‘Up to 8 meg’, but what is your ACTUAL broadband speed?

Well, since moving over to Virgin a couple of months ago, I’ve noticed that the advertised ‘8 meg’ is a completely mythical figure. Apparently, it’s not possible to get such speeds, as I live too far from the exchange (1.5miles). But using Speedtest.net, I have learned that the average speed seems to be no higher than 2 or 3 meg, usually lower. In fact, at ‘peak’ times, during the evening, it can drop as low as 1meg. Which makes viewing streaming media a bit of a pain. iPlayer seems to like a connection of at least 1.5 meg to work smoothly. A bit of enquiry reveals this is a common situation, in this particular area. Lower actual speeds than most places, it seems.

So, is this actually false advertising? I am paying the full rate, yet not actually getting the service as advertised. I know the small print says that speeds can be lower during busy times, but to actually get less than a quarter of the much hyped maximum speed, is a bit of a con, I feel. I don’t think it’s down to Virgin, as apparently only BT and NTL run off this exchange; all the other providers merely rent the service from them. My line is on a BT bit.

So, if I’m not actually getting the ‘full’ product, should I have to pay the full price? Considering these lying, cheating thieving bastard companies make incredible profits, why shouldn’t the customers be able to pay less, if they are getting less?

How about, a system where, if you only get an average speed of 30% of the advertised, you only pay 30% of the price? That would be fair. Or, if you can only get ‘up to’ 3 meg, out of 8, then you pay a reduced rate.

I understand new regulations are coming in, that should make companies deliver more like the service advertised, but I wonder how effective they’ll actually be?

In a time where everyone needs to be watchful of wasteful spending, I think it’s time companies like these were made a lot more accountable. Let’s face it, most ISPs are piss-poor, and I think everyone would agree, shoddy and inadequate service, in all areas of business and commerce, are virtually the norm, now.

Plus, is failure to deliver a service as advertised, a breach of contract?

For comparison, I had over a year of nightmare grief with BT; the most recent chapter saw my ‘broadband’ getting no higher than 0.8 meg. I switched to Virgin (better, but still not great; none of ’em are), and have told BT to shove their bill, as they failed to deliver a services ‘as advertised’ (ie; advertised as being able to provide streaming media, such as video, music, etc, high download speeds- all bollocks).

What think the STW Massive? Power to the People? Time for an uprising? Overthrow the greedy bastard corporations?

Or should I just shut up, and meekly accept the shafting I will invariably get?

Do they have a cheaper/slower speed service? Change your account to that one instead.

Job done.

Next?

Speed of internet connection assumes components working at optimum speed and capacity. Speeds referred to are download speeds. Both cable and ADSL broadband are affected by user volume

good luck getting out of that bill

Just tested mine. But I’m at work so that’s cheating.

If they did the reduced rate thing, people living closer to the exchange would feel cheated, because they’d have to pay more whether they want it or not, and because so few are actually close enough to get the top advertised speed ISPs would either have to increase prices or go bust!

The real fault lies with BT. If they were prepared to invest in our cabling, we could have broadband like those in Scandinavia, where less than 100mbps is a joke…

Lol, yeh, don’t get me started on that one!
Pipex 8meg connection

Best I get is 4 on a very good day.
Sometimes it’s below a meg in peak times.

On BT and couldn’t be anymore in central Bristol, I get 6mb, paying for 8mb

i get about 3.2meg at home on Sky

or in fact most of europe

we just opted for the wrong system, like we held on to steam for too long and have crap trains as a result. also our system wasn’t annihilated in WWII as mos of europe’s was

Great site, that Speedtest.

Just checked and I’m apparently getting 9892kbps out of Virgin for DLs and 487kbps for uploads.

Happy with that.

I am aware of all the small print, yet if I cannot enjoy the service ‘as advertised’, then is that not false/misleading advertising?

As for the BT bill; I’ve had a year of pure grief with them, coking things up all the time, disconnecting me for no **** reason, then denying any fault, and taking 2 months to reconnect me. Shittest company I’ve ever dealt with.

They were murmering something about ’18 month contract’, from September, when I was reconnected, until I asked them ‘if I was under a new contract, then I should have recieved the ‘free’ equipment as advertised (new-type router), which I never did. They soon shut up. They are trying to get 2 months bill out of me, but I’ve told them I’m not paying. I’ve told them to get someone senior to give me a call, if they’re that interested, but I suspect they will probably just give up, actually. They did fail to provide an adequate service (average speed was around 0.3-0.4 meg; completely unnaceptable), and with my history of problems with them (their fault), I doubt they’d push it too far.

i pay for a 512k connection and get nearly a meg in good conditions 🙂

the most i could get is 2mb so i’m not really bothered anyway

spare a thought for my parents who can barely get a 56k modem to work on their line

The BT exchange is 10 yards away from me

Not too shabby. I started with Telewest on a 512k service years ago and they just keep giving me free bandwidth upgrades….

I think part of the problem is, that Ilive in a very densely populated area, and the contention at the exchange is mental (it runs Canary Wharf!). It’s possible that BT is giving the high-paying businesses more of the bandwidth. There’s basically too many people using the system, so each ADSL line to the exchange has more people on it, than will allow decent speeds. As more people get BB, this increases pressure on the system even further.

Yes, we pay far too much, for shyte service. In France, I’d be getting over 24meg, TV and free phone (to any landline in Yerp, apparently), for what I pay here, just for BB.

