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Let us be open and transparent here, whether it is broadband speeds, mobile phone service coverage, gas or electricity service you cannot trust the ads.

Advertising should be to inform but like its close cousin PR is now more often associated with "spin" than facts. I hope that the BT Advertising ban will see some honesty return but I doubt it.

seldom has it been more appropriate to apply "caveat emptor".

Personally, I think its about time all the telecoms companies stopped using the 'up-to' tactic to market their broadband services. Its become discredited (as Rory said), but more importantly, its become less important.

Most of us can now access 2Mb/s connections - I'm sitting out in the countryside in Shropshire writing this, right at the end of a 5-mile copper line, and still benefitting from a 2Mb/s connection.

What is more important to most customers nowdays is price, reliability and good customer services. The market has matured in the same way that the automobile industry matured in the last century .. the car makers no longer boast (not most of the mainstream ones anyway) about the top speed of their cars, but concentrate on the factors that matter to the average purchaser, like service intervals, costs and reliability.

You can still buy a car that does 200 miles an hour .. but you pay for the privilige.

Telecoms companies should bail out of this race for headline speeds and guarantee a minimum service standard, with a minimum speed, an uptime guarantee and local customer support.

Then instead of spending thousands on advertising, put their cash into making their services fit for use, so that their reputation brings in the customers.

Flashy advertising gains customers, good services reduces churn. The companies with mature proven services that are reliable will be the ones that see customers turn to them when those customer's realise that they cannot rely on all those flashy promises that prove to be bog mist that boil away when exposed to the light.

BT have probably missed a trick here. Most people probably get about 2Mbit from their "8Mbit" service, but they'll actually get 8Mbit from their "20Mbit" service. If BT had been honest, it could have claimed a fourfold actual speed increase.

The ASA needs to produce guidelines. Providers should only be able to claim the average speed that customers actually get. The "up to 20Mbit" service only applies if you live next door to the exchange and are using the internet when none of your neighbours are. I'm supposed to get 11Mbit from Sky. I just did a test and I'm getting 1.5Mbit. I wonder if I can get 90% of my money back?

Companies are *required to* use the phrase "up to" in advertising, by the ASA no less. This was and is the case on fixed rate services like the original 0.5,1,2M ADSL and VM's cable services which are fixed link speeds.

Further advertising copy is required to cover the variable rate of variable rate services that depends on distance from the exchange etc like BT's ADSL Max 288-8128k service since another ASA ruling on Bulldog's advertising.

About 1/3 of users of 8M services get 6M or more, and about 1/3 get 2M or less. I get an 8128 connection 1.5 miles from the exchange ie full speed. It wouldn't be full speed if there was an up to 20/24M package available, but it would be faster.

I have no idea what would be gained by quoting an average speed - it would simply be wrong for 98% of users.

The point of sale line checkers are there to give specific speed estimates of how an individual line will perform on a given package. The "up to 8M" is merely a package description, not a speed warranty.

It doesn't cost any more to provide a faster service once the kit is in place, so there's no logic for paying less if you don't get the full link speed. Costs are largely fixed plus a variable element depending on how much you use it at peak times.

@3 I used to live two doors away from my telephone exchange, and still got 'only' 18Mbps from my up-to-24Mbps connection.

Advertising broadband or anything else needs the serious attention of The Advertising Standards Authority, which should be looking at a code on any and all advertising. This code should address things like:
1. You cannot use a megastar unless that megastar really uses the product on a regular basis;
2. You cannot claim proficiencies for a product, healthiness for a product, or anything else for a product UNLESS these claims can be independently verified.
3. The public has a right to know, especially where drugs, cosmetics and similar products are being advertised what side effects have come to light.
I am so tired of listening to the hype of advertisers; I'd like to give you examples but that might get me "moderately" kicked out.
Everyone (I think) knows that broadband speeds are subject to several different factors, including volumes, peak intervals.
Whatever happened to truth in advertising? All it would take is a couple of high profile prosecutions, followed by huge fines, to make companies stand up and pay attention.

