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back to article Oz consumer watchdog: 'up to' speeds shouldn't be in broadband ads

Australia's consumer watchdog is trying to ensure advertising offers comprehensible and accurate broadband performance information. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) wants to regulate ads that spruik speeds “up to 100 Mbps” because consumers almost never experience the headline speeds advertised. …

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  1. Paul J Turner

    As I have said for the last two years

    https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2016/07/26/oz_regulator_eyes_broadband_marketing/

    "The only thing that needs to happen is that when talking about the bandwidth we pay for, the words "up to" are replaced by law with the words "at least". When the law ensures that we all get what we pay for then Telco's will finally put in place an infrastructure that can actually deliver it."

    11 0 Reply
    1. P. Lee
      Reply Icon

      Re: As I have said for the last two years

      >the words "up to" are replaced by law with the words "at least"

      This is only ever going to refer to the link speed. What we really need is for link-speed to not be artificially restricted. I don't think the cable providers throttle the links speed so that's not an issue. It really is only a marketing gimmick. It should be the maximum ADSL2 supports given the physics or at least 1gb/s for fibre for home connections, unless 1g transceivers are vastly more expensive than 100mb/s ones.

      If speed is not a cost for the provider, take it out of the equation. I'm happy to pay for capacity but stop doing silly stuff.

      2 0 Reply
      1. Paul J Turner
        Reply Icon

        Re: As I have said for the last two years

        Actually I mean the overall speed to the source.

        Obviously some servers just aren't too fast but a lot of slowdown is due to crappy low bandwidth links being used on the principle that not everybody uses them at the same time.

        Unfortunately, greed for profit sees this taken way too far resulting in rubbish performance for far too much of the day.

        'Provisioning' they call it, I'd like to put their network architects and capacity planners in a room and 'provision' their air. I'm sure they don't all breathe in at the same time.

        4 0 Reply
  2. Winkypop Silver badge
    Unhappy

    NBN. As fast as

    ...a wet sock in a clothes dryer...

    0 0 Reply
  3. theniginator

    Ive been tracking my own speed for months on a 100Mbps optus plan and typical performance in the evenings is 1-2MBps. Im thinking at what stage does this not conform to the advertised "up to" speed. When its 1-2% of the advertised performance? Optus's decision to unmet Netflix certainly alter performance but then again I like Netflix and it still works well in the evenings. Other things not so well.

    The alternative is they throttle folks down to a guaranteed speed but that wouldn't look competitive in the market place would it.

    1 0 Reply
  4. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

    Only 15 years late...

    ...but okay, good.

    Meanwhile my FTTN line has lost a third of its speed in the three years since it was connected (using shiny new copper.) This is the future, thanks Mr. Broadband!

    1 0 Reply
    1. SImon Hobson Bronze badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Only 15 years late...

      I'm, assuming your FTTN is what we in the UK call FTTC - a VDSL2 service,

      AIUI, this may well be down to interference between subscribers to the cabinet. The high frequency signals aren't perfectly contained by the low spec twisted pair cabling, so when several subscribers take the service, and their pairs are in the same (or adjacent) cable, then the signals interfere and the result is a reduction in the number of usable bins or bits/bin for certain bins. The result is that the first person on a cabinet gets a grest speed, but it starts dropping off a bit as other subscribers get connected and the signals start interfering.

      Another factor may be backhaul dependent, but with gigabit fibre back to the exchange, you'd need something in the order of 20 users all pulling 50M before you saturated it. I don't know if larger cabinets have multiple backhaul channels (eg 2 or more 1G links aggregated) - but if not, then by the time you get up to cabinets serving hundreds of users, there's scope for local contention for the backhaul.

      1 0 Reply
      1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Only 15 years late...

        Yeah that's right, it's a VDSL2. It's the absolute peak speed that's dropped, so I don't think it's caused by contention or congestion, but the interference explanation sounds plausible enough to my lay ear.

        1 0 Reply
  5. A Banker

    It's a nice thought, but will still go over the heads of Joe public who cannot differentiate the WiFi signal from connection speed.

    As someone with FTTB in a multi-dwelling apartment building, iiNet's 100/40M regularly provides speeds less than 10M in the evenings. Was great in the start, but as the rest of the building got the NBN, so the speeds went down.

    0 0 Reply
  6. Adam 1

    it's actually quite simple

    For cars we have urban and extra urban fuel economy figures listed separately. Let the ISPs list a peak and non peak figure and make them refund any days charges where the peak speed is not met during peak times or non peak speeds in non peak times. They can quote their big headline speed number for off peak and users can get a realistic expectation of likely performance of the connections they are considering.

    Even back in dial up days we used to be able to ask how many subscribers per phone line they had and what the session limit was so you would know which ISPs you could get through to and which would just be engaged the whole time.

    0 0 Reply
  7. Tim Roberts 1

    with apologies to Monty Python

    " ..... up to clearly includes the number zero ...." (or some such in a skit about pills that allow one to sleep with up to 1000 women per week)

    0 0 Reply

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