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Broadband Firms in UK Must Ditch 'Misleading' Speed Ads (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the enough dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Broadband firms will no longer be able to advertise their fast net services based on the speeds just a few customers get, from May next year. Currently ISPs are allowed to use headline speeds that only 10% of customers will actually receive. In future, adverts must be based on what is available to at least half of customers at peak times. It follows research that suggested broadband advertising can be misleading for consumers. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) looked into consumers' understanding of broadband speed claims and found that many were confused by headline speeds that they would never actually get in their own homes. The concerns were passed on to the Committees of Advertising Practice (Cap) which consulted with ISPs, consumer groups and Ofcom to find a better way to advertise fast net services. Most argued that the fairest and clearest way would be to use the average speeds achieved at peak time by 50% of customers.

29 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Re:My solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Minimum speed to what? My webserver connected to the internet via 9k6 modem?

  2. It took so long by La+Gris · · Score: 3, Insightful

    These twaddles are as old as ISPs. I just wonder why it took so long. Most ISPs are advertising the RAW carrier bit-rate rather than the actual net data bit-rate. DSL Provider show you ATM bit-rate. You can roughly cut 10-12% for the real BPS. And it still represents the raw data rate between your modem and the DSLAM. Even when you get optimal link there, the local collect loop is either deliberately throttled or saturated. By the time your data can travel to or from outside your ISPs internal network, it is already diminished. Getting VDSL2 here advertised as up-to 100up/30down MBPs. Lines has 0 loss, 0 CRC, and talks at 90/25 MBs. Even if it is encapsulated in an ATM transmission with 10% loss. That make it still like 80 Down / 25 Up. In reality ISP is throttling it to 25-30 Down 20 Up because their fiber to the central has not enough capacity in my area. Sheepples here don't care as long as they can go to Facebook to post their pathetic lolcats. Good hope some advertising regulators pay attention. Was about time they did.

    --
    Léa Gris
    1. Re:It took so long by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      In Australia the debate is only just starting.
      Hopefully we will follow the mothercountry, and have only started to refund from plans that had impossible to get speeds.
      Here is international fimdings. Go for it. .

    2. Re:It took so long by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They should force ISPs to reveal where there is congestion on their networks. The national speed might be good, but in your area there is oversubscription and no intention to do any upgrades so what you get is much lower.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:It took so long by Cederic · · Score: 1

      That would be sensible. My ISP gets negative feedback online because some customers are getting lower performance at peak times.

      My experience is that I pay for a 200/20 asynchronous connection and steam game downloads sustain 223Mbps (e.g. downloading the 110GB of games I bought in yesterday's sale) and my Youtube uploads (50-70GB at a time) sustain 22Mbps.

      So the online complaints are at best representative of a specific location.

    4. Re:It took so long by mjwx · · Score: 1

      These twaddles are as old as ISPs. I just wonder why it took so long.
      Most ISPs are advertising the RAW carrier bit-rate rather than the actual net data bit-rate.
      DSL Provider show you ATM bit-rate. You can roughly cut 10-12% for the real BPS. And it still represents the raw data rate between your modem and the DSLAM. Even when you get optimal link there, the local collect loop is either deliberately throttled or saturated. By the time your data can travel to or from outside your ISPs internal network, it is already diminished.

      Getting VDSL2 here advertised as up-to 100up/30down MBPs.
      Lines has 0 loss, 0 CRC, and talks at 90/25 MBs. Even if it is encapsulated in an ATM transmission with 10% loss. That make it still like 80 Down / 25 Up.
      In reality ISP is throttling it to 25-30 Down 20 Up because their fiber to the central has not enough capacity in my area.

      Sheepples here don't care as long as they can go to Facebook to post their pathetic lolcats.

      Good hope some advertising regulators pay attention. Was about time they did.

      Well to answer your first questions is that this is the UK, nothing gets done until enough people complain.

      The answer to your second question is that advertising exactly what bandwidth is would be far to difficult for the average mouth breather to understand, and our mouth-breathers (Chavs) are far better educated than the average American mouth-breather (redneck, trailer-trash or Trump voter). Most people dont understand the difference between upload speeds and download speeds on ADSL let alone the intricacies of line noise or attenuation.

      Basically what the Advertising Standards Agency is not saying that ISP's can no longer present their maximum speed as the average speed, so an ADSL provider cannot say 24 Mbit internet, they must now say "up to" 24 Mbit internet. They might have to put some faff about average speeds in the fine print that flashes up for the minimum mandatory 1.23423 seconds.

