back to article Brit ISPs get their marker pens out: Speed advertising's about to change

ISPs are scrambling to tweak advertised broadband speeds as the great unwashed continue to receive services that are on average 51 per cent slower than they were led to expect, according to a Which? report. Changes coming into force next week mean ISPs will have to start promoting average download speeds, as opposed to the …

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  1. A K Stiles

    Honest advertising?

    Or at least, 'more reflective of reality' advertising - who'd have thought that was a good idea (from a consumer perspective at least)!

    And who would have thought that the self-regulation model from a few years back wasn't going to work in terms of more accurately reflecting the likely outcome of the advertised product...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes

      "He cited Ofcom's most recent testing, which showed a 200Mbps connection from Virgin Media averaged 92 per cent of the advertised speed at peak times."

      And Volkswagen cars were passing the emissions test with flying colours. Just saying.

      1. Gotno iShit Wantno iShit

        Re: Yes

        The comparison is not fair. VW cheated for their own benefit, Ofcom are unlikely to cheat for the benefit of Virgin.

        It is not clear but I think the chap from Which? might be acknowledging something amiss with their methodology. He certainly shouldn't be questioning Ofcom as Ofcom's testing methodology is the fair one. Ofcom tested the speed of the broadband to the building (92% of the advertised 200Mbps). Which? tested the speed of WiFi in the house, their result (26% of 200Mbps) is the slowest link in the chain and beyond the control of Virgin. Even if Virgin supplied the router they are not responsible for someone running the Which? tool from the end of their garden.

        If I ran a Pi off a 9600 baud serial link what would that say about the broadband to my premises?

        1. defiler

          Re: Yes

          Which? tested the speed of WiFi in the house, their result (26% of 200Mbps) is the slowest link in the chain

          I'd laugh it they'd used 802.11g...

          Sorry, world, but WiFi is just no good for speed testing. Sure, it's convenient. Sure, I use it constantly. But when you need speed and stability you can't beat shoving a bit of copper in there, unless you're shoving glass in instead.

        2. M Mouse

          Re: Yes

          It may not just be their methodology, but the sample they have, because their results always favour ISPs like Zen (which, while undoubtedly popular, is well outside the "top 6", and hardly comes into comparisons unless you are looking for the more expensive end of services, at least for residential use).

          I had a subscription to Which? for 20 years but when they found they had forgotten to increase the price and wanted something ridiculous, I cancelled, as their comparisons seem to cycle every three years and some of their results are not comparable with any other sampling/ comparison sites.

  2. Herring`

    WiFi

    It is a point. If we had 1Gb FTTP, if most people were using entirely WiFi then would there be much point?

    I get 80Mb/s (FTTC) and the boy has his PC wired into the router for whatever purposes teenaged boys use the internet - gaming I'd assume.

    1. ChrisC Silver badge

      Re: WiFi

      "If we had 1Gb FTTP, if most people were using entirely WiFi then would there be much point?"

      Depends how many devices you've got all individually requesting WiFi-sized chunks of your external bandwidth...

      1. Serg

        Re: WiFi

        Mmno, with the vast majority of home WiFi setups, the transmission medium and therefore bandwidth is shared. The more concurrent users you have the worse it gets too, due to overheads and the way that WiFi protocols work.

      2. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: WiFi

        >Depends how many devices you've got all individually requesting WiFi-sized chunks of your external bandwidth...

        No it depends on how many WiFi AP's you have plugged into your router that are requesting WiFi-sized chunks of bandwidth.

        Whilst 'N' sounds good, the vast majority of WiFi devices will quite happily use a A/B/G channel, a few will use 2-channel N and even fewer multi-channel N. So to make any real impact on a 1Gb FTTP connection, you'll need quite a few WiFi AP's at which point you are probably better to simply admit defeat and hard cable the bandwidth heavy appliances: Amazon Prime via Xbox over Ethernet over Homeplug is consistently better than the same set up using WiFi...

