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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.
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.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
"Up to" speeds are kind of like loot boxes. You fire up the browser and see what the computer gods are giving you today.
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)
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.