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Monday 18 February 2008, 4:08 PM
UK Broadband Sucks - Official
According to 18,558 tests carried out this month by a large broadband comparison site, some poor souls get a paltry 1.72Mbps from Tiscali through to the highest average of 6.07Mbps with Be broadband. The higher download speeds of Be, who also provides the technology