      This may not seem like much to the average American (my apologies if you're not American) but to the pedantic British, this is a hell of a difference.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    5. Re:It took so long by Malc · · Score: 1

      Now if only they'd be forced to advertise their upstream speeds too. This tends to be the biggest bottleneck and pain point, and also the hardest information to find. This was one of the reasons I originally went with BT when FTTC was rolled out in my neighbourhood (and I hated myself everyday for being their customer) was because I knew I'd get 20mbs upstream. Compared with other 'fast' providers like Virgin, this is actually very good. Virgin BTW buried this information somehwere on their website, and it transpires, is (was?) a lot slower and also variable... fuck you very much!

  3. Custermers, who are these people? by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 3, Funny

    The lady at Comcast told me she's not having any speed or connectivity problems.

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
  4. Re: My solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Uhh, Soros is a Holocaust surviving Jew that has givens tons to charity and has already given most of his wealth to charities and he aged - so your bogeyman actually seems like a great guy.

  5. Re:My solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    9k6 modem....Someone FINALLY used the notation properly!
     
    I am tired of all these flaming frat boys referring to things like "2K17" -- the year is not 2170!
     
    And if you meant 2017, why not just say 2017? It's the same number of characters and sounds considerably less retarded.

  6. Re:I was going to write something informative, by Aereus · · Score: 1

    Apparently it stands for Water Displacement Formula #40. And yes, he didn't perfect it until the 40th try. Science, bitches.

  7. Re:I was going to write something informative, by Whiteox · · Score: 2

    WD40 stands for 'Water Dispersant #40'
    The first 39 didn't work that well.

    --
    Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
  8. Destruction of an economic model by Dinatius · · Score: 1

    This would destroy the major USA ISPs. Most of them advertise "up to" speeds that are asynchronous and rarely live up to half their expectation. Many of the larger ISPs depend on this lack of clarity to arbitrarily over subscribe their customers. This would drastically destroy many of their shady marketing practices. 3 Here's to hoping...

  9. Re: My solution by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

    It's easy to 'survive' if you help out the people doing the roundups

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  10. What is it about Europe? by XB-70 · · Score: 3
    Why is it that European governments seem to actually act on behalf of their citizens?

    Is there something fundamentally wrong with their systems of government?

    Everybody knows that "Up To xx Mb/s" means "you should almost, maybe, sometime, perhaps, likely, on occasion, once in a blue moon...."

    Now they are trying to change things in a terrible, terrible way for ISPs - taking away hope and replacing it with fact - OK, at least 1/2 the time... but still...

    --
    *** Don't be dull.***
    1. Re:What is it about Europe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Why is it that European governments seem to actually act on behalf of their citizens?

      Proportional representation in parliaments is a good start. That means that a party can't just screw their people over just because they are the lesser evil. People can still vote for the third or fourth party without feeling as if their vote is wasted.
      (That is such a silly notion, even in a two party system the politicians will notice if they lost a percentage of the vote to someone on the fringe and adapt their politics to get those votes back.)

      The way EU is structured also leads to a situation where a single government can't screw over their people too much.
      If EU votes for an unjust law it is still up to each member nation to implement it, so they can just ignore it and pay a fine for not fulfilling that deal. As long as the people support their government here it is a small price to pay.
      If a nation implements an unjust law the people can complain to EU and have them tell the national government that they are in the wrong.
      Essentially there are a lot more people you have to bribe if you want to push corrupt shit and it is hard to get all national governments on board with unjust bullshit.

    2. Re:What is it about Europe? by Solandri · · Score: 1

      FWIW, I'm in the U.S. and have never felt the need for this type of legislation because I usually get faster speeds than advertised. My current plan is advertised as 100 Mbps, and that's what I get. I used to get slightly less than that because of occasional slowdowns. But about a decade ago my cable company switched to burst service. The first few megabytes of a transfer can go at up to 2x the speed I'm paying for. So since I do very few large file transfers (e.g. filesharing), on average I'm now getting more than 100 Mbps.

      The problem is more with DSL, where the speed decreases with phone line length (distance to the central office). The phone companies tend to use overly optimistic assessments of what speed a line is capable of, meaning most of the time you get slower speeds than what you're paying for. But cable Internet bandwidth is usually artificially capped by software, not limited by hardware. So despite their many other faults, they do a pretty good job of delivering the speeds they advertise.

