back to article MILLIONS of broadband punters aren't getting it fast enough – Which?

More than 15 million households may not be getting their advertised broadband speeds, suggesting that providers are telling porky pies about how fast their services are. According to a survey of 2,000 punters from Which?, 74 per cent reckon they are paying for packages with advertised speeds they never receive – amounting to …

  1. Kubla Cant

    Does the CAP fit?

    BT uses the method to describe our speeds that is defined by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP)

    I think I'd place more trust in a method devised by network specialists than one made up by a committee of admen.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Does the CAP fit?

      BT uses the method to describe our speeds that is defined by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP)

      I think I'd place more trust in a method devised by network specialists than one made up by a committee of admen.

      And this is, being cynical, EXACTLY why you don't decide the method, but a committee of admen do.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "According to a survey of 2,000 punters from Which?"

    I find myself in the difficult position of siding with the ISPs on this one. There is no way that for this type of claim a survey of 2000 people from all different ISPs on different packages could be considered accurate. 2000 random people all on the same package from the same ISP, in different locations, with hourly monitoring over the course of a month, then fine.

    1. Irongut

      Also who are these 2,000 people? Assuming they are a representative sample of the population very few of them will be IT people so how would they even know if they were getting the advertised speeds?

      Personally I get faster than the advertised speed. But then I pay more than the cheapest price I can find and don't deal with idiots like TalkTalk, Sky, Virgin, BT, PlusNet, etc.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Given the market shares of BT, Talktalk and Sky that total of 2,000 will still include several hundred users of each of those providers. That's ample to give a fair impression of whether customers of those providers are falling well short of what they promised.

      1. Boothy

        Quote: "That's ample to give a fair impression of whether customers of those providers are falling well short of what they promised.".

        Erm, no it's not. Several 100 from a single provider is still statistically insignificant. Any results would be very unreliable.

        To produce reliable figures, you'd need a minimum % of the providers customer base (or of the entire customer base).

        Typically you need a sample of around 5% before the results can be considered reliable. Although depending on things like how you choose the sample, that could be as low as 1%.

        Just for TalkTalk, if we assume rounded down to 500,000 to make this easier (based on their 'over half a million customers' comment).

        That would mean a sample range of 5,000 to 25,000 users, before the results would be of any statistical significance. And that's just for a single (smaller in comparison to BT etc) provider.

        1. Kubla Cant

          To produce reliable figures, you'd need a minimum % of the providers customer base (or of the entire customer base).

          Statisticians may correct me, but I was under the impression that statistical significance is determined by a combination of absolute sample size and the relative frequency of the attribute being sampled for. For example, if you're measuring the percentage of population under 20, a sample of 1000 produces results that are equally significant for Cambridgeshire or the whole UK.

        2. Dave Bell

          I have some knowledge of statistics, and this depends a huge amount on how you select the people in the sample. Do it right, and you could get useful results from a smaller survey than you think. But there are also some obvious questions on the selection process that Which do need to answer (or which journalists haven't paid attention to when they read the report).

          On what I have seen for myself, the advertising is not always as clear as the ISPs are claiming.

          Neither side in this argument has clean hands. I live in a rural area, I get good speed for my line length, and I do now have the option of fibre-to-the-cabinet. I am not confident that any of the ISPs have a reliable connection between the exchange and the rest of the internet. It's not the raw speed that gives me problems with the stuff I do.

    3. Lee D Silver badge

      I don't know about this survey, but SamKnows does an awful lot of broadband monitoring. I know, because I have their kit in my house. And they supply that data to government, and probably places like Which too sometimes.

      Basically I have a box that tests everything from download and upload speed to RTP packet jitter to DNS reponse time, you name it, throughout the day. I get a fancy little summary at the end of each month with pretty graphs going back years. If nothing else, I keep it because a) I know what it can and can't do (it's VLAN'ed off from my LAN and I can monitor its traffic using my router if necessary), b) it doesn't hurt my connection at all, c) It's nice to know that I am getting what I pay for at the top end even if sometimes I swear about "the connection" being slow (probably just my clients/wireless) d) I like to think that my ISP could easily detect I have one of these boxes and given that they contribute to the government statistics on which ISPs are performing and which are not, I imagine they might want to ... ensure my service level is consistent with expectations... ;-P

      Plus, at any time now, I can turn it off and I get to keep the re-firmware'd wireless router that it's based on for myself (after the first year).

