Limited Offer 1 - Normally £15.99
Only £8.49 for £10 of call credit + SIM

Limited Offer 2 - Normally £25.99
Only £14.99 for £20 of call credit + SIM

• Read full article
• Share this article
• Related articles

Computeractive magazine launches a petition for clear information

Broadband speeds are often advertised as ‘up to 8MB’ however this speed depends on how far you live from the exchange, and in the majority of cases it would be almost impossible to achieve such a speed.

Computeractive asked its readers to test the speed of their broadband online and compare it to what they expected to achieve, over 3,000 people took part. Computeractive added an tool developed by Broadband Choices to test the current speed of your Broadband service. The tool checked individual connections an average of 19 times by downloading a 10MB file, meaning that total checks numbered 100,000.

The survey concluded that more than 50% of the broadband subscribers tested received less than half the bandwidth advertised by their ISP and 28% of people received only a quarter of their advertised speed. And even though customers understood the advertised speed of ‘up to 8MB’ was not always achievable, they did not expect the results to be so much lower than that. One Sky Broadband subscriber living close to the exchange was paying for a 16 Mbps service but only receiving 9 Mbps.

Computeractive have taken the findings to Downing Street along with a petition to stop such misleading and unfair actions. They want Ofcom to force ISPs to provide clearer information on actual speeds, and instead of advertising the maximum speed they advertise a ‘typical’ speed, similar to the APR on credit cards.

The Computeractive campaign follows a similar survey carried out by Which? last month, they found out that the average speed of 300 customers tested was just 2.7Mbps. The maximum speed obtained was just 6.7Mbps and the lowest was a measly 0.09Mbps – practically dial-up speed.

Which? asked Ofcom and Trading Standards to investigate Broadband based on their results, Ofcom made a statement at the time saying they would monitor the situation. This new survey and it’s findings should hopefully prompt an official investigation, which will lead to more honest and clear broadband advertising.