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: WiFi

          "Ethernet over Homeplug"

          has the same problems as wifi when it comes to contention. It's ok if you only have 2 homeplugs and rapidly turns to mush if you have more than that.

          1. Roland6 Silver badge

            Re: WiFi

            >"Ethernet over Homeplug"

            "has the same problems as wifi when it comes to contention. It's ok if you only have 2 homeplugs and rapidly turns to mush if you have more than that."

            Agree it has contention issues, however, not seen it - I use 4 in a single network and have yet to upset son's on-line gaming whilst at the same time downloading ISO's etc. But then I suspect the limiting factor is the broadband as the FTTC is only 38Mbps and the homeplugs are 600Mbps... :)

    2. Commswonk

      Re: WiFi

      ...the boy has his PC wired into the router for whatever purposes teenaged boys use the internet - gaming I'd assume.

      You might think that, I'm afraid I couldn't possibly comment.

      I wouldn't want to be responsible for your disillusionment.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: WiFi

        It's pr0n. It's always pr0n. The internet is for pr0n.

        1. hplasm
          Devil

          Re: WiFi

          "'s pr0n. It's always pr0n. The internet is for pr0n."

          Kitten pr0n.

          The truth, it burns...

        2. handleoclast

          Re: WiFi

          The internet is for pr0n.

          We know a song about that, don't we children?

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: WiFi

          "It's pr0n"

          I was mortified when I checked the firewall logs to discover how my teenage son was eating bandwith. It was games .... no porn ...... just games :-(

          1. lleres

            Re: WiFi

            Or maybe games with pr0n in it. It's also cute you think a teenage boy does not know how to hide his pr0n viewing habits from his parents.

    3. Baldrickk

      Re: WiFi

      It's also the device AND the speed test that play a role in the result.

      The following is a comment of mine, copied verbatim from an article on ISP-Preview, resulting from giving the referenced speedtest a try and getting a really poor result (the links may very well be dead now):

      Baldrickk

      February 19, 2018 at 8:39 pm

      Oh no. The thinkbroadband data is not necessarily going to be representative.

      What devices are going to be the most common through which the service is accessed?

      Even if it is not mobile/tablets, they’ll be a large number.

      Let’s take a look at some results shall we?

      #1 Samsung Galaxy S7 802.11n (5Ghz) connection, no other network traffic, same room as router (direct line of sight):

      https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/1519071071361740055

      Sustained single thread download of 17.7Mb/s

      Sustained multithread download of 84Mb/s

      #2 PC, same network, but two floors away and a tiled bathroom between, also connected via Wi-Fi (no wired ethernet)

      https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/1519071323686959555

      Sustained single thread download of 75.8Mb/s (4.2× faster than phone)

      Sustained multithread download of 107.1Mb/s

      (Considering I’m on 100Mb/s that’s a pretty good score, beating the advertised speed, while the phone couldn’t manage it)

      So choice of device used definitely impacts the result.

      And if I use an alternative service, for example https://speedof.me on my PC, what is the result?

      https://speedof.me/show.php?img=180219203621.png

      Sustained download of 120.5Mb/s

      If the speedtest site can’t always saturate the link for whatever reason, that’s also going to affect the results

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: WiFi

      > the boy has his PC wired into the router for whatever purposes teenaged boys use the internet - gaming I'd assume.

      That wouldn't have been my first guess.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is all down to BT with their half arsed FTTC which is subject to all sorts of reliability and performance issues due to the last run of knackered old copper pair twisted bell wire. A fortune wasted on crap when we should have grabbed the bull by the horns and gone straight for FTTP.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      So how does that affect the Virgin results?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        When Virgin's predecessors cabled up the country, they had a blank slate. They dug up pavements across the country (badly patching them once finished) and that allowed them to put in a decent network which was future-proofed.

        BT on the other hand, used a sticking plaster approach on their existing networks, so the speed you get depends on whether you've had an upgrade to the box at the end of your street, plus how far you are from that box.

