UK Broadband Users Misled on Speeds

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UK Broadband Users Misled on Speeds

While ISPs advertise ever-increasing broadband speeds, download speeds for users in the UK don't match the claims.

Macworld staff

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 9:00 AM PST

U.K. broadband users continue to be misled over the actual speeds of their connections, leading broadband researchers claimed this morning.

While broadband service providers advertise ever-increasing speeds,

the actual broadband download speeds enjoyed by customers continue to fall under the claimed maximums, or so it appears.

As a result of 18,558 tests carried out in January on broadband comparison site Broadband-Expert.co.uk, the average speed in the UK is 2.95Mb.

The results varied enormously, the research claims, with the lowest download speed being 1.72Mb from Tiscali, through to the highest average of 6.07Mb

with Be broadband.

The higher download speeds of Be is partially due to the service's use of ADSL2+ technology which allows much greater speeds.

Most providers currently provide their broadband connections through the more traditional ADSL technology.

"Despite ongoing pressure from Ofcom and various consumer groups broadband providers are still misleading the public over broadband speeds,

" said William Harvey, Broadband-Expert.co.uk technical director.

"Current advertising campaigns like the one for Tiscali broadband promise superfast broadband (download) speeds of up to 8Mb.

Yet Tiscali came bottom of our test results with an average actual download speed of just 1.72Mb.

Now that is not superfast by any stretch of the imagination and is over 1Mb lower than the UK average."

full article

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As a result of 18,558 tests carried out in January on broadband comparison site Broadband-Expert.co.uk, the average speed in the UK is 2.95Mb.

The results varied enormously, the research claims, with the lowest download speed being 1.72Mb from Tiscali, through to the highest average of 6.07Mb

with Be broadband.

They should also take into account that most people who don't mind their speed, people who just browse and mail, are less likely to stop by and do a test on sites like these. So the measurements that were done, were most likely done by people that mind their speed, people who download. Taking this into account you could say the people with higher speeds are more likely to test their speed than people with lower speeds. So the average is most likely lower than mentioned above, how much would be very hard to say so i'm not going to do that :P