British ISPs Favour Well-Connected Customers

scurtis writes "An insider has told eWEEK Europe that some Internet service providers in the UK only sign-up customers who can be guaranteed a good service, in order to improve average speed claims. The revelation comes after the regulator Ofcom criticised broadband service providers earlier this week for not delivering the speeds promised to consumers. Meanwhile, TalkTalk's chairman Charles Dunstone has argued that Ofcom could be doing a lot more to push BT — as the operator of the copper infrastructure — to improve maintenance of the lines and its communication with fellow service providers."

Comments

It's not just the quality of the lines

[crimperman]

It's also the routing. I once had a case where two adjacent sockets (on different lines) got entirely different speeds. Turned out one went direct across the road to the exchange and the other took a left out the building, went round the block for about 4 miles and came back to the Exchange across the road.

tiered pricing based on service possibility

[SkunkPussy]

I don't see why ISPs don't just measure the possible speed to your location, then put you in the highest price-band tarriff that your connection will allow.

So as an example if you sign up for 20 Mbps at £10.99 but your connection only allows 14Mbps, you get the 12-16Mbps tarriff at 9.49 or whatever.

We do it to

[Charliemopps]

US telcos do it to. Although I don't think it's to increase average speed claims. Customers that are too far out to get 1meg service usually have so much noise on the line that they generate a lot of repair calls. If you're getting under 1mb DSL you're also probably going to get dropped service every time there's a storm as well.

Article lacks credibility

[petes_PoV]

The reference to ISPs cherry picking customers comes from a single unnamed "insider". No information is provided to substantiate the claim and no ISPs were named, to allow for follow-up investigations.

So, ask yourself: in the dog-eat-dog world of extremely price sensitive internet provision, is it likely that some ISPs have so many potential customers queuing to sign up (with them) that they can afford to turn away those who may not get a good service?

Re:Well, Virgin signed me up...

[commodore64_love]

Is this "Virgin" the same company that provides cellphone service, aka Virgin Mobile?

I love that they let you buy just the service you need - in my case that's $5 a month worth of calls. They also sell data bundles for cheap (1 GB for $5). All the other companies require you get $30 minimum even if you rarely use your phone.