Britain 'failing' net speed tests

[DorsetBoy]

BBCNEWS

Britain 'failing' net speed tests............or can people simply not read?

[Rik]

Unable to read, unwilling to learn is my view, Dorset. Too many people buy broadband as they would a bar of chocolate. To my mind, like buying a car, you need to do your homework first. OTOH, I do believe that unlimited and the headline 8Mbps should be banned.

[Lance]

A survey by consumer group Which? found that broadband packages promising speeds of up to 8Mbps (megabits per second) actually achieved far less.

Idiots. The up to part implies that they could well get less. Even if they get 0.5mb, they have still got the promised up to 8mbps!

[RobMc]

The bit that annoyed me was the following sentence:

The average speed achieved in the Which? trials was 2.7Mbps, with the lowest coming in at under 0.09Mbps, barely at dial-up rates, and the maximum only reaching 6.7Mbps.

Well a speed of 0.09Mbs seems to me to imply a fault on the line. As such it should have no part in such a survey. 6.7Mbps is really quite optimal, I can't see many lines supporting anything significantly better then this on a standard BT adsl enabled line.

All the Which report has done is to muddy the waters again and perpetuate some of the old myths about adsl broadband.

Rob.

[Rik]

All the Which report has done is to muddy the waters again and perpetuate some of the old myths about adsl broadband.

Not for the first time, unfortunately, Rob. I have found over the years that Which? reports that involve the need for some specialist knowledge of the subject often fail. Many years ago (very many!), they ran a review of magnetic recording tape, concluding that a particular brand was best. When I read the testing method, I was not surprised by their conclusions - they had used a machine which had the bias set for that particular brand of tape.


Edit: Brain not in gear!

[MoHux]

Unable to read, unwilling to learn is my view, Dorset. Too many people buy broadband as they would a bar of chocolate. To my mind, like buying a car, you need to do your homework first. OTOH, I do believe that unlimited and the headline 8Mbps should be banned.

A caveat gentlemen ............

Beware it's not YOU who are muddying the waters.

............. According to a Which? survey, done in conjunction with the speed tests, only one in 10 of its members thought that a broadband service advertised as up to 8Mbps would actually deliver the top speed. ............................

Which sounds to me as if they are learning.

Also we have asked long enough for people with clout to 'pick up the cudgel'.  So why knock them when they do? 

[Rik]

Point taken, Mo, though I am never sure of how much clout the CA carries these days... 

[RobMc]

Well I think they have muddied the waters. To quote again "and the maximum only reaching 6.7Mbps."

To say "only reaching" implies that this isn't very good. In fact 6.7Mbps is almost as fast as you can get on a BT Max ADSL enabled line. If they are to run and publish such surveys they have a duty to explain what is on offer and what "up to 8Mbps" actually means.

Just my tuppence worth...

Rob.

[MoHux]

Sorry Rob, by inference (up to) ISPs are saying you can reach 8, when you can't!!

But if they told you you could jump an 8ft wide stream, and you only managed 6.7ft, you wouldn't think it was very good! 

[RobMc]

Yes, my point was that the Which Report should have explained what the upto 8Mbs service was, and not said "only 6.7Mbps" implying that that was low compared with 8Mbps. The theoretical maximum download speed would be about 7Mbs and so 6.7 out of 7 is damn good. Hence my comment about them muddying the waters and perpetuating the myth that the up to 8Mbps adsl service could ever actually equate to a transfer speed of near that. They need to be careful how they word their report with a subject that obviously causes confusion for less technically minded members of the public.
Rob.

[MoHux]

But, but, surely that is their point ........... the ads should say upto 7Mbps if that's the limit, NOT 8Mbps. 

Mo

[RobMc]

Yes, but they didn't make that point. They just perpetuated the myth that an up to 8Mbps max adsl service should give speeds of significantly more than their quoted maximum of ONLY 6.7Mbps, which is wrong. I think there is a lot of willful (or ignorant) misinformation of the max adsl service going on in the mass-market and the which report was in a position to explain this but it would seem that they didn't. That was the basis of my original comment on the which report and I stand by that. The mis-selling of adsl broadband based on exaggerated download speeds/deliberately vague terms and conditions etc are another topic entirely.

Rob.

[MoHux]

............. The mis-selling of adsl broadband based on exaggerated download speeds/deliberately vague terms and conditions etc are another topic entirely.

Sorry, I read that as being what the report was all about!

"Britain 'failing' net speed tests 

Broadband speed depends on how far you live from local exchange
There is a huge gap between advertised broadband speeds and the actual speeds users can achieve, research has shown."

[RobMc]

mea culpa.

I've just read the speed report on the which website, rather then the article on the BBC News Website.

The quote from the BBC article that I found difficult to cope with:

The average speed achieved in the Which? trials was 2.7Mbps, with the lowest coming in at under 0.09Mbps, barely at dial-up rates, and the maximum only reaching 6.7Mbps.

Doesn't actually appear on the Which Report and so my whole argument falls down. I apologise for being mislead by the wording on the BBC article and for not reading the report (tbh. I thought these reports were only available to subscribers, however this seems to no longer be the case). So for this reason I must withdraw my comments about the which report as they are now groundless.




Rob.

[MoHux]

NP