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UK Download Speeds Swindle

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ragnar

Thu Jul 29 2010, 11:54AM

Registered Member #63 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:18AM
Location:
Posts: 1425

We have a similar situation in Australia, but I wouldn't call it a complete swindle. I paid AU$124.90/mo for 120GB with iiNet in the Sydney CBD. Advertised as "up to 24Mbps", the actual service was 12Mbps down / 2Mbps up. This was adequate for my servers.

I recognize my distance from the telephone exchange, cable characteristics and electrical noise will impact my connection. Typical users don't grok this distance/noise implication, nor do they feel the difference between 1Mbps and 10Mbps (which is quite convenient for ISPs).

The service was available at the advertised level, whether or not the infrastructure between me (Broadway) and the exchange (Haymarket) was qualified to carry it. It might be capitalizing on public ignorance, but it costs them just as much whether you live inside the exchange or 6km away.

I'd gamble that the intercontinental connections bottleneck long before your local connection. The only content that ever reached me at full speed tended to be stuff cached locally by my ISP like Windows updates, SourceForge downloads etc.

Chris Russell

Thu Jul 29 2010, 07:53PM

... not Russel!
Registered Member #1 Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052

Yikes. I guess I'm somewhat spoiled. I'm paying USD $65/month for 20Mbit down, 4Mbit up. Any time I've run a speed test, it comes out that fast or a bit faster (they offer a speed boost thing that bumps my speeds to 25/5 for the first 20MB or so of a download). There's no cap on data at all. Good thing, too, as I average around 200GB-300GB of traffic per month.

That said, every time I've signed up for service, ISPs have gone to great lengths to make it clear that advertised speeds are under ideal conditions only, and that your experienced speeds may quite frequently be lower, depending on things like signal strength and network congestion. When download speeds are advertised, there is almost always an asterisk that explains the aforementioned caveats. Is the same not true elsewhere?

Proud Mary

Thu Jul 29 2010, 09:01PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Chris Russell wrote ...

When download speeds are advertised, there is almost always an asterisk that explains the aforementioned caveats. Is the same not true elsewhere?

When average speeds across all users are only 50% of the "up to" figure, and where only 2% of customers are getting the maximum speed, as in the UK, then the 'small print' needs to be printed a lot larger, and more clearly, to satisfy UK trading standards.

It should say "up to pie-in-the-sky for a lucky few, but half that speed for the great majority," but nothing so honest is likely to happen with industry self-regulation as it is in Britain today.

dmg

Thu Jul 29 2010, 09:19PM

Registered Member #2628 Joined: Fri Jan 15 2010, 12:23AM
Location:
Posts: 627

Im not the best when it comes to understanding the whole internet speed thing, so I just took this test:

for fun,

my results come to download 23.11mb/s and upload of 0.48mb/s
my area settings display (on desktop) a speed of 100Mbps

Is this in any way accurate?
Im in Canada.

Chris Russell

Thu Jul 29 2010, 10:47PM

... not Russel!
Registered Member #1 Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052

Gatedbreakdown: the speed tests are pretty accurate, but the speed reported on your desktop isn't the speed that you're paying for from your ISP. That's just the speed of the LAN that connects your computer to your router or cable/dsl modem. Those results could be anywhere from quite good to quite bad. You'd need to know your package to say for sure.

Adam Munich

Fri Jul 30 2010, 01:07AM

Registered Member #2893 Joined: Tue Jun 01 2010, 09:25PM
Location: Cali-forn. i. a.
Posts: 2242

I have fios, and i get the advertised 5 megabyte/second download speed. Yay!

GhostNull

Fri Jul 30 2010, 12:35PM

Registered Member #2648 Joined: Sun Jan 24 2010, 12:45PM
Location: Australia
Posts: 291

It's not so much that other countries internet is good, it's more that Australia's internet is C*** unless your in Tassie where they've rolled out the Australia broadband network thing

Sulaiman

Fri Jul 30 2010, 07:21PM

Registered Member #162 Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 10:25AM
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3141

I'm using Virgin, I subscribed to 256 kbps and have received free upgrades to 2 Mbps and now 10 Mbps.
Just did a 'speedtest' and got 9.75 Mbps result,
but my son is on the net playing games sharing the bandwidth.
I really like Virgin....good service too.

P.S. IF I changed to any other ISP I'd have to use BT infrastructure

P.P.S. My son is into eGames both personally and profesionally and he tells me that when playing online games he has a definate advantage over non-Virgin users, mainly due to low latency (short 'ping' time).

GhostNull

Sat Jul 31 2010, 12:44PM

Registered Member #2648 Joined: Sun Jan 24 2010, 12:45PM
Location: Australia
Posts: 291

omfg I got such bad internet compared to everyone else >.<
I think it's because I'm on an exchange which is serving 2-4 suburbs >.<

stop4stuff

Sat Jul 31 2010, 01:58PM

Registered Member #64 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:25AM
Location: Southampton, UK
Posts: 68

I'm with TalkTalk (Â£21.xx/month unlimited bandwithd broadband and includes free worldwide landline calls), speedtest.net has just given me 26ms ping, 6.59Mb/s download and 0.5Mb/s upload... the service is supposed to be 'upto' 8Mb/s download, I don't know what the upload speed is supposed to be but I'm quite happy that I'm getting speeds as advertised and higher than average for TalkTalk.

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