I wonder how many people realise that the 8M or 24M relates to a different layer in the protocol stack to that which a customer can measure ?

My 8128 kbits/s connection (ATM cell rate) can carry 7150 kbits/s of TCP/IP traffic which carries about 6700 kbits/s of my data. I can measure the last figure with a speed tester or by doing a timed download.

Similarly on up to 24M the highest ATM rate is 23840 with a TCP/IP content of 21000 and a useful data load of 19700 kbits/s.

As the advertisers, ASA or OFCOM never bother to define their terms, everyone picks the one that suits them best.

PhilT makes a very good point - the other issue we have is when people compare Megabytes to Megabits. A 8Mb/s (little b - megabit per second) connection at maximum capacity can support a maximum of less than 1MB/s (big B - megabyte per second).

End users are never going to get what they think they should, because the technology involved wasn't designed to offer a consistent speed for a set price, it is designed to offer a connection point onto one of the most variable communication methods there is - the worldwide TCP/IP network.

I am very glad to hear the second to last paragraph of this article:
"The Advertising Standards Authority is currently looking at its code on the advertising of broadband - the cable firm Virgin Media is lobbying vigorously for change, and Ofcom is applying more discreet pressure."

It is very difficult to explain to the end user why cable "upto 10Mbps" is (in most cases) far better then ADSL "upto 24Mbps", because in reality you're not comparing like-for-like. ADSL is a great bodge for a network that was never designed to handle the internet. Digital Cable was already streets ahead 10 years ago, and was designed to give a consistency to the network, that ADSL can only dream of.

Roll on 4G - then we'll see how many consumers we can confuse in a fortnight... Ofcom - please step in and save us!

Rich

I have a little sympathy with BT in this instance. They have no control over how far you live from your exchange, how many people are streaming video between you and the exchange or how fast your PC and Router are. To give a standardised tangible measure wouldn't apply to anybody.

Most consumers aren't interested in the definition of 24MBPS they just want to know how long it will take to download an 'episode of Glee'. But for everyone this figure will be different. If BT were to advertise 20 minutes and it takes 30 more people will complain.

What does upset consumers is paying a flat rate for a variable service. That is something Ofcom should regulate against

I'm sure BT won't be the last. A well known TV provider claims they offer "An Award Winning Broadband" but I end up having to use my 3G mobile at times to get a faster connection. However they did confirm that I got less than .42MB from an 8MB connection bearing in mind the exchange could offer 2MB but as I was 4KM away .42MB was the maximum. Yet they offered no other alternatives.
It doesn't help that either my partner or myself work from home and need a fast connection at times.

Waste of time!!

I wish the ASA would jump on Virgin Media's claim that they use fibre optic, which is better than copper. They might use fibre optic to their cabinets but it is copper wire to the home. They can't even run a decent telephone service without network congestion and their digital TV network can and does drop out for hours.

It is always BT that gets the 'stick' and the other get a free pass.

I sync at 6654900 down and 444900 up on ADSL2+ (so called 20 meg by BT). Almost the same as when I was on 8 meg!

However neither of these speeds represents a speed at which I can send or receive my data. The overhead for packet padding and syncing will be about 10% of the rate between me and the internet.

Now what I am trying to do when surfing is to get data from a server somewhere else and this server is shared with all the other connecting to it as the same time as I am. (I am deliberately neglecting load sharing systems to keep things simple.) This results in something of a queueing process at the server. (A bit like waiting in line at a supermarket checkout with everyone else connected to the same server - but faster!)

There is a further problem of congestion in the internet itself. The old game of do not do a big download for a server in the USA when the Americans are awake or you will find that the rate will slow considerably.

The point of all of this explanation is that the rate of my connection to the internet backbone is significant by can be a minor part of the irritation experienced by delays when using the web.