Problem lies with BT (private company) having monopoly over the hardware. And not investing some of the enormous profits they’ve made, since privatisation, on new infrastructure. And our wonderful government allowing companies to be sh1t, yet still charge customers exorbitant fees.

IMO, the State should own the hardware, and licence it out to companies who have a duty to provide a certain level of service. The system we have supports lazy, incompetent companies like BT, to get away with ripping us all off.

RudeBoy – Member

Yes, we pay far too much, for shyte service. In France, I’d be getting over 24meg, TV and free phone (to any landline in Yerp, apparently), for what I pay here, just for BB.

Have you ever seen French TV? They’d have to pay me to watch it.

That’s better.

IMO, the State should own the hardware

I can’t see the Government investing either. Politicians don’t like spending money on things with a longer time horizon than the next election. Hence the state of the railways,roads etc.

Not happy with out work one, on Be and paying for something like 24mb and just tested it and getting a mere 10mb

Will be better at the end of the month when we switch to 100 meg broadband that is being trailed in our flats!

I went for the up to 20mb option with Sky. No chance I’d get anywhere near that but it was their only option with unlimited downloads. I’m consistently getting between 5mb and 6mb all day for £10 a month.

Whereas before, with the absolute shower of c*nts known as BT, I would get between 5mb and 6mb between midnight and 8am, and about 10kb/s for the rest of the day, all for the f*cking bargain price of £30 a month.

Yep, that’s about right. Pay peanuts, get peanuts-worth of service

Tried it in work for a laugh

😆

😀

Mine from home with Virgin

Not bad for work.

Until i looked at the ones above.

hurmph 😥 fair bit of willy waving going on here

This is a good day.I’m at right at the end of the exchange line, however there is a fibre optic cable that passes my back garden from Tesco if only we could use that!!!

ok then 🙄

but if i look out of my window i can see trees and fields and stuff

i know which i find more important

I’m on 10Mb virgin and got a download of 10Mb and an upload of about.5Mb so pretty much as advertised.

Limiting factor in my experience is the site you’re downloadign from, I rarely get more than .5Mb speed on download on a single site (but can carry on with other things without affecting it).

We did this a while back in the old forum.

I seem to remember thrashing your asses (by cheating with my work connection):

i’m still the slowest 😀

To rub it in, I know quite a few people that live above or very near places with free internets, or internet cafes. With the latter, all you do is pop in once a week for a coffee, get the password, bosh! There are some that change the password every day, but apparently, most don’t. and the place I work at, just uses the same one all the time.

Grrr!

I know, I know, stealing etc, but it’s already paid for, and you’re probably not using it when the place is open, anyway.

And I know others, who may live in a big house converted to flats, where it makes sense to get a fast (24meg or so) service, and share the cost throughout all residents. A mate has this system, and pays about £5 a month. And it’s always a decent speed, as no-one really canes it.

Arrggghh!!

Sh1tting Cheezuz! Bradford??? I didn’t even think they had electricity up there!!!!!!!

Is that a 100 meg service? Bloody hell!

it’ll be a maintained T3 connection

not within the budget of your average home user

plus universities need it as their are a lot of essays to be downloaded for the purposes of cheating

you’d have top seriously trust your neighbours to go for a shared connection, imo.

I’m on AOL so just grateful to get a connection most of the time 😯

Yes, I wish I knew my neighbours well enough to have a shared connection. The mate in question gets on really well with all the other residents (6 flats, I think). They had a separate cable line fitted, and actually installed an ethernet cable system to distribute the network, rather than using wireless. Then, each flat can use a wireless thingy if they choose. Very clever. Apparently, it came about when one flat had internet, then started sharing with another, then a third one. So they decided to do it properly.

Aye but the ISP will see all the connected users as one mac address. If anyone was up/downloading anything dodgy (porn, ripped music/video, bomb-making instructions) everyone would be in the frame….

Its probably been mentioned but subscribers are normally on an ‘up to 8MB’ service which means that although 8MB may be possible you may not (probably won’t) get it.

It is just an arse covering exercise from the ISP and fulfills their contractual arrangement with BT.

I consistently get pretty close to 8Mbps on my connection (Zen in a small village).

I am aware of all the small print, yet if I cannot enjoy the service ‘as advertised’, then is that not false/misleading advertising?

Not really. It says "up to" and some people can get that figure so fair enough. Same deal as the old "Sale: up to 80% off" by which of course they mean "80% off one thing that no one wants. 5% off everything else".

Couple of things you can try:

➡ check how noisy your line is. This is the usual reason that it runs slow (the equivalent to having to talk loudly and slowly in a noisy room). Your modem should report this on its configuration page. Look for something like "Line Attenuation" and "Noise Margin"

➡ make sure you are using ADSL micro-filters on every phone socket.

➡ check if your internal wiring is making any difference: find your BT master socket. Take the front off it and plug your modem directly into the hidden socket. This takes all your own internal phone wiring out of the equation. If the noise gets significantly better then you need to replace your wiring.

➡ if it is still noisy then you just have to hassle BT to get a better quality connection. Ultimately though if you are far from the exchange then the quality will always be pretty bad – your only real option then is to consider going cable, if it is available. Virgin do speeds up to 50Mbps.

Zen broadband are amazing but pricey, but you get what you pay for.

virgin this year on 8 unlimited are good ( at a student housing location of terrice streets so no doubt the exchange is being rammed full of people dling so this is cool if its good here!)

last year 4mb virgin was pretty crappy well it was alrite but online games were to laggy to play..