ISPs' Listed Speeds Drop Up To 41 Percent After UK Requires Accurate Advertising (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Most broadband providers in the UK "have been forced to cut the headline speeds they advertise when selling deals" because of new UK rules requiring accurate speed claims, according to a consumer advocacy group. "Eleven major suppliers have had to cut the advertised speed of some of their deals, with the cheapest deals dropping by 41 percent," the group wrote last week. The analysis was conducted by Which?, a brand name used by the Consumers' Association, a UK-based charity that does product research and advocacy on behalf of consumers. "BT, EE, John Lewis Broadband, Plusnet, Sky, Zen Internet, Post Office, SSE, TalkTalk, and Utility Warehouse previously advertised their standard (ADSL) broadband deals as 'up to 17Mbps,'" the group noted in its announcement on Saturday. "The new advertised speed is now more than a third lower at 10Mbps or 11Mbps." "TalkTalk has completely dropped advertising speed claims from most of its deals," the consumer group also said. "Vodafone has also changed the name of some of its deals: Fibre 38 and Fibre 76 are now Superfast 1 and Superfast 2." Previously, ISPs were able to advertise broadband speeds of "up to" a certain amount, even if only one in 10 customers could ever get those speeds, Which? wrote. "But the new advertising rules mean that at least half of customers must now be able to get an advertised average speed, even during peak times (8-10pm)," the group said.

Comments

Very descriptive, I guess?

[fahrbot-bot]

Vodafone has also changed the name of some of its deals: Fibre 38 and Fibre 76 are now Superfast 1 and Superfast 2.

Now define "fast".

Re:Very descriptive, I guess?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vodafone has also changed the name of some of its deals: Fibre 38 and Fibre 76 are now Superfast 1 and Superfast 2.

Now define "fast".

"fast" is what a company says it is - at least here in the States.

Truth in advertising? LOL!

"Well Mr. Regulator, it's faster than Dail-Up!"

"Ah OK! Here's a get-out-of-fines card. Have a nice day! I look forwards to working for you! I Mean Working WITH you! *wink* *wink*"

Consumer: "My AT&T connection is overpriced shit!!"

LAW written by industry lobbyists: "That's slander! STFU!"

Consumer who doesn't have the resources to fight: "I apologize for my ignorant attack. I was wrong. AT&T are saints and should by knighted by President Trump AND the Queen of England!!"

Re:Very descriptive, I guess?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently it is less than 'Superfast'.

Re:Very descriptive, I guess?

[Hognoxious]

Looks like Super Kendalll has lost his password.

Re: Very descriptive, I guess?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate níggers.

Re:Very descriptive, I guess?

[Anonymous Coward]

fast (adj). "It could be 38, or it could be less. It could be a lot of things." Syn: bigly.

Re:Very descriptive, I guess?

[sims 2]

Suddenlink likes to say they are faster than DSL but they aren't even faster than that here and they know it, they send out lots of fliers but never mention the actual speeds they sell.

Re:Very descriptive, I guess?

[arth1]

"Well Mr. Regulator, it's faster than Dail-Up!"[sic]

Not necessarily, no. You could possibly bond 672 dial-up modems with compression in parallel on each T3...
(Although the fattest bonding I read about "only" scaled to 30 ISDN channels, and was only used because it was significantly cheaper to jump through hoops to scale than paying for the entire E1 all the time.)

Re:Very descriptive, I guess?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although the fattest bonding I read about "only" scaled to 30 ISDN channels, and was only used because it was significantly cheaper to jump through hoops to scale than paying for the entire E1 all the time.

It's actually an interesting idea. How to make a ton of crappy internet connections one good internet connection.

Ultimately your just passing bytes, so using a custom Linux solution on both ends should get the job done. You can probably get a serial server to just pass bytes to the modems via udp. Speed would have to be throttled on both ends to make your modems generally reliable and not having to retransmit, say force all the modems to connect at say 48kbps. Group modems in sets of 10. Every set will produce 8 bytes for every byte transmitted via a forward error correcting code such as used in raid6. (Basically you could recover from 2 errors.) Turn off the modems internet error checking (can you do that?) The decoding can be done in C# or similar with just various udp listeners, though data framing is likely still tedious. Generally though, everyone puts their stuff it its place and when a full set is assembled it reproduces whatever the original structure was. Sync patterns and sequence numbers would likely need to be inserted periodically to make sure no one is lost or at least to make sure you can recover.

