Millions let down by broadband speed ads, says Which?

Millions let down by broadband speed ads, says Which? - BBC News article with a quote from ThinkBroadband's Seb.

This Which? campaign does the rounds each year.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6978-speed-test-r... basically gives some examples of what median and mean speeds are like, i.e. what might be used if industry adopted their system.

Of course showing the median will still mean half don't get that speed and campaign will continue. Emphasing that people should pay attention to the estimate they get a lot more is the real message to give out.

From the BBC article:

"Meanwhile BT said that more than 10% of its super-fast broadband customers could achieve speeds of 80Mbps or above."

That seems very unlikely to me given that the maximum possible connection speed is 79999 on FTTC and the number of FTTP customers is presumably a lot lower than 10%.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Of course showing the median will still mean half don't get that speed and campaign will continue. Emphasing that people should pay attention to the estimate they get a lot more is the real message to give out.

And a more generic message to give out: Don't trust advertisements.

That should read: "Millions cannot read the adverts correctly and understand the meaning of UP TO ...!

Which are getting tiresome with their continual false campaign. If an advert says Up To 78Mbps then anyone getting any sort of speed, even 1kbps, is receiving what is advertised. Perhaps Which need educating in the English Language.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

That seems very unlikely to me given that the maximum possible connection speed is 79999 on FTTC

Just a small correction, I have seen connections of 80000/20000.

COULD - anyone with a capped sync of 80, could get greater than 80 if BT had a product offering that allowed it.

Suspect someone just said the wrong number and meant up to 76 Mbps, but as not my company won't be chasing them to correct

I do like the fact that FTTC 80/20 is sold as 76/19 but in fact it's 74/18...

modems don't sync at more than 79999/19999 anymore... and don't test past 74/18

So customers do get confused with the speeds....

For instance a provider tried to tell one of my folks that they would get 2.6mbps on there ADSL line but there was a fault, the provider then changed their mind and said the line could only do 1.2mbps....

However some changes where made and got the line to sync at 2600kbps... this barely gave 2mbps throughput.... they said they didn't have to as the modem synced at 2600kbps..

After getting the fault on the line completely fixed the line synced at nearly 4mbps giving throughput of 3+ mbps which was suitable...

So I think its now time to start guaranteeing throughput and not sync!

TBH, if Which think its so easy to guarantee a speed for a customer why have they not set up their own ISP?

Surely they would be the greatest ISP ever, you know, what with the guarantee of superfast speeds no matter what the conditions or distance from your exchange..