throughput by speed test, apples vs oranges, not the basis on which it is sold.

Facts in advertising are required by law to be consistent (apparently only for certain values of consistent, but that is another issue, the one you should be annoyed about, and the one ISP's have been taken to task over). Hence why all loans are advertised with an attached APR figure (which most people don't understand but is required by law as it is defined in a consistent manor).

IF we go back to the car analogy

In reply to a post by pmb00cs:

TO use your car analogy from elsewhere in this thread, it's like buying a car, it was £2999 at the lot, you've paid £2999.

But at the shop it was a 105p pound, at home it is a 95p pound, and 299900p has been moved around to get things sorted.

So do we measure the pounds moved as the 105p pound (£2856.19 OMG you underpaid you thief!) or the 95p pound (£3156.84 OMG you've been ripped off!)?

Now if we consider a situation using efficient character encoding, and stream compression you might only move 200000p not 299900p. Or if there is no compression, inefficient character encoding, and an inefficient transport stream (like TCP/IP) with high overheads you may have to move around 400000p and not 299900p.

The bit rate of a connection is like APR. It is the only consistent measure. Bytes just aren't consistent enough. You could store a 10 bit byte and transfer it as a 4 bit byte, or store it as a 4 bit byte and transmit it as a 10 bit byte. in either case the byte count would not be consistent between stored size and transmitted data. bit rate would. bit rate always would. bit rate is thus the only correct measure. If you don't like that tough.

Saying the public is ignorant will not change that. The public is ignorant of many things, it doesn't change them. Nor does it largely upset the public as they also largely don't care about what they are ignorant of. Believe it or not as a "techy" I have to deal with people ignorant of technology, and as much as many of them don't know the difference between MB (and even the more correct in technical terms MiB) and Mb most of them just don't care!

I'm still looking for a shop that gives me £1.05 of goods for every pound I tender!

In reply to a post by yarwell:

throughput by speed test, apples vs oranges, not the basis on which it is sold.

ultimately end user speed is what its all about.

having a 1meg sync that is not congested so always 1meg is the same as having a 20mbit sync but only performs at 1mbit throughput. When measuring speed. I am sure every asl isp will have stuff in their t&c regarding throughput not been garuantueed to be at line speed. So that is defenitly part of the up to, and traditionally thats what up to has been used for.

All this is moot, distracting from the fact that only 3% (according to bbc) get close to advertised up to speeds, I think anyone defending that has vested interests for the situation not to change.

If this was to be regulated on eg. only allowing up to speeds that a majority of customers achieve, the positive benefit would be the business case for FTTx would change overnight.

ultimately end user speed is what its all about.

However not the basis on which is it is advertised. Go figure.

The BBC do not show any information about the sync speed that people achieve, in order to compare that to the advertised maximum sync speed.

I'm still looking for a shop that gives me £1.05 of goods for every pound I tender

one with a 5% loyalty card scheme. I put £55 of diesel in the car and paid Tesco £48 for it.

yarwell wrote:
> I put £55 of diesel in the car and paid Tesco £48 for it.

Unfortunately as a result we'll all pay a few pence more on everyday groceries that are never discounted, just to make-up the margin that Tesco lost on that transaction.

Items such as milk, butter, bread and vegetables are a boon for supermarkets as they can creep the price up by a penny at a time to cross-subsidise other promotions.

Things may seem cheap at the pump, but there is always a cost.

--
Just Another Grocery Customer

Urm the BBC did - read Rory Cellan-Jones blog

To anyone who has looked at a distance versus speed plot for ADSL and ADSL2+ then the results are no surprise, it has always been estimated at only 10 to 15% will get the best speeds from ADSL2+. Add into the mix the issues of home wiring and viola 3% is entirely feasible.

Things may seem cheap at the pump, but there is always a cost.

indeed. the skill is to make sure you get the benefit without paying the cost.

Where in the BBC blog is the distribution of ADSL2+ sync speeds ? or where else for that matter ? Please don't point me at a speed test result !