Assuming you had 8 of these sets, then for every byte transmitted through a modem you would get 64 bytes transmitted. 48kbps is 6000B/s so x 64 is 384KiB/s. All that would only take 160 modems (2 sets) and 80 phone lines. The last time I had a POTS line I think it was around $30 a month, so assuming that is similar, then that is $2400 a month, or actually $4800 for both ends per month, plus probably a few thousand in hardware.

Yep, I'm glad the days of phone modems are gone. I think an approach like I outlined might be achievable with minimum latency and reasonable scaling, but getting all that to be reliable is likely to be painful. The idea is to use a forward error correcting code as close to the metal as possible, then force everything to run at the same rate.

I'd hate to have to be the one in charge of making such a scheme stable and low latency. Possible, but what a mess.

Better for consumers

[rjstanford]

This is another case where the UK's watchdog agency has made things better for the average consumer. Always be cautious of people insisting that "freedom" is always better, when "freedom" often includes the freedom to lie to your customers - albeit with the bonus of being able to make some truly awesome ads that don't fly over there.

Re:Better for consumers

[Desler]

You seem to have purposefully glossed over this part of their post:

when "freedom" often includes the freedom to lie to your customers

Fraudulent advertising should never be tolerated as "freedom." No one was talking about insulting others or any such nonsense.

Re:Better for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

Living in the freedom country is still worth it compared to the UK.,,

VAT 20% - because that is fair on lower incomes :-)
Price of gasoline? probably a weeks wages to fill a car up
Electricity? 10c/kWh around here.
Prices of houses, out of the question for the working class.

Yeah, please enjoy your honest broadband speedz :-)

Re: Better for consumers

[Nidi62]

In the US we just have a whole generation that cant afford to buy a house

Re:Better for consumers

[jareth-0205]

Living in the freedom country is still worth it compared to the UK.,,

VAT 20% - because that is fair on lower incomes :-)
Price of gasoline? probably a weeks wages to fill a car up
Electricity? 10c/kWh around here.
Prices of houses, out of the question for the working class.

Yeah, please enjoy your honest broadband speedz :-)

Medical bills & chance of being bankrupted by sickness or denied treatment - zero.
University education - not cheap but a helluvalot more affordable than your 'freedom' prices.
Actual consumer protection laws so you can expect your purchases to function.

But I do agree on the VAT, it's a horribly regressive tax.

Re: Better for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

You think it's different over here? I should have a mortage by now... I have a decent job and decent savings, and proven reliable income - but no mortgage for me, it's rent rent rent until I have hard cash just helping the last generation get richer.

Re:Better for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

I... claim... freedom isn't better...

See this quote? This is what you just did. This is how retarded you look.

Re: Better for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom isnt free it costs folks like you and me.

Re:Better for consumers

[AlanBDee]

University education - not cheap but a helluvalot more affordable than your 'freedom' prices.

Some universities aren't that expensive. If you go to a public in-state university then it's not nearly as expensive as many of the private universities that prey on people, give them a crap education, and stick them with a lifetime of student loan debt. For example the University I went to is currently about $20-25k for a bachelors degree. That same degree from some of the private universities are over $100k. But the feds started to crack down on them and people are getting wise to the scam which is making it harder for these private universities to do it.

Re: Better for consumers

[c6gunner]

This is another case where the UK's watchdog agency has made things better for the average consumer.

What's better about it? You still get the same shitty connection, but with a new name, like "Superfast 2" which tells you nothing at all about it. Or, even if the name actually still describes expected speeds, it still only has to cover 50% of costumers during peak times so it's a coin toss over whether your service matches the advertised speed.

I'm failing to see the "better" in any of that. I suspect that whatever benefit you think you're seeing is either nonexistent in practice, or negligible are best.

Re:Better for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more retarded to take something out of context. You win!

Re:Better for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

> Freedom is always better.
Whose freedom? Better for who?

Time-lock safes are bought for the specific purpose of limiting their owner's freedom. And they make a fairly good analogy for why the freedom to enter into any contract whatsoever isn't necessarily a good thing.

Re:Better for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

...one of the few legitimate areas of government intervention in free markets

The government we have now is a result of most people agreeing that there are only a few legitimate areas of government intervention, but few people agreeing on what those specific areas are. There are plenty of people that would disagree that the government is responsible for ensuring there is no fraud, for example. They would probably say you should sue if you don't get "x".