        BT have to share their network with other ISPs, who all inherit its shittiness. Virgin on the other hand get to have a monopoly, where they can charge what they want, and can pump the prices up mid-contract because nobody's stopping them. And you have to take a phone line you'll never use, even though it's a completely different cable.

        So you have a choice of paying through your nose for Virgin, where at least you'll get decent reliability and speeds, or getting a crap service through BT.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          When Virgin's predecessors cabled up the country, they had a blank slate. They dug up pavements ....and that allowed them to put in a decent network which was future-proofed.

          Err, only to a point. Much of the work was cheap and shoddy, and let's be honest, almost all of VM's technical problems stem from that local loop of coax, and the limitations of DOCSIS standards. If they'd really built something future proof they'd have used fibre optics for that local loop, which is what they're actually doing for some of the Project Lightning build out, but that's a tiny fraction of their total network.

          Also, despite the supposed superiority of VM's cable, the fastest speed offered is 350 Mbps, that's nowhere near universally available, and there's a lot of complaints in their user forums from people who've upgraded and found their speeds slower than before. I can only guess that the cheapskate Hub 3 and VM's CMTS are operating at the absolute edge of their capability, and the slightest thing tips the connection over the edge.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            >and the limitations of DOCSIS standards

            It beats BT's unshielded and rotten bell wire.

        2. M Mouse

          Actually, NO, you don't necessarily have that choice.

          Much as I might like to use their service, my road happens to be in the 30% of this postcode district which has no service and no prospect of it, but we get all their advertising blurb because it is deemed cheaper to cover everyone in this district than be selective to streets they serve.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        >So how does that affect the Virgin results?

        DOCSIS 3.0 Google it

        Additionally according to the article:

        However, Dan Howdle, consumer telecoms analyst at broadband advice site Cable.co.uk, said: "Looking at Which?'s results here I have to say I find them rather odd." He cited Ofcom's most recent testing, which showed a 200Mbps connection from Virgin Media averaged 92 per cent of the advertised speed at peak times.

    2. M Mouse

      "we should have grabbed the bull by the horns and gone straight for FTTP"

      I can only imagine the downvotes were from some BT/Openreach guys...

      Only way to get majority of the country set up with fibre is to scrap damn vanity project HS2 and use part of the money for this. I doubt it is practical to fibre to every property so consider wireless on top for some outlying rural farms etc, but for many FTTC works "OK" and for many, 20 to 50 Mbps is quite adequate.

  4. John Robson Silver badge

    Why not pay for the speed you actually get?

    Either the sync rate, or an averaged actual data rate?

    It's not as though the ISP doesn't have that data...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why not pay for the speed you actually get?

      "punters paying for a package of up to 200Mbps were on average only able to get 52Mbps – 26 per cent of the speed promised"

      How was this measured? If this is just from punters hitting speedtest sites, and they are going over local wifi, then I'm not surprised - most wifi connections won't support this.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Why not pay for the speed you actually get?

        I'd be interested in Virgin's Business VOOM 350Mbps service, but from various reported speed tests allege actual speeds fall somewhat short of the advertised maximum.

        That and they reserve the right to continue to hike prices during the fixed term, giving you 7 days to cancel.

        Also, since the Special Terms for the product state that they override the Standard Terms, it looks like you cannot get out of the contract without paying their cancelllation charges (amounting to all of the remaining charges until the end of the minimum term) if they do raise prices.

        https://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/pdf/legal-documents/Standard_Terms_and_Conditions.pdf

        https://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/pdf/legal-documents/Voom-Fibre-Special-Terms.PDF

        So it looks like you have the option to buy a pig in a poke and have no recourse to get out if you don't like what you are given and have no way of determining in advance the actual level of service you're going to get, or indeed what price you will end up having to pay for it.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Why not pay for the speed you actually get?

          I'd be interested in Virgin's Business VOOM 350Mbps service, but from various reported speed tests allege actual speeds fall somewhat short of the advertised maximum.