  3. Tim Almond

    Does Anyone Use this capacity?

    I'm running at about 7mbps at home and I've tried monitoring it and the only time I hit it is when downloading large games off Steam or things from MSDN subscription.

    If you're watching a movie, it's 2mbps. If you've got 20mbps, it's still 2mbps. Websites are nicer, but it's not exactly a deal breaker to get a webpage in 3 seconds instead of 1.

    The biggest benefit of fibre seems to be that upload speeds go up from about 400kbps to 1mbps.

    1. Truth4u

      Re: Does Anyone Use this capacity?

      My VDSL gives lower latency than my ADSL did on the same line, so that's something.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Does Anyone Use this capacity?

      Game downloads (and patches), streaming 4k content, streaming to multiple devices. Buffering latency to fill in around instantaneous congestion. Many use points.

      Going from ~5mbps to >20mbps is a significant improvement.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Does Anyone Use this capacity?

      "The biggest benefit of fibre seems to be that upload speeds go up from about 400kbps to 1mbps."

      My ADSL gives me 1mbps upload speed and 12mbps download (against a theoretical max of 16mbps). Traffic throughput on large transfers suggest that it is site dependent how much bandwidth is then used.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Does Anyone Use this capacity? I'd love it!

        I get c. 480 kb/s download, 200 kb/s upload over ADSL 12 miles from Watford. I'm told it's due to the length of the last mile.

        1. Lee D Silver badge

          Re: Does Anyone Use this capacity? I'd love it!

          The Watford area is quite bad. I have just put in a huge leased fibre into a school around there because, generally, the ADSL/VDSL is so atrocious.

          After two ADSL2 lines were deemed inadequate, we moved one to a VDSL. Promises of "up to" 75Mbps. We get 45Mbps at the property boundary (according to the engineer). 30Mbps by the time you get it somewhere useful. Our actual, usable, Internet-measured speed was 15Mbps at best.

          And BT took years to try to get a leased line to us and then decided that the exchange was inadequate so delayed more years. We cancelled.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Does Anyone Use this capacity? I'd love it!

          "I get c. 480 kb/s download, 200 kb/s upload over ADSL 12 miles from Watford. I'm told it's due to the length of the last mile."

          Some "last miles" are longer than others, obviously.

          As usual OFCOM have messed up. What they should have done is given the customer a "walk away" clause, but also the option to pay pro-rate between the speed delivered and the maximum advertised speed for that technology (with no vendor cancellation option). You'd need a framework to make sure that the resellers could pass that price cut onto any guilty network operator. On that basis you could call BT and demand the price be reduced to about 50p a month.

    4. Boothy

      Re: Does Anyone Use this capacity?

      If you're watching a movie in low resolution, it's 2mbps.

      There fixed that for you.

      For HD you typically need around 4-5Mbps, although it depends on the service, and these days, most new video content is uploaded in HD.

      For example, BBC iPlayer recommends 3.2Mbps as a minimum for their HD content, but if your trying to stream a Sky HD movie, you need around 4.4Mbps minimum.

      This is assuming no one or no other device, is using the Internet in your house at the same time of course.

      I'd say these days, that an absolute minimum speed for residential connection, would be around the 6Mbps, otherwise people will see the 'buffering' messages on a regular basis. (My GF is on 2Mbps, and it's buffering hell).

      This is of course ignoring new things like 4K/UHD streaming, where you are looking at 25Mbps speeds being recommended.

      Even for Steam games downloading, recent AAA titles are in the 20GB+ size ranges, that takes quite a while over a 2Mbps connection (20+ hours).

    5. Blitterbug
      Happy

      Re: Does Anyone Use this capacity?

      Tim,

      What the hell are you smoking, my man??

      Do you not realise that a reasonably normal household containing yucky teenagers will absolutely bring your 7mb line to its knees? Minecraft, WoW, CoD, TeamSpeak, you name it. And that's before the porn! Hell, it's even before everyone else in the house's porn...

      I'm apparently rare in that I actually get >90% of whatever package I am on from my ISP. But I use Entanet who buy from BT Wholesale. Example: I was on good old 8mb, of which I got between 7.5 - 8mb, but it wasn't quite fast enough for my, erm, needs so I got FTTC and now get between 18 - 20mb.