Re: Better for consumers

[mikael]

Regardless of the reseller you get the "broadband" service from, they still have to lease telephone lines from BT OpenReach and a commercial fibre-optic internet link from a national service provider. The first problem is that the telephone lines can't be changed and the signal/noise ratio limits the maximum bandwidth. Then there is the number of customers sharing that trunk line.

Re:Better for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what the GP was describing. I guess it's not surprising you can't read, given how you lack basic self-awareness.

Re:Better for consumers

[Aighearach]

I just want the Freedom to demand that assholes either shut the fuck up, or settle our dispute with a sword duel.

Re: Better for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

There is still a sales tax in the US, although it is I believe set at the local level. Is it state or county level? I'm some USian can tell us. I doubt it's 20% anywhere though.

Re:Better for consumers

[rtb61]

Fraud is freedom due to the purposeful corruption of the legal system. Freedom to lie is never better.

Re:Better for consumers

[sdjimmy]

University Fees: zero if you're Scottish and go to a Scottish University.

Re:Better for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

"Where Freedom just means,
Freedom to exploit,
any weakness that you can find"

-- New Model Army

Re:Better for consumers

[thegarbz]

He's also missing the point. Gasoline? What's that. Is that this old thing that the 3rd world without functional public transport burn to get around?
Electricity? His 10c/kWh lead to far higher monthly bills thanks to the stupidly wasteful practices in the USA.
Prices of houses? Don't know what you're talking about. It may surprise the GP that not everyone lives in central London.

Re:Better for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

Medical bills & chance of being bankrupted by sickness or denied treatment - zero.

Hah, you wish. People are literally dying from the delays in treatment as the NHS is completely oversaturated with patients, more and more people are being driven to private health insurance every year, and nurses/doctors in the UK keep getting longer hours and less pay, which is why you hear about an NHS strike every few months. Over 70% of healthcare workers in the NHS end up doing unpaid overtime each week because they actually care about the patients and helping their coworkers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-...
https://www.theguardian.com/so...
https://www.theguardian.com/he...

The NHS is collapsing and open boarders, along with hundreds of thousands of refugees (of which most don't work even after being there for 4 years), is only speeding it up.

University education - not cheap but a helluvalot more affordable than your 'freedom' prices.

Not exactly useful when degrees are nothing more than expensive toilet paper now. Unless you're a genius in some field, go to trade school instead.

Actual consumer protection laws so you can expect your purchases to function.

The US has the most amazing and generous return policies I've ever seen, it's far easier to justify a return in the US than in the UK.

Re:Better for consumers

[mjwx]

This is another case where the UK's watchdog agency has made things better for the average consumer. Always be cautious of people insisting that "freedom" is always better, when "freedom" often includes the freedom to lie to your customers - albeit with the bonus of being able to make some truly awesome ads that don't fly over there.

Maybe it's because I've always lived in countries that have punished deceptive advertising... but I've never considered "being lied to" a freedom at all, let alone a basic one.

Re:Better for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you're suffering from a severe case of being a complete fuckwit.

Loot boxes were banned

[Anonymous Coward]

"Up to" speeds are kind of like loot boxes. You fire up the browser and see what the computer gods are giving you today.

Re:Loot boxes were banned

[Anonymous Coward]

You can download up to 15% or more by switching to [redacted].

Re:Loot boxes were banned

[Aighearach]

If those are your Gods, you should really watch an old show called Stargate. It's about ISPs.

Communist!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame we'll never get a similar thing here in the US as long as Ajit Pie is running the show. Wouldn't want ISPs to actually be accurate in advertising or anything... That's akin to Stalinist Russia!

I’ll take a net neutral connection over a fa

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares how fast it is if you can’t access the “wrong” sites.

INB4 cayenne8

[Hognoxious]

I have no idea where the UK is, but I know you don't have guns. This is why you rely one nancy-state protectionism like this.

if you truly had a free market like the USA does there'd be no need for this.

You should put your big-boy pants on and negotiate a better deal with your ISP. May be you can't because it's owned by the quean like everything else over there.

Re:INB4 cayenne8

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea where the UK is, but I know you don't have guns. This is why you rely one nancy-state protectionism like this.

if you truly had a free market like the USA does there'd be no need for this.