Nothing will ever be as fast as my 1 gig switches and cat6 cables between my local server and my PCs until I upgrade to 10 gig! (when its price point drops.) I can't even edit uncompressed HD video over this network as my servers Hard discs can deliver phenomenal data rates - but my network needs to deliver 1920 x 1080 x 25 (frames per second) x 24 bit colour or 1250 m bits per seconds and the 1 gig Ethernet can only deliver about 800 m bits however TV seems to be delivering so called HD on less than 100th of this by judicious use of compression - in fact a lot of what is watched is just artefacts! My HD camcorder uses 24 mbit (AVCHD) compression so I an edit this over my network (Much of the so called HD broadcast uses even lower data rates than this!) I'd love to shoot in 4k (like the very highest resolution films) but my editing equipment is not up to it and I don't think the market would pay enough for the product either!

OK, the reason for banging on about date rates is that it matters - and the data rate that matters is the system throughput not just the rate of the final link - Ofcom seem not to understand this (nor do BT!) This storm in a tea cup is all about marketing! Ofcom pick on BT rather than doing what the country needs - facing off with Rupert Murdoch and hope that by picking on BT we are distracted! (It is a bit like the FSA starting to get tough just before they are abolished.)

on 4G (see #8) - what a joke - the 3G mobile business has been a commercial disaster I can't see the complete re engineering of the UK mobile phone infrastructure ever happening unless the phone companies are more honest with everyone and it must start with themselves!

"If a company cannot claim that a "faster" service will promise faster speeds, it is difficult to see how on earth it can promote new services or justify investing large sums in building new networks."

It's easy isn't it - companies can base their advertising on actual speeds received rather than completely bogus 'up to' speeds. Virgin at the moment are running ads based on actual speeds (think they use Ofcom data)and that clearly shows that they're faster than any DSL provider so people who want faster speeds know where to go.

What the ASA should do is require ISPs to only advertise speeds if they can show some real data which proves this. This is what happened in Australia when I lived there and that was ages ago....

We are new to BT and regularly get in excess of 13Mb with a ping of 30ms. We heard the ad but didn't for a minute believe what they were claiming. But even if it was half of what they claimed it would be three times that of our previous ISP. If BT is being cautioned then so should just about every other ad. People should think for themselves and have great cynisism about these or indeed any ad claims. Gullible springs to mind here. Happy with the service. Trouble is I may need a faster processor or increased RAM to deal with the extra internet speed. Ah well.

The Australian approach was basically to stop the advertising of speeds.
The ASA have considered that too. We could have Slow, Medium and Fast instead, with no definition. That should appeal to the hard of thinking.

Virgin cable is a FIXED SPEED service, that is the key difference. Where it exists (less than half of the population) the link speed is either 10, 20 or 50Mbits/s of TCP/IP and performance below that is due to congestion on the shared coax in the street or on the backhaul from the street cabinets. DSL is a variable rate covering a much wider area.

It does irritate me when people bang on about "nobody getting 8M" on the up to 8M MaxDSL. 3 of my relatives get it, as do 33,000 Plusnet customers and over 20% of Entanet customers ( ref )

No doubt the moaners will then say "but you don't get the full speed" well wrong again. Speed test just now: Download Speed: 6692 kbps (836.5 KB/sec ) Upload Speed: 375 kbps (46.9 KB/sec )

As for paying the same regardless of speed, it is important to note that the expensive bit is the backhaul connecting the exchange or cabinet to the rest of the network. Typically each customer gets about 50 kbits/s of this at the weakest point in the system. That is what you're paying for, how much capacity is needed at peak time to carry your data. How much of that you need depends on your peak time usage, not your line speed.

My sister uses less than 2 GBytes/month on her 8128 line. I have a customer that connects under 500k and uses a bit more than this. Both will cost the same to provide so why not charge the same.

BTW you aren't supposed to use Sky broadband connections to work at home - read the terms and conditions.

I think the ASA's objection was more about BT showing web pages loading faster than is physically possible over any remote network and pointing out that 20Meg wasn't going to give you lower latency. A surprisingly technically competent investigation.

and fwiw, I've had more speed problems caused by wiring in my house than I've ever had from any other factor between me and an internet service.

Here's what I think needs to change: standardise the ASDL speeds at 2, 8, 16 and 24Mb/s (for example); and people only pay for the speed they actually get. So if you sign up for a 24Mb/s package and you are only speed testing at 7Mb/s, the ISP should only be allowed to charge you for an 8Mb/s connection.

Theoretical limits don't work and are misleading, people should pay for what actually get!

I'm pretty happy with my broadband service. Currently on the 10Mbps service from Virgin, which is what I get, consistently. Sometimes they slow my downloads a little during peak times but never more than to about 6Mbps, and my speads remain constant when I am streaming videos from Youtube. Dynamic throttling during peak times is fine by me, since they offer a really good service. The consistency is pretty important when downloading large files, such as games from Steam.

#15 PhilT

The site you linked to proves the very opposite of what you suggested: it shows that the maximum download speed you can get on an 8meg DSL Max connection is 7.2meg. Now you might say that there is no difference between the two. Fine, advertise it as 7.2Meg in that case - that would help for starters.

Same for 'up to' 24meg ADSL2+ services where the maximum download speed is around 20meg. ISPs like BE and TalkTalk pretend you can download at speeds of 24meg when you simply cannot do so even if you have a sync speed that high (which only a tiny fraction do)

15 PhilT

The site you linked to proves the very opposite of what you suggested: it shows that the maximum download speed you can get on an 8meg DSL Max connection is 7.2meg. Now you might say that there is no difference between the two. Fine, advertise it as 7.2Meg in that case - that would help for starters.

Same for 'up to' 24meg ADSL2+ services where the maximum download speed is around 20meg. ISPs like BE and TalkTalk pretend you can download at speeds of 24meg when you simply cannot do so even if you have a sync speed that high (which only a tiny fraction do)

I have Virgin 50 meg. When ever I check a speedtest it's 49megs+ and normally 50.5megs (so I'm getting even more for my money). Yes I pay a premium but it's worth it to me. I would be furious if I paid for a broadband service labelled 20 megs but only get 8 megs - surely that's illegal. It should be law that the broadband packages are labelled based on the average speed. So BT 20 meg in fact would be BT guaranteed 8 meg and if you're lucky you might get faster at off peak times. Same for 8 megs being labeled guaranteed 2 meg (with the usual caveats applied distance from exchange etc). Of course this will require the entire industry to agree to this change simultaneously or it just would not work.

I am with Sky, which runs on top of BT's network.

I used to be on the up to 8mbps service and achieved a speed of around 3mbps. Not great.

I have been automatically upgraded to the new up to 20mbps service. You might think I'd be pleased. I'm not as I now only get around 2mbps!

The amount I can download within the service is at least as important as the speed to me. The providers know this and so restrict what is available on each speed level in order get customers on a higher speed service and paying more.

The Virgin (formerly NTL) cable service I used to have was much better. Did what it said on the tin. :-)

I must be one of the lucky ones.

I am getting between 6 and 7mbps on a BT landline. But then again I am only 300 - 400yds from the exchange.
BT are currently touting their 21CN service. The novices in the IT world are all thinking this is a great thing. What they don't know is that BT are still going to try and squeeze it down 40yr old copper wires that were not designed for data transfer.
I'd like to think it's about time that OFCOM and the ASA had a look at the mobile networks now too.

Hi all

I mentioned this directly to BT via the BTCare Twitter account

kieransymes "@BTCare crrect me if im wrng, but the recent BT ad with adam and his mates suggests 20mg bb would stop congestion issues? Thats impossible?"
2 months agoÌýin reply to BTCare

The ad I mean in particular is the one where Adam and his friends are trying to watch a video at his friends house and the broadband is too slow due to congestion issues (I believe he mentions it being peak time for broadband

In this advert, BT claim they have upgraded the connection between the telephone exchange to an up to 20meg service for some customers. So these customers (according to the advert) would see significant speed increases. I don't doubt this, but the advert suggests to me that these upgrades would resolve congestion issues. However, I know for a fact this would cause more strain and congestion on the backhaul of BT's network, thus, possibly resulting on a slower connection and higher ping rate or connection latency.

Yet...this advert was never banned.

One thing I find rather strange about this is that one of the complainants to the ASA against BT was TalkTalk, who themselves advertise upto 24Mbps!

Looking at the actual services offered, are TalkTalk customers any happier than BT's? I seriously doubt it. This is partly something of a war of words between competitors, scrutinising each other's use of words, including punctuation, in each other's advertisements.

As we have said previously on this forum, the nature of ADSL is such that it is a variable speed technology, largely dependent on the state as well as length of the copper cables involved. Therefore it is extremely difficult not to advertise nor offer variable speed services to individual customers. Interestingly, mobile broadband is equally variable in speed but we don't seem to have similar complaints brought to the ASA about it. My guess is it's because it is usually advertised and sold on the amount of data one can download, rather than the data rate. In fact there's hardly a mention of data rate with mobile broadband; mostly what you're told is your device capability and nothing more, except the percentage national coverage your provider covers for a particular service such as 3G, HSDPA, etc.

It may help if Ofcom and or the ASA could provide some clarity on agreeable terms that could be used in advertising the variable service that is ADSL.

In my country we have a simple solution to these issues. Before you can order the service the ISP will check if they can provide the desired speed. If they can't, then they will offer you the maximum they can provide you with. For this reason no one is unhappy because they get maximum that their connection/line allows. Ofcourse that means that for example on a country side you won't get more than 2 Mb/s or maybe 4 Mb/s.

Hopefully they will continue expanding the optical network in more rural areas. The project is stuck at the moment due to recession and some other issues with national Telekom.
Luckilly my town has optics for the most part and i switched. Couldn't be more happy with 20/20 Mbps connection. Sometimes it shows 19 or 18Mbps on speedtest, but for the most part it's 20.

#26 @gregor3000

Some UK ISPs already do that. Last time I signed up with Plusnet the system said my package would be up to something like 2.4Mbps, which is the max I can get on the copper wires into my home.

I think part of the problem here is that most consumers don't know much about the variability of ADSL speeds, and therefore only look at the largest figures given in the advert and expect no less than that. Another part of it is that providers are just too keen to cash in on advertising the highest figures they can get away with, especially in light of differentiated services at different speeds.

On the contrary very few people, if any, complain about their car not being able to reach the advertised max speed, except perhaps racing drivers and Jeremy Clarkson (certainly not James May, lol). It's probably because for the most part the speed is adequate, or limited by road congestion, in which case there are bus lanes. It's all very similar to the internet, the main difference perhaps being that there is no safety issue with going fast on the internet.

The only way to change this confusion is declare everything by "Average" not 'upto'. Most people in the know, know that BT, TalkTalk, Sky and others cannot make anywhere near to 10mb or 20mb speeds that they declare in their adverts.
Instead Ofcom should do the tests and then the companies should use the data from those tests to say "on average we can provide blah, blah, blah connection speeds", and so on. But no, that will never happen as they will need to refund considerable sums of money to the poor consumers that thought they were getting one thing and end up with some poor imitation.

If this is all based because of copper line connection, then I feel very sorry for these internet users, as they will never get any faster. The downside is that BT and others when they do improve the speed, customers will be paying a far greater price than what cable users are using today.

I average from a 20mb connection roughly 15mb to 18mb and only ever had in 10 years 3 occassions when the connection has been down due to technical problems, and thats with Virgin and the company who owned them originally. And also, it will only get better and no need to install any new lines, massive price hikes etc. etc. Because price is what it will all come down to in the end.

I upgraded from "upto 10Mbit" to "upto 20Mbit" with Sky, paying more for a service which was sold to me as being ideal for online gaming. I (did) appreciate that this was a maximum speed and 5 to 7Mbit was a more realistic figure. However, I only get between 1 to 3Mbit. And because Sky are playing their games, I'm unable to play mine! Let's hope Virgin's published speeds are closer to the mark.

"It's easy isn't it - companies can base their advertising on actual speeds received rather than completely bogus 'up to' speeds."

How do you propose they do this? Send an engineer out to every property in the UK before they run each advert so they can tailor make each one?

Using 'up-to' speed claims is the ONLY way they can advertise the service. They have no idea exactly what speed you will get till your connection is made, they have no idea what you'll be using it for, what time of day you'll be using it, how many other people will be sharing it, etc.

#30 @korat102

"How do you propose they do this? Send an engineer out to every property in the UK before they run each advert so they can tailor make each one?"

No, ISPs use technology to run line tests on the line to measure line conditions such as length, signal losses, etc, which are then used to intelligently and fairly accurately work out the max line speed the end-user can get.

"No, ISPs use technology to run line tests on the line to measure line conditions such as length, signal losses, etc, which are then used to intelligently and fairly accurately work out the max line speed the end-user can get."

Yes but we're talking about advertising here. How can they develop an advert to broadcast to the nation telling people what speed they are likely to be able to achieve when every property is going to be getting different speeds?

I can't see how they can do it without saying something like "Here's the maximum possible, you'll get something up to that point." i.e. 'up-to' which is exactly what they do now and people complain about.

"7. At 4:58pm on 25 Aug 2010, PhilT wrote:
I wonder how many people realise that the 8M or 24M relates to a different layer in the protocol stack to that which a customer can measure ?"

Good point also its a shaired service, most home broadband conections are shares with upto 50 other users. So even if you have a 20mb conection to the exchange from the exchange to your ISP and fromt your ISP to the actual internet the ISP only is shaired with 50 users bringing the actual speed that they need to give you under the terms and conditions down to under 1/2 a megabit per second.

i would just like to say i am very happy with my broadband speed on virgin media, ai says up o 10 megs and regularly hits 9.8 megs thou i must say i do use ethernet cable to connect and i don't use wireless

Rory,

Having read through the ASA's adjudication, I can understand whey it upheld issue no.4 raised by Sky, which reads:

"4. British Sky Broadcasting (Sky) challenged whether the claim "BT is rolling out up to 20 meg speeds to give you a consistently faster broadband even at peak times" was misleading in the context of the industry comparison claim in ad (e) because BT operated a traffic management policy."

I am not a lawyer, but from a technology perspective, the challenge is valid. BT's traffic management policy defeats their "consistently faster" speed claim. Perhaps BT were relying on people not being aware there was such a traffic management policy, but didn't count on their competitors revealing it.

Issue no.6 raised by Sky and TalkTalk challenging ad (e) reads:

"6. they understood the figures used as the basis of the claim "consistently faster broadband speeds compared with the ADSL* industry average" were not independently obtained and were not suitable for an industry wide comparison because they could have been affected by the particular telephone lines selected."

BT in their small print in ad (e) had written, "Factors affecting speed include local availability, distance from the exchange and internal home wiring. We’ll offer the best speed available on your line. Please visit www.bt.com/superfastbroadband to see what speed we can provide on your line."

Issue no.6 is an interesting one, because even though BT had this small print, it is very possible that those subscribers whose premises are a significant distance from the exchange may well not be able to get any faster speed on the ADSL2+ (or 20Mbps) packages. That is because the nature of ADSL2+ is such that the speed drops very rapidly beyond a certain distance as compared to ADSL which is currently in use in many areas.

Rory, you said that advertising "up to" has been discredited. What has been proposed as the alternative to ADSL broadband advertising?

I just got an unsolicited letter from Virgin Media through my letter box which reads in part and I quote:

"Buckle up for the fastest broadband we can give you. Rather than charge you for a speed you can't get, we promise to give you the fastest Virgin broadband your phone line can handle... You then simply pay for how much you want to download each month"

So, they've done away with the "up to" and there's no mention of any speed whatsoever. This is clearly aimed at undermining BT's service differentiation on speed and the new 20Mbps service in particular, plus Virgin seem to be targeting BT customers as this area where they've advertised has no cable.

You guys in the UK are getting ripped off!
Very few other places dare to try and charge for volume on ADSL. Telcos anywhere else, even AT&T, get fined for not delivering what they advertise on bandwidth and "up to" ads aren't ever allowed. They are expected to front the capital *before* offering the service.

When the service is delivered there are no volume restrictions. I may only have 5.1/0.5 ADSL but I have ALL of it, 24x7, and I run 14 websites on it. I could have faster but I do not need it.

The variability of DSL is BS too. It is variable because the make it variable, even after collecting their money from the fools that think they now have 20mbps when they only have 2mbps, and they have the b*lls to charge you extra for extra volume.

Jeez, when are British consumers going to wake up and tell BT to stick it where the sun never shines?

Come on!be honest about this,Britain will always struggle with internet speeds because it is profit first,second and last that counts here,customer service is just something to talk about in the adverts.I have to ask myself why the advertising standards do not ban completely this "up to"scenario,which of course is total fiction.Like so much advertising these days the truth is never told.

I live in a rural area on Dartmoor, 5 miles from the nearest town and about 4 miles from our exchange which is in a small village. We receive a variable 3Mbps service from BT and sometimes, due to what I would call traffic management, our internet is unusable. They should not traffic manage people on slower connections, and our connection is definitely not faster at peak times. Because of our fluctuating speed, iPlayer cannot find a bit rate it can use, and is often jerky and thats if it works at all!

Neither the exchange in the nearest town or our exchange have been 21CN enabled, thus both exchanges only support a max speed of 8Mbps. When I last questioned BT as to the roll out date for the town and our exchange, they couldn't give me an answer other than 'soon'. Both exchanges aren't even on the list on BT's website for the roll out! Considering the town is one of the biggest suburb comute areas for Plymouth, this is poor.

I'm also of the opinion that now BT has started the fibre-to-the-caninet project that 21CN will be put on the back burner and we will not see an upgrade to our speeds for years to come! Virgin Media have made more progress than BT in the same amount of time, and their service (if you can get it) is cheaper! 50Mbps Broadband, working towards 200Mbps and BT's latest fttc project is looking at a top speed of 40Mbps, come on!

BT shouldn't be allowed to claim that they are providing upto 20Mbps which is consistently faster at peak times until it is available to everyone.

It wouldn't hurt for the broadband providers to train their call centre staff on the difference between megabits and megabytes. A gentleman from Virgin assured me I would get download speeds of 10 megabytes per second. I assured him, that I wouldn't.

"36. At 12:48pm on 31 Aug 2010, EMC wrote:

I just got an unsolicited letter from Virgin Media through my letter box which reads in part and I quote:

"Buckle up for the fastest broadband we can give you. Rather than charge you for a speed you can't get, we promise to give you the fastest Virgin broadband your phone line can handle... You then simply pay for how much you want to download each month"

So, they've done away with the "up to" and there's no mention of any speed whatsoever. This is clearly aimed at undermining BT's service differentiation on speed and the new 20Mbps service in particular, plus Virgin seem to be targeting BT customers as this area where they've advertised has no cable."

This is very interesting, I've felt for a while now that the only fair way to charge for broadband is on the volume of traffic that you cause over the internet, if your connection is slow (like my 300 kbps) it's likely that your volume will be less and a your charges lower. I will definitely investigate this, I hope it doesn't require an LLU exchange although I fear that it might.

Well, having had a quick look at the Virgin National website I can't really see this is any better than what BT offer. It's true that they are not selling you a service based on speed, but neither are they charging for what you use, the only options are 10GB, 40GB or unlimited per month. I was hoping this would be a charge per GB, it if was set at say £1 then in a busy month I might pay £10 (70 hours of full speed downloading) but a quiet month I might pay £2, both a fair reflection of my usage. It's all academic anyway because as I suspected it does need to be LLU to get the cheapest rates.

#42 @Andy in Highland Perthshire

A very interesting observation. Having done away with "up to" on speed, they're still charging "up to" (10GB, 40GB, etc) for data usage!

Virgin Media, what do you have to say??