    6. Graham Marsden

      @Tim Almond - Re: Does Anyone Use this capacity?

      The point is not whether anyone *uses* this capacity, it is that the Providers sell it as if everyone *can* use that capacity.

      And that's a different matter (and not exactly credible either)

    7. Jaybus

      Re: Does Anyone Use this capacity?

      Yes, it is site dependent. Even if all sites that one connected to were more than capable of saturating your link, it would still be route dependent. ISPs give us the maximum theoretical bandwidth, not the throughput or average throughput or even maximum throughput. TCP window size (in bits) divided by round-trip latency (in seconds) is the maximum throughput in bits/second. For example, with a window size of 64k and a round-trip latency of 30 ms, the maximum throughput is 17.4 Mbps. Note that this is the maximum throughput regardless of bandwidth. If that latency were 90 ms, then the maximum throughput would be 5.8 Mbps. Bandwidth, on the other hand, reflects the minimum time it takes to actually transfer the bits in the window once the delay is over and assuming absolutely ideal conditions and no other traffic on the network..

      So bandwidth doesn't tell us all that we need to know and is always greater, and therefore sounds better, than the delivered throughput. In other words, it is the perfect metric for marketing hype, and certainly essential for marketing wireless and satellite services.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "However, Ofcom is calling for a rule change to prevent providers from advertising speeds consumers can't receive."

    I have no problem with them advertising theoretical speeds so long as they don't charge for them once they've installed it and realised the theory is wrong.

    We were paying for 21Mb/s ADSL, moved home and our new speeds were 3Mb/s, we "upgraded" to fibre (up to 76Mb/s) at a cost to ourselves, only to still get the 21Mb/s we were paying for on ADSL.

    1. David Webb

      They generally do though, the BT DSL checker will give a rough estimate for your expected line speed, up to X MB is just that, up to, your ISP should let you know what speeds to expect. And no, I'm not smug because I'm not on an up to package, I'm guaranteed full fat fibre /smug

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "the BT DSL checker will give a rough estimate for your expected line speed, up to X MB is just that, up to, your ISP should let you know what speeds to expect"

        It did, up to 50Mb/s, so still over double what we're getting and we're still paying for up to 76Mb/s with no option for us to pay for a 21Mb/s or even a 50Mb/s package.

        Your smugness is irrelevant, we were paying for 21Mb/s ADSL and not getting it, and now we're paying extra to get what we were already paying for but wasn't being delivered.

  5. Simon B
    Holmes

    It's the new world we live in.

    Where 25 meg is a maximum theoritcal speed, more like 16.

    where 60mpg is in a lab and in real life use more like 47mpg.

    And where unlimited is not unlimited, but it sounds cooler so providers (phone/internet/mobile etc) use it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "It's the new world we live in."

      Hardly new. This has been going on for years, and OFCOM have repeatedly failed to tackle the issue. Telecoms remains one of the worst sectors in the UK for customer-focused regulation, but I don't see that changing anytime soon.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "and OFCOM have repeatedly failed to tackle the issue"

        Subtly different, but I notice that AT&T have just been fined $100m by US regulators for broadband throttling. That's how you bring telecoms companies to deliver what they promise.

        An open question: Is OFCOM the worst, most toothless, limp-wristed regulator in the developed world, or is there somebody worse?

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Stephen Leslie

    I don't complain about Rogers

    I get 10 - 20 approx. upload and 70 - 200 approx. download depending on day (and which hub I'm connected to first, Kingston is about 70 and Montreal is all the way up to touching 200).

  8. Otto is a bear.

    If you don't like BT speed you can go elsewhere

    Not in my manor squire, yes you can go to 3 or 4 other suppliers, but it still comes down to the link between the exchange and the cabinet, and then the house, all of which are BT. Strangely enough, all my possible broadband suppliers quote exactly the same speeds.

    I suspect the broadband demand in my manor is also going up, because the broadband performance is going down, even during the day.

    1. AIBailey

      Re: If you don't like BT speed you can go elsewhere

      Luxury!

      I don't even have the option of going with anyone other than BT. There are literally no other providers where I live.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If you don't like BT speed you can go elsewhere

      " it still comes down to the link between the exchange and the cabinet, and then the house, all of which are BT."