    3. Re:What is it about Europe? by Dixie_Flatline · · Score: 1

      So when it comes to anti-trust (I know that's not what's being talked about here, but bear with me), the USA only considers it a problem when there's a negative PRICE impact on the consumer. The fundamental, underlying philosophy is that low prices are the greatest good, so monopoly is bad only insofar as it impacts prices. This is why Apple lost an anti-trust suit despite being a small player: they raised prices, and colluded with publishers because publishers felt like they were embarking on an unsustainable path. Amazon's only concern is to lower prices, and they don't care about publishers (which is fine; I'm not trying to make that sound pejorative) as long as the consumer gets the best price, even if that means in the long run publishers disappear.

      In Europe, their concern is with COMPETITION. Their idea is that prices may fluctuate or go up, but monopoly power must be discouraged because competition is the higher good, and in the long run, that's more sustainable, even if consumers don't immediately see the benefit.

      So both governments act on behalf of their citizens (in the best case; don't start with me about the current administration) but their end goals are different. To me, this decision is just a matter of furthering the goal of competition. Competition can only exist in a transparent marketplace where consumers are informed of the true features and costs of a product or service.

  11. It's not just the mega-ISPs, either ... by thomst · · Score: 2

    When we moved to rural southern Ohio in 2008, the ONLY option for "broadband" available to us was the iLEC's DSL, which it advertised as offering "up to 1 megabit" speeds (although I never saw downloads faster than about 680kbps, with just over 100kbps up).

    Then the rental house we lived in was struck by lightning, which trashed the ISP's DSL modem, of course (along with a bunch of our own electronics - thank you, renter's insurance!). A chat with the tech they sent to test and replace the modem revealed that the iLEC capped DSL rates at 768/112 kbps at the DSLAM, so, in fact, the "up to 1 megabit" claim was a flat-out lie by the iLEC, Horizon. There's no other way to characterize it than as a deliberate, knowing misrepresentation.

    Here in the USA, that's entirely legal - and the new, Trumpified FCC sure isn't going to do anything to change that.

    Lucky us ...

    --
    Check out my novel.
    1. Re:It's not just the mega-ISPs, either ... by antdude · · Score: 1

      Did you ask for credits for the misled speeds?

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    2. Re:It's not just the mega-ISPs, either ... by thomst · · Score: 1

      antdude inquired:

      Did you ask for credits for the misled speeds?

      Again: legal in this country. No recourse available, no compensation required.

      Smell that? It's the aroma of FREEDOM!

      So don't blame the FCC if it smells like dogshit to you ...

      --
      Check out my novel.
  12. That was fast by HalAtWork · · Score: 1

    They knew exactly what they were doing.

    --
    Twinstiq, game news
  13. Re:My solution by tepples · · Score: 1

    And if you meant 2017, why not just say 2017?

    Because 2K Games finds it easier to obtain and enforce exclusive rights in the "2K17" mark.

  14. no solution by nastyphil · · Score: 1

    Soros was a *child* at the time, and is being held to an adult standard in this particular example.

    --
    Dialectician. Archology.
  15. Re: My solution by snakeplissken · · Score: 1

    It's hard to imagine Karl Popper - who coined the term 'Open Society' which Soros named his Open Society Foundations after - having a similarly disconnected view of morality where it doesn't matter if you collaborate with evil because if you didn't do it someone else would.

    of course it's hard to imagine, because the karl popper in your head is an adult karl popper, not a child; esp. not a child all fucked up by living in fucking nazi germany!

  16. Re: My solution by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

    It was Hungary were he was helping the Nazis round up Jews.

    And he made his comments about guilt as an adult in 1998.

      He was thirteen when he did it. I think I'd have known helping the Nazis round up my people was wrong when I was thirteen.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  17. Re: My solution by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

    You are another of these Russian troll cunts

    Yeah right. I'm much more pro-US than I am pro Russia or China.

    https://slashdot.org/comments....

    E.g. I was pro US ABM deployments in Eastern Europe

    https://politics.slashdot.org/...

    And nothing I said was antisemitic - in fact I criticized Soros for selling out his own people.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  18. Re:I was going to write something informative, by Whiteox · · Score: 1

    Apparently it stands for Water Displacement Formula #40..

    Then why didn't the inventor call it WDF40?

    --
    Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
  19. Forget speed; Teach them what "unlimited" means by geowar · · Score: 1

    I can handle the fact that my connection speed may fall short of advertised speeds... What drives me insane is "unlimited" data plans that drop your speed to pre-DSL speeds once you've reached your data cap. "Unlimited" means to me: NO FRICKING DATA CAP. All "faster speed" means to me is that I hit my data cap quicker and therefore spend more time at a MUCH MUCH lower speed than advertised.