          I hang around the VM customer forums from time to time, and their are a lot of problems with new 350 connections, but once those have been ironed out the speed is usually exactly what they promise - and then some, because VM connections are capped above the nominal contract speed.

          The max traffic rate of the VM hub is set to 402.5 Mbps for a contracted 350 Mbps, and my 200 Mbps connection routinely measures 230 across a range of trusted speed test sites. Obviously speed testing against an obscure server on some long distant part of the internet, or even some poorly connected local backwater will have different speeds.

          When you've got it working, Virgin Media is rather good. The problems start when you need to speak with them about anything, because their customer service is without doubt the worst of any large company I've encountered in my life. When my contract is up with VM, they'll have to come in with a really big discount to keep me, because I'm thinking I'd rather go with an AAISP offer and Openreach wires since I'm not far from the cabinet.

    2. AndrueC Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Why not pay for the speed you actually get?

      Either the sync rate, or an averaged actual data rate?

      In the case of sync speed because the cost to the provider is the same. Or, if there is any difference, it will be slightly more expensive to provide a service on a longer line due to higher transmission costs and statistically greater chance of a fault due to more cable involved. Since it costs the same for the provider charging pro-rata means they will either stop selling services to those on longer lines or else raise the prices for all resulting in those on shorter lines being overcharged, or choosing lower speeds.

      As for average data throughput the problem there is how do you measure it? Data speeds can be affected by every hop along the path the traffic takes between the user's computer and the remote host. Average speeds could therefore be being dragged down by:

      * Misconfigured computer.

      * Old computer not able to keep up.

      * Wifi issues.

      * Cabinet issues (for xDSL, Fibre and Coax) (1)

      * Head-end issues. (1)

      * Backhaul issues. (1 & 2)

      * Customer's ISP server issues. (3)

      * Interconnect issues.(2)

      Then any number of:

      * Some other ISP's interconnect issue.

      * Some other ISP's server issues.

      * Some other ISP's backhaul issues.

      And of course at the very end of the connection:

      * Overloaded host.

      * Badly configured or throttled host.

      (1) - For coax (cable) this will be the responsibility of the customer's ISP. For other service types, they won't be.

      (2) - The customer's ISP will have responsibility for some part of this, but probably not all of it.

      (3) - The customer's ISP will have exclusive responsibility for these.

      What this means is that it's impossible to place the blame for poor data throughput at your ISP's door. You might in some cases (when the host is on your ISP's network, perhaps) be able to moan that your ISP should pick better people to partner with. However even then your ISP may have no choice in the matter. All non-LLU xDSL connections are reliant on at least one of the BT group members to carry data at least part of the way, and all VDSL connections are reliant on openreach to get the data between the cabinet and head-end (the exchange).

      And when all's said and done it's a service. The law does not require services to be fit for a purpose. The law only requires that the service provider not over charge, be upfront about limitations and make reasonable efforts to deliver the service.

  5. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    Hmmm...

    To be fair to Virgin Media (and I really don't want to be due to their crap customer service) my 70MBps line is fairly consistent at giving me the 70MBps that I pay for.

    1. wiggers

      Re: Hmmm...

      I've noticed many survey/speed test sites don't allow the option of 'coax' or cable, which forms a large proportion of VM's connections.

    2. David Harper 1

      Re: Hmmm...

      That's definitely NOT my experience. Like you, I pay Virgin Media for what they call their 70 MB/s tier. I have a cron script on a Linux box which measures my download speed every hour, and whilst the speed is indeed close to 70 in the wee small hours of the morning, it drops below 40 between 4 p.m. and 11 p.m. most evenings, and sometimes it's as low as 20. I've managed to get a refund on my monthly bills a few times after posting graphs of the download speed to the Virgin community forum, but not recently. I guess they don't give a sh*t any more.

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Contention

        Virgin tend to massively oversell a region, then take a few years to add enough capacity to handle the connections they're charging for.

