More than 50 per cent of British broadband users are not receiving half the speed promised by their providers, according to a report from Ofcom, the communications watchdog.

The report has found that more than 50 per cent of users on services that offer "up to 8 Mbps" actually receive a typical speed at a much slower 3.9 Mbps.

Customers that live further away from the telephone exchange, or used their connection at the peak time of between 8pm and 10pm, suffer the slowest connections.

Internet users who receive their connection through a copper wire — DSL — rather than through cable broadband also experience longer download waiting times.

Ofcom said today that it is impossible for any internet user to receive the top speeds advertised because some capacity is reserved for technical reasons.

The highest speed that someone on the 8 Mbps package could receive in practice is 7.2 Mbps, the report found.

But fewer than one in 10 customers on an 8 Mbps package received an average speed of more than 6 Mbps, and around one in five received an average speed of less than 2 Mbps.

However, the regulator stopped short of accusing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) of false advertising.

Peter Phillips, a member of the board at Ofcom, said: “The point is that people are not lying to consumers — if you live close to the exchange you can get very close to the headline speed.

“What we are trying to do here is make available information to people so they can make choices. Banning advertising speeds would not be in consumers’ interests.”

The findings come soon after the publication of the Government's Digital Britain report, which recommended that every household have access to a connection of 2 Mbps or more by 2012.

The survey, which involved 60 million broadband performance tests in 1,600 homes, established that the average broadband speed in the UK in April was 4.1 Mbps, which falls to 3.7 Mbps at peak times.

business.timesonline.co.uk

(07-28-2009 08:55 AM)forwardone Wrote:  Ofcom said today that it is impossible for any internet user to receive the top speeds advertised because some capacity is reserved for technical reasons.

“What we are trying to do here is make available information to people so they can make choices. Banning advertising speeds would not be in consumers’ interests.”

No, but I guess misleading advertising is?

I have a great internet connection for you ... I have limited you to 1.5Terabits, of course the network won't be able to support that, but that's the limit I imposed, and that's what I'm charging you for!

That is a very less Probability for that.
That may possible for less support to the network,,