Indeed, Icaras - facts sometimes don't.

Interesting. I have a line to a Market A exchange. I can't order Sky or Talk Talk FTTC but I could order Vodafone FTTC at a very reasonable price. At the moment I have a free ADSL (not ADSL2) service from Plusnet which has got quite a few months left to run. I have to do something when the contract expires as the standard Plusnet price is about £18.00. pm. I am wondering if Vodafone FTTC would be a sensible option. I had an earlier bad experience with the Post Office but at least they let me leave without making a fuss.

Hence the Ofcom Speeds Code of Practice that all the largest providers sign up to, though people do need to be aware that sometimes the reasons for slow speeds mean that no provider will be able to do better.

The Ofcom voluntary Speeds code of practice is a start, but it does not go as far as it could to ensure that customers are advised of an "actual throughput" and to a large extent receive this 24/7.

What is an ISP supposed to do about users doing speedtests wirelessly, connected to their router from the far end of the house with a couple of floor levels intervening?

Possibly with no computers/laptops - just phone or tablet.

If the ISP has its own speed test they should be able to tell quite a bit about the device being used. They should also know the state of their back haul etc. It should be possible to define a sensible set of rules which allow a customer to leave without penalty when performance is poor.

My new laptop has no ethernet port, possible because the laptop base is to thin to accommodate one!

Wireless cannot be relied upon in the same way Ethernet can.

Regarding you being a market A exchange. Generally this matters for ADSL but not so much for FTTC. Your FTTC cabinet will almost certainly not go back to your market A exchange. It will go to a main exchange, perhaps in the nearest city for instance, this is known as a fibre headend. Here you would expect there to be many more options available. This is why often market A users cannot get sky or Talktalk on ADSL but can on fibre, the fibre cabinets never touch their market A exchange, they just go back to an exchange where all the major providers are available usually.

It would be worth you getting someone here to check out what exchange is your fibre headend.

Regarding Vodafone, as it's a new ISP I do not know if they resell BT wholesale products in exchanges where they do not have their own equipment. If this is the case I would stay clear. You do not want a resold product.

For you I would personally be looking seriously at BT and Plusnet, factoring in quidco cash back, but certainly give the likes of sky a chat as your fibre headend may be served by sky.

My laptop doesn't have ethernet either . But I have an old one next to the router connected by ethernet in case I need a wired link.

Speed tests are not usually, if ever, device detecting so far as I know. They pick up the IP address of course, and maybe the device operating system. Postcode if you choose to tell them. Then the state of the wireless connection at the end user can vary from one second to the next from hundreds of Mbps to 11Mbps or less.

How do they know you aren't streaming to one device while doing speed tests? Even wired? What if Win10 is doing its own thing downloading stuff and you don't know about it?

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 17-Oct-16 00:38:53)

Our tester is certainly device testing, hence the fastest tablet of the month prize on twitter.

Detecting wireless is harder, and even harder is detecting whether wireless range is the problem.

The ultimate conclusion will be more complex product base, i.e. you pay £x for a guaranteed speed of 2 Mbps, with burst to 76 Mbps, i.e. as per lots of Ethernet services

The two nearby exchanges both have Sky and Talk Talk LLU presence. As I can't order their FTTC products, I assume that my cabinet is not connected to either of them. It appears that I could order Vodafone FTTC. They don't have a presence at these exchanges, or my local exchange so they must have bought back haul capacity from some one.

Historically Vodafone have had a reputation for quality for their mobile phone products. Have they kept this philosophy for their broadband products?