years or so the broadband industry has become more competitive with each provider trying to undercut the other and by imposing limitations on download limits, ‘bandwidth profiling’ at peak times and even preventing access to some services such as VOIP or FTP if you have exceeded your bandwidth quota. From my personal experience of trying to find a reasonably priced, reliable broadband provider without ridiculous usage restrictions it can be difficult.

You may have also noticed that just recently broadband providers are giving away ‘free’ laptops when you subscribe to their broadband services. At face value this looks very appealing until you read the small print whereby you are often required to sign up for a 24 month contract which tends to cover the value of the laptop of which are old models anyway. Thankfully my current provider, PlusNet have been OK on all accounts.