        I expect that the Which? average is accurate, and that Ofcom only tested places where Virgin did add capacity.

        After all, Virgin almost certainly know where and when Ofcom do the tests.

    3. Nick Kew

      Re: Hmmm...

      Back in January (before I parted company with them), my Virgin 70Mbps connection was giving me consistently less than 0.5Mbps.

      Or I really should say, inconsistently, as it frequently dropped out altogether, leading to regular timeouts on things as routine as web and email, as well as having to use the mobile 'phone for a voice line.

      The role of the impossible-to-contact customer service is in keeping me paying over the years of crap service before then. It was simply a line of least resistance. And, to be fair, Virgin's router had a feel of quality by virtue of providing the most solid wifi I've ever had: it was the connection to the outside world that was problematic.

  6. ExampleOne

    In fairness to BT on this specific point, they made a big thing about what speed we could expect when signing up, and they deliver that for the most part. They advertised up to 72 or 80 or whatever it was, but when we actually signed up, they did a preliminary line test and gave us a lower estimate, which has been roughly what we got whenever I have speed tested it.

    However, if running TV or streaming video over your VDSL line... I can tell when the TV is running an IPTV channel, both kids are streaming video, and the wife is watching iPlayer.

    Also, asymmetry. If you need upload speed, you are basically out of luck for reasonably priced connectivity in most of the UK.

  7. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Which caught the ISP's by surprise

    By using speedtest servers that they haven't yet prioritised.

    Plus I expect the Ofcom figures aren't based on real (not-in-the-South-East) actual throughputs.

  8. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    It's no good BT complaining 'WiFi'

    When that's how the majority of the customers connect.

    When did you last see a wired mobile phone?

    1. ChrisC Silver badge

      Re: It's no good BT complaining 'WiFi'

      The point here is that, if the customers own equipment is more of a bottleneck than the external connection provided by the ISP, then any evaluation of the actual speeds provided by the ISP really ought to be done at the point where the ISP connection terminates at the customer premises, because from that point on it's out of their control.

      And it's not just WiFi connections that can skew the results if measured on a LAN-connected device, even a wired connection can be an unexpected bottleneck if the router you're using isn't up to the job - my old one had gigabit-capable LAN and WAN ports, but the LAN-WAN bridge part of the hardware was limited to around 150-160Mbps, which I only discovered after my VM connection was upgraded from 100 to 200Mbps...

      1. David Nash Silver badge

        Re: It's no good BT complaining 'WiFi'

        It's true but they need to put in big letters that to get the full speed depends on your equipment, and Wifi frequently isn't up to it.

        Many packages are sold as a Wifi Router and that's it. to your average punter Wifi is "the internet" and they don't want to mess around with cables, and most don't even know what a network cable is.

    2. Commswonk

      Re: It's no good BT complaining 'WiFi'

      @ Neil Barnes: Perhaps the majority of customers do connect via wi-fi, but even the "fastest wif-fi in the world" cannot overcome the problem of attenuation due to internal walls (etc) or the multipath propagation arising from the same walls and other reflecting surfaces in a domestic or other environment and guarantee to provide the same speed as a properly wired connection.

      A search for "how far will my wi-fi go" will produce no sensible answers, because no manufacturer would be so silly as to specify a figure when they cannot control the environment in which their product will be used.

      IIRC speedtesters tend to state that wi-fi should not be used, along with advising that whatever is used for the test should not have anything else running at the same time.

      Complaining about wi-fi inclusive speedtests not achieving a certain supposed "up to" or any other target speed is a bit like complaining that a car does not achieve its rated acceleration or fuel consumption figures when towing a caravan.

    3. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: It's no good BT complaining 'WiFi'

      That's like most people having treacle driveways to their houses and then complaining that their cars "don't do the 0-60 advertised when they drive off in the morning".

      Wifi is a SHARED MEDIUM over UNREGULATED radio frequencies. There's no possible way it can reflect the reality of what they delivering to you down a customer-specific cable via their own certified equipment.