You should put your big-boy pants on and negotiate a better deal with your ISP. May be you can't because it's owned by the quean like everything else over there.

Perhaps you should shut the hell up and stick to something you're good at.

You know, like geography and spelling skills.

Re:INB4 cayenne8

[mrbester]

*ahem* YHBT.

Nicely played, Hog. I wouldn't have thought such old school tricks would have worked nowadays.

how do they list vdsl2 planes where the line

[Joe_Dragon]

how do they list vdsl2 planes where the line controls much speed you can get?

Re:how do they list vdsl2 planes where the line

[jareth-0205]

They can predict reasonably accurately how fast the line will go to your house because there's a whole bunch of historical data to pull from https://www.dslchecker.bt.com/...

Don't ask me how this works for averages though... an ISP that has more customers on lower speed lines presumably would have their average pulled down even though they themselves might not be the bottleneck. Meh... nothing's perfect and it's a better rule than it was...

Re:Fuck this, the NFL is gonna have male cheeleade

[Hognoxious]

I bet some of them will be black too!

Silliness aside, hasn't it always been the case?

I guess I could not assume

[Anonymous Coward]

"if you have to advertise it, it isn't true" mantra I use in the US. Sounds like the UK may be on to something. You can't lie. Novel.

Concentration change?

[Anonymous Coward]

Historically, if you have a bunch of subscribers at X mbps access rate, they only use X/10 average at busy hour.

This advertizing rule says X/2 must be supported. (At least half the customers must get X at busy hour.)

This will certainly change the economics of providing Internet service.
Will this also change the statistics of how apps use the Internet?

Re:Concentration change?

[sims 2]

If you are selling service as 10Mbps it doesn't seem unreasonable that half of those attempting to use it at peak time actually be able to do so.

Re: Concentration change?

[Wycliffe]

You are confusing peak speed with average speed. Peak speed is a useless metric unless you are always using the internet at 2am. Average speed during normal usage is what a customer cares about. You can still oversell the bandwidth but you have to be honest about what kind of bandwidth a customer can expect. Who cares if you are on a T1 or a T3? Who cares if you have a 100mbps or 1000gpbs connection if your 1000gbps connection is so saturated that it is really only 10mbps? Giving the average real world speed is much easier to compare companies (for those lucky enough to have competition and choice)

Re:Concentration change?

[ledow]

Exactly.

Whatever the historical "norm", on highly asymmetric services, if a customer without techy knowledge buys something called "100Mbps" they expect... well... 100Mbps. And it to be twice as fast as something 50Mbps.

Alright, they may not know what 100Mbps represents, how it compares to MB/s, etc. but that's the technicality. However, selling a 100Mbps where the average person gets home from work (peak time) and receives a maximum of 10Mbps (previous) or EVEN 50Mbps is misleading. Don't claim it if you can't sell it.

If it was a case that you had to compete against other ISPs lying in this manner, while you had to "tell the truth", then yes it's unfair. But if *ALL* ISPs have to stick by the same numbering, then it's not misleading even if everyone goes "But didn't I used to get 100? Why do I only get 10 now?" because they can't go to a competitor that is mis-selling 10 as 100 any more.

The numbers don't matter. The truth of them does.

Re:Fuck this, the NFL is gonna have male cheeleade

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Slashdot. What the fuck is NFL? A broadband carrier?

It's still enough

[AlanBDee]

I recently updated my internet from 20Mbs to 40Mbs with Centurylink. Before I let the installer leave I verified the download speeds and found some interesting results:

1) many of the "speed tests" online were wrong. My PfSense firewall has a real time graph that measures traffic. I got anything from 10Mbps to 67Mbps on the speed tests while my firewall would consistently show the spike up to about 38Mbps where it would flat line until the test was done.
2) It takes a little over 21Mbps to stream a 4k nature video from YouTube. Star Wars Episode VIII from Netflix (1080p) was 6Mbps and my kids cartoon was 4Mbps (1080p).

So even though the ISPs had to drop the advertised speed it's still plenty of speed so long as you are actually getting that speed.

Re:It's still enough

[Cederic]

My ISP didn't have to drop their advertised speeds.

I find Steam is a reliable speed test. Downloading a 17GB game at a rate faster in bytes/s than most of the UK gets in bits/s isn't actually worth the money I'm paying for it, but it does sustain it, even at peak usage times.