      That's not strictly true. Some ISPs install their own kit in exchanges and the amount of backhaul they pay for will have a significant effect on throughput.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    While I agree it's wrong that they advertise speeds that can't be reached (except perhaps at 2 in the morning one day a year) the real issue here is that we aren't delivering stupid amounts of bandwidth to everyone*.

    I'd set a target of providing every house and business with a last mile connection that was capable of 1Gbps. The wording there is careful, I'm not saying everyone should be able to get 1 Gbps right away as I doubt the rest of the network could cope. We should, however, be installing the fibre to houses and businesses today so that tomorrow the cabinets can be connected and and exchanges upgraded so that people can get loads of bandwidth (e.g. 100Mbps).

    Realistically we are never going to be able to deliver the sort of data rates necessary over wireless to make that a general way of connecting to the internet and the old twisted pair phone line is already maxed out. Fibre is a tried and tested solution to the problem that gives a ton of bandwidth for future growth if needed. I suppose the problem is that it costs a lot to run fibre to every premises but we're going to have to do it sooner or later so lets get on with it.

    * Absolutely everyone would be hard but at least as wide spread as the electricity supply.

  10. simmondp

    Time for a pragmatic solution.

    As much I agree with what Which are trying to achieve, the speed is usually governed by physics, namely the length of copper from the exchange (or FTTC box) to the home.

    Is not the pragmatic solution to charge for the percentage of actual speed delivered.

    This if you advertise 18M for £10/month but I only get 9M then I only get charged £5 / month.

    Or is this too simple?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Time for a pragmatic solution.

      "Or is this too simple?"

      A little. ISPs are making maybe a pound a month from you. If you force them to drop their prices, they'll have to choose to make a loss or decline to serve you. Serving you costs them the same regardless of how much of your theoretical speed you achieve.

      It would be quite the unintended consequence if instead of improving speeds for people on longer lines they ended up with no service at all.

  11. funroll

    And herein lies the problem. The speed you see on the headline is UP TO - that's UP TO, not "You'll get this speed". When people begin to understand what "up to" means, then people will quit moaning.

    Just because you've paid for "up to 20 whatever Mb/s" doesn't mean you will, or should get it, it all depends on how far you are from the DSLAM, be that in the exchange or in an FTTC cab.

    Now if you're quoted a speed, for your line, and you don't get it - then you have a valid reason to complain.

    Adrian Kennard has written a good blog post on this - http://www.revk.uk/2015/06/broadband-speed.html

    1. Red Bren
      Holmes

      > And herein lies the problem. The speed you see on the headline is UP TO - that's UP TO, not "You'll get this speed". When people begin to understand what "up to" means, then people will quit moaning.

      No herein lies the problem. The amount you see on the bill is the headline price - not UP TO this price. When BT et al start billing customers for the service actually delivered, rather than headline price for a fraction of the headline speed, then people will quit moaning.

  12. Brucifer
    WTF?

    Copper on new builds?

    I moved into a brand new house before the build of the estate had even been finshed.

    Out on the main road, Openreach had serviced all the street cabinets with fibre ready to go live at the exchange 4 months later. However, the brand new street cabinets just off the main road on the new estate needed new feeds pulling in. On these brand new cabinets on a brand new estate, they did this with copper. 3 or 4 years later, it remains in this state.

    People out on the main road have roaring speeds whilst all the new houses do not.

    In my case the router syncs up at about 4-6mbps down and 1mbps-ish up.

    What were they thinking?

    1. Bunbury

      Re: Copper on new builds?

      They were thinking "this building developer has contracted us to do it this way". The comms infrastructure is specified by the developer, who will typically go out to tender and select the cheapest option.

      An analogy would be to look at the bricks they buil their house with and ask why the brick company didn't supply a better quality brick. They didn't because they were not paid to do so, and had they delivered a better brick, the developer would have rejected as that was not what was specified.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The fibre problem

    Whilst it meets the requirements from a bandwidth perspective, unlike copper it's:

    - fragile making it susceptible to breaks

    - technically more difficult to work with (it's not twisted pair/RJ45 simple)

    - more expensive hardware to connect and run the network

    This explains why the existing copper to the house, whilst old and flaky, is likely to be in use for many years without massive investment.

  14. ACMTIX

    Whats the point?