      P.S. General rule of thumb I use as an IT Manager... wifi is 20 times slower than a cable. It doesn't matter if you deploy stupendously expensive stuff (we have Cisco Meraki... £600 for a basic AP) or have a clear field (we are a 28 acre sites set in farmland), there is no way for wireless to provide the performance you need the second ANYONE (not even your own devices) walks into range.

      There are only THREE possible non-interfering channels on 2.4GHz, for instance, and the channels themselves are unregulated so people can use them for ANYTHING (not just Wifi, video senders and all kinds of crap). Guess what frequency most people have on their router? 2.4GHz.

      So before you even start, in a typical residential street, you are dividing the maximum theoretical throughput on your wifi device by about 5-10, in a spiky, unpredictable, unregulated way, to get the speed you might actually achieve with timeslicing, channel-sharing, interferences, etc. If you're lucky. And though you "might get" a speed test that's a high number, it's by no means reflective of real world usage, or what will happen if you click it again.

      Then consider that most households have 5-10 devices connected to wifi - everything from phones to computers to consoles to cameras to doorbells to tablets to Chromecasts etc. etc. etc. You don't stand a chance of getting any accuracy at all, and your neighbour waking up their phone next door will drastically affect your speeds.

      Wifi is 20 times slower than a cable. Always. Think of that when you tell people to log onto a network over their home wifi into a VPN... literally multiply your normal logon etc. times by 20 before you even start.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It's no good BT complaining 'WiFi'

        NOTHING is ever 20 times slower. Otherwise, everything would be going BACKWARDS 19 times faster than it should be going forward.

        You mean 95% slower.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Virgin Media

    So many figures...

    I'm paying for Vivid 350. I went for this as it had no traffic control and I was expecting it to be less than 350Mbps.

    On certain peak times - this drops to 70Mbps but is still usable. I used to be ADSL2 with BT and had 7Mbps but in reality around 3Mbps.

    At present - I am getting

    PING 24ms

    DOWNLOAD 195.06Mbps - so 48.46% of provisioned traffic rate

    Max Traffic Rate 402500000 - 402.5Mbps

    Max Traffic Burst 42600 - 0.0426 Mbps

    UPLOAD 20.91 Mbps

    Max Traffic Rate 22010000 - 22.01Mbps - so close

    Max Traffic Burst 42600 - 0.0426 Mbps

    I'll be glad that they don't do up to anymore but keen to stick a service provision in that says if it drops below 50% then you get refunded for the day - then at least network fixes would be quicker. Mine has been a bit unstable - off at least once/twice a week for a few hours.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Virgin Media

      Thanks for the real world numbers.

      After some more digging, it appears the Vivid 350 package is not subject to either throttling or data caps, much like Sky's/Opeanreach's fastest FTTC product but without the compulsory 18pounds per month for a phone line you will never use and at over 4 times Openreach's fastest speed.

      Total price is about 10 pounds cheaper for Vivid 350 than the 80/20 package from Sky/Openreach.

      I had been avoiding Virgin due to it being Virgin, but this is just so much better than anything else out there.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Virgin Media

        Thanks for the downvote, BT/Openreach engineer. Good luck with those redundancies.

      2. M Mouse

        Re: Virgin Media

        I don't have the option of VM here, so plan to move across the city where I may get Hyperoptic and for about 60 quid a month, have the option of 1000/1000.

        I'd love to know whether anyone is able to comment on the speeds they are getting with it, although I expect most standard equipment will struggle to pull a full 1000 Mbps and similarly, what speed test service will provide that ?

    2. Cederic Silver badge

      Re: Virgin Media

      I was told Vivid 350 didn't exist but upgraded to Vivid 300 (at lower cost than my 200Mbps connection).

      Current download speed: Varying between 398 and 400Mbps, sustained for 6GB. Steam game downloads are far more honest than speedtest sites.

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