Deep State Capital homeland

[Anonymous Coward]

trashed it's own internet to ban advertising of ideologies that aren't communist and white-hating.Who knew!

Re: Fuck this, the NFL is gonna have male cheelead

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a full-contact "sport" for repressed and latent homosexuals.

Why do you speak as me & you're not I?

[Anonymous Coward]

See my subject & answer that: & Why do you also STALK me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts as well? AFRAID to stand behind your lies??

* THIS I have to hear, lol - it WILL truly be a classic I'm sure!

(CAT GOT YOUR TONGUE SUDDENLY? You wouldn't answer LAST TIME I ASKED IT + YOU DOWNMOD "HID" IT (the sure sign of YOUR total SELF-defeat) https://it.slashdot.org/commen... )

Plus, since you say I'm the "Lord of Hosts"? My "portrait & themesong" https://www.youtube.com/watch?... so SATAN, get thee behind me.

APK

P.S.=> Grow up you obsessed loon who not only IMPERSONATES me but also STALKS me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts constantly... apk

Registered /.ers review of the Win64 mode

[Anonymous Coward]

Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017

Your premise that hostfiles are a good way to deal with advertising and malvertising is quite valid - by JazzLad April 20, 2016

his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015

his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015

I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015

that APK guy, I use his host file by rogoshen1 Tuesday March 03, 2015

I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

Linux model = faster/more efficient

APK

P.S.=> APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-1 32/64-bit for Windows https://www.google.com/search?...

Get more speed/security/reliability online

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Via APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux & BSD h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r L i n u x . z i p (remove spaces between characters & download).

Yields more security/speed/reliability/anonymity vs. any SINGLE solution (99% of threats use hostnames vs. IP addresses most firewalls use) more efficiently/FASTER + NATIVELY 4 less!

(Vs. "Bolt on 'MoAr' illogic-logic" competitors slowing you, hosts speed you up 2 ways (adblocks + hardcodes u spend most time @) vs. competition loaded w/ security bugs (DNS/AntiVir) + overheads (messagepass ('souled-out' to advertiser addons) + filtering drivers) & their complexity leads to exploitation) + protects vs. script trackers & ads + DNS requestlog tracking

* ONLY 1 of its kind in GUI on Linux!

Better vs. Windows model in speed/efficiency/merge.

APK

P.S.=> Protects vs. trackers/ads/DNS reques tracking/botnets/malware downloads/email malcious payloads... apk

Registered /.ers review of Win64 model

[Anonymous Coward]

Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017

Your premise that hostfiles are a good way to deal with advertising and malvertising is quite valid - by JazzLad April 20, 2016

his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015

his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015

I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015

that APK guy, I use his host file by rogoshen1 Tuesday March 03, 2015

I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

Linux model = faster/more efficient

APK

P.S.=> APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-1 32/64-bit for Windows https://www.google.com/search?...

Shut up you lying sack of shit

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't threaten vs. a NOBODY

Shut your fucking pie hole you lying sack of shit.
You threaten people all the time and when called on it you hide in the fucking corner and piss yourself.
So come on pussycake post your fucking address

LMAO! Bugs BUNNY's more real than you... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

WRONG unidentifiable anonymous NOBODY (you're not a real person: Bugs Bunny has more identity than YOU do shitbrain)!

I literally threatened NO ONE (& you start w/ me constantly STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE ac as you are now).

Don't play "jailhouse lawyer" w/ me - you'll LOSE on that alone!

Especially when even from your 'example' PROVES you START it harassing/stalking me 1st & constantly as you are now too!

So yes, & I tell 'your kind' I'll smash your face IF face to face (& yes, I mean it)!

Again - Only problem for you LEGALLY??

YOU'RE NOT A REAL PERSON (is "Anonymous Coward" who doesn't even ID himself as I do on your birth certificate as your NAME/IDENTITY? NO, it is not) so YOU CAN'T DO SHIT, lol - & I win, you lose!

* You're TOO STUPID to "F" w/ me dumbshit...

(I'd get you LAUGHED outta a court of law.. lol, guaranteed!)

See subject: You're nobody real & nobody in accomplishment either (lol, KING nothing).

APK

P.S.=> WHY you HIDE behind UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous coward? You KNOW you're GUILTY of STALKING ME but were we to meet in person? I'd just bust your fucking teeth FLAT out of your PUNY jaw fucker - I've had w/ you STALKING me! apk