From the Deparment of Bleedin' Obvious..

[Ben]

BBC

Broadband speeds in the UK are much slower than advertised by internet service providers, a study by Computeractive magazine has found.

Some 3,000 readers took part in speed tests and 62% found they routinely got less than half of the top speed advertised by their provider.

Regulator Ofcom said it was aware of the issue and was "investigating".

  Regulator Ofcom said "blah, blah, blah - we can't hear you... la-la-la-la-la-la-la"


I can't stand the way the price is advertised either - they simply should not be allow to scream "Only 3.99 a month" and then in really small print that price is only for three months then it's 19.99 or something. That really is dishonest.

It's a bit like a shop ticketing an item as "99p" but you need to pay 19 quid to leave the shop....

[Curry]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=shMUlnetAA8

[Tanthalas]

It's the magical "up to."  Legally, they're OK with that in there.  But you're right, they shouldn't be allowed to advertise a top speed vastly in excess of average speeds.

You've also got to bear in mind that it's partially the fault of the consumer.  Their minds will happily ignore the "up to" bit if the "speed number" is higher and the price is lower.  

[JasonD]

62% found they routinely got less than half of the top speed

Totally meaningless statistic unless we know how many of that 62% ever get the top speed.

The current infrastructure is not able to provide the advertised maximum speeds to every household. Skipping the detail, but basically the longer your line from the exchange, the worse speed you can achieve. Assume for the sake of mathematics that users are evenly distributed from the exchange, the exchange serves a radius of 5 miles and that you have to be within 3 miles to get the top speed (I'm making these numbers up). pi r squared: 28 sq mi get top speed, 50 sq mi get less.