    Whats the point in harping on about download speeds when all internet service providers, use bandwidth traffic management to restrict speeds and access to networks. I find it increasingly more and more frustrating when my internet service provider (Virgin) caps my bandwidth speeds and then denies all knowledge of it until I speak to one of their engineers who confirms they do this.

    We should also be evaluating mobile phone networks such as EE, O2 and Three, which are increasingly offering terrible service and value for money.

    The UK's communication networks are desperately in need of investment and creaking under tremendous strain.

    I am lucky to get a 2G signal in Leicestershire and my Virgin broadband is iffy at best.

    1. SMabille

      Re: Whats the point?

      Not ALL ISP use network traffic management.

      I have 2 providers, one (A&A) clearly state they are not using traffic management and endeavour to buy enough transit traffic to not be the bottleneck and do a really good job at it and I strongly believe my second ISP (gigaclear) not to have any traffic management in place either.

      Neither sale argument is ridiculously low price and you get what you pay for. In this case for slightly higher cost I get ISPs not slowing me down and with competent support if/when needed.

  15. SMabille

    17% get their "up to" speed at any time, down to 15% during peak hours.

    So only 2% are hit by congestion (at their ISP and/or transit level).

    That means that most of the 83% not reaching their "up speed" is due to sync speed being below their expectations.

    Switching provider won't help as both will use the same BT Openreach copper pair (except to alternative technology - cable/FTTP if lucky enough to have them available - in which case you would be unlikely to go for low ADSL/FTTC sync speed in the first place).

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What Broadband speed?

    Quango's, bullshit and Corporate Greed.

    I love my 28.8k modem ;-)

  17. Kaltern

    SKy FTTC,Unlimited Pro. Started off at the maximum 80mbps, for about 4 months. Then inexplicably it dropped to 65mbps. Did the usual checks, but no dice. OR engineer came out, after many phonecalls it was determined my router was not sending data for 4 hours a day, causing the DLM to think it was a shifty line and decreasing my profile accordingly. Except I can't see where this mysterious 4 hour dropout is occurring, logs don't show anything.

    So got replacement router, and speed dropped to 62mbps. I'm awaiting another engineer, but it would seem my own equipment is not to blame.

    I'll take bets on the next excuse BTO give for the speed decrease...

  18. StephenTompsett

    The real problem is the steadily corroding cables to the home...

    Unless you change the physical connection, changing ISP isn't likely to give an increase in speed. Its really amazing the data rates that they do manage over the same old corroded damp copper wire intended for telephony, I used to get approx 8MB over ADSL when it was dry, but it would drop to approximately 0MB the day after a good rainstorm, The replacement cable from Virgin has no problems providing me with 100MB+, and the quality of the telephone service has also improived!

  19. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    Your total speed will be the speed of the slowest part of your connecttion. If you have a 20Mbps connection to "the internet", but the server you're accessing only has a 4Mbps connection to "the internet", guess how fast your connection to that server is going to be.

  20. Bunbury

    Isn't this a category error?

    Let's say I run a broadbband service for 10,000 punters, and the absolute max my service will run at is 100Mbps. It's xDSL so degrades with cable distance. I want to advertise and check the rules. I need to say "up to" the speed that at least 10% of my customers synch at. I look at my records and discover that 1,000 synch at 92Meg+, and 9,000 at less than 92Meg. So I advertise as "up to 92Meg".

    I don't wan't to go broke by providing private ciruits to all the customers (they wouldn't pay for that as my competitors offer dirt cheap broadband) so I put in enough network capacity that, in really busy times, the lines run at about half the synch speed. So my fastest 1,000 customers will runat 41-50Meg throughput.

    So, if these guys get surved by Which? asking "who gets the advertised speeds?" and "who gets them at peak times?" surely I would expect the answers to be "10%" and "none" respectively. Whereas actually the performance seems better than this. So it seems a bit of a non story.

    In fact, it seems to boil down to "most people don't get the 'up to' speed because by the design of the advertising rules 90% shouldn't be able to".

  21. Adair Silver badge

    Here in Karooville*...

    we take what we're given, and are grateful.

    Having said that their fibre service is pretty good, there just isn't very much of it yet.

    * the area around Hull served by the Kingston Communications monopoly.

  22. Iain 15

    Nospeed

    BT toll me all my internets was falling out of the wires in the house. Was they making lies to me?

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