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UK Download Speeds Swindle

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Proud Mary

Wed Aug 25 2010, 08:02AM

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

BT broadband advert banned over speed claim

BBC News
25 August 2010

An advert for telecommunications firm BT has been banned for misleading customers over broadband speeds.

In a TV advert, a voice-over said BT is "rolling out up to 20 meg speeds" to give "consistently faster broadband".

The Advertising Standards Authority, which received 17 complaints, said it had not seen sufficient evidence to support the claim and concluded that the advert was likely to mislead.

BT said it was disappointed by the ASA's adjudication.

After the complaints were made, BT told the ASA that the sequence shown in the advert had not been intended to be an actual comparison.

The advert - an instalment in an ongoing campaign about "Adam and Jane" - showed Adam being shown around a property by an estate agent as he talked to his partner, Jane, on his mobile.

She was seen viewing the house online from her home computer, loading a website faster than the estate agent at peak time, before a voiceover said: "BT is rolling out up to 20 meg speeds to give you a consistently faster broadband throughout the day even at peak times."

A similar message was carried in radio and press adverts.

There were 17 complaints from the public and competitors Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin.

Some felt the 20Mb (megabits per second) claim was misleading and could not be substantiated.

Others believed surfing a typical website would not be any faster with a 20Mb service than it would with BT's original 8Mb service.

And three people said the speed at which the "Jane" character navigated various web pages was faster than anyone could achieve at any connection speed.

In reaching its decision, the ASA said: "Because we had not seen sufficient evidence to support the claim that BT's new broadband service was consistently faster than its existing 8Mb service even at peak times, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead."

The advertising watchdog said viewers could expect the internet speed demonstrated by "Jane" to be available to them, adding that this was not the case.

It concluded: "We noted BT's new service was available to fewer than half of all households and the roll-out, increasing that figure to 75%, was anticipated to take around two years.

"We noted that a significant proportion of the population could not get the service at the time the ad appeared and therefore considered the ad should have made that clear. Because it did not, we concluded that it was likely to mislead."

Highlighting 'higher speeds'

The watchdog ruled that the adverts must not appear again in their current form.

In a statement, BT said: "We are disappointed by the ASA's adjudication.

"At the time the ads appeared, BT had just started rolling out a new up-to-20Mb broadband service across the country and we wanted to highlight the higher speeds available in newly enabled exchange areas offering customers consistently faster web browsing in comparison to BT's up-to-8Mb service.

"There was certainly no intention to mislead."

It said the claims made in the advertising included independent data from broadband monitoring firm Epitiro and a statistician.

Steve Conner

Sat Aug 28 2010, 11:06AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

I get several flyers per week in the mail advertising BT's new "Infinity" broadband service. I believe it's fiber to the kerb, or whatever. They're determined for me to buy it, but I'm equally determined not to.

I'm currently on Be Internet's cheapest value package, it costs Â£15 per month and promises 8Mbit down, 1Mbit up, with no cap. Speedtest.net gives me 5.68 down and 0.80 up. I used to get a download speed of nearer 7, but that was with the router supplied by Be, which was forever crashing, dropping the line, and its wi-fi would sometimes just quit for no apparent reason. In any case, I find it plenty fast enough for home use.

My mum and dad live out in the country, and they get 1.5Mbit download if they're lucky, on a line that BT's own checker says will support 8. Of course, the BT checker doesn't actually check your line speed, it just asks for your phone number and then prints out a suitably inflated figure.

On weekends when there are lots of people in the village online, it slows to a crawl or dies altogether. There obviously isn't enough capacity from their local exchange to the rest of the intertubes.

Avalanche

Sat Aug 28 2010, 03:59PM

Registered Member #103 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:16PM
Location: Derby, UK
Posts: 845

I'm getting 1.71Mb/s down, 0.8 up on a Saturday afternoon. Subscribed to an 8Mbit service on Freedom2surf (now opal). I live in a small-ish village, and the local exchange gets bogged down at peak times like now. In fact, we were one of the last places to get the exchange upgraded - there was a petition here a few years ago to get broadband made available.

99% of the time, the 'low' speed doesn't bother me though! I was happy enough moving from dial up to 512Kbit broadband back in 2004

I've regraded since, to 2Mbit and then to 8Mbit, but never really noticed anything from either upgrade.

Broadband is about as best it can be with the current infrastructure, but the ISP's can't help themselves from getting over excited and making out that it's getting faster and faster when it really isn't. They need to stop all the false competition with 'high speeds' and just offer something realistic like 'broadband, average 1-2Mbit/s'

Russell Haley

Tue Aug 31 2010, 07:07PM

Registered Member #2478 Joined: Mon Nov 23 2009, 03:24AM
Location: Texas A&M University
Posts: 47

I At the moment I'm getting 4.61 Mb/s down and 3.66 Mb/s up, but there's also LAN infrastructure not under my control between me and the internet, so I can't make very good use of it.

Proud Mary

Tue Aug 31 2010, 08:06PM

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

I just measured my download speed as 2.33 Mbps, meanwhile my BT Openworld Broadband Status window claimed the speed during the same interval was 8.1 Mbps. Hah!

Steve Conner

Tue Aug 31 2010, 08:45PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

BT Internal Software Specification

The download speed display should work as follows:
Display 3 times the actual speed the user is getting, or 8 megabits, whichever is greater.

How BT's programmers actually implemented it:

10 PRINT "8.1Mbps"
20 GOTO 10

Dr. Slack

Wed Sept 01 2010, 07:45AM

Registered Member #72 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:29AM
Location: UK St. Albans
Posts: 1659

I started out on Pipex many years ago. When they were bought by Talk-Talk, I asked them for TT's package, as Pipex were by then overcharging seriously. After a long time on the phone, dancing through some double-talk and repeatedly asking for a MAC, I was eventually offered a "retention" package, which costed out to exactly the same as TT's uncapped 8Mb/s + 24/7 free landline calls for Â£8 per month, with Â£11 rental to BT. Which was equivalent to what I wanted in the first place.

The numbers. I'm 2.5km from the exchange. I usually get 6Mb/s to 7Mb/s if I hit known good sites for large downloads, and this is in spite of their advertised (in the fine print) 50:1 contention ratio. Stll happy.

Shortly after going to the new arrangement, I noticed that my connection often just stopped working, I'd maybe restart 2 or 3 times a day. In trying to figure out what was going on, I noticed that my modem, on automatic, was presenting Talk-Talk's DNS address to my PCs. I went back to my original Pipex install docs, and found different addresses for their DNS. They all pinged, so I put my connection on manual and gave it the Pipex addresses. Uptime now several months. Still happy (until Pipex, now Opal, take their DNS down )

Steve Conner

Wed Sept 01 2010, 09:41AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Well, if they ever do, you might want to try OpenDNS or Google Public DNS.

modularduck

Wed Sept 01 2010, 07:58PM

Registered Member #3094 Joined: Tue Aug 10 2010, 03:12AM
Location: portland, or
Posts: 30

Damn I feel lucky kinda, while i pay a rediculous amount for my interwebs $80usd a month I have 25Mbps down and average 8-9Mbps upload speeds.

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