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Brit Broadband Often Half Touted Speed
By Larry Hendrick | August 9, 2007
Have you tested your connection for download and upload speeds? Are they even close to what you thought you bought?
This Business Week article tells about a consumer rights group in the UK trying to correct the mis-match of what you are sold, and what you get. The problem exists in the U.S., as well. Many ISPs sell a speed rating, but fail to deliver a close facsimile.
Brit Broadband Often Half Touted Speed
The average speed of an 8Mbps broadband connection is just 2.7Mbps, according to a survey released by Which?, the consumer rights group.Which? surveyed 300 people who had signed up to broadband services advertised as being “up to” 8Mbps in download speeds. Apart from calculating the average speed, it said the slowest download speed it found was a paltry 90Kbps.
There are several factors that affect ADSL speeds. The crucial two are contention - the number of people using the same connection to the exchange - and distance from the exchange.
Since moving to Central Texas a few weeks ago, I bought DSL from the local telephone company. They offer one package … that’s all. It is sold as 1544kbs/384kbs on both their website and the sales people. Random testing continues to show speeds above that. In fact, right now, my wife is watching a streaming video, I’m online with several self-updating web pages, and here is what I just tested.
I have been very pleased with their product, so far. How about your service? Is it what you’re paying for?
Send me your information on what you pay for and what you get. A site I like to use is SpeakEasy’s speedometer. It is clean and concise.
Topics: Business, Technology |
August 15th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Comcast cable modem:
Download Speed: 2885 kbps (360.6 KB/sec)
Upload Speed: 745 kbps (93.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
August 16th, 2007 at 7:56 am
Dave, I’m very jealous.
My DSL looked like that before our move, but I have the fastest available here,(although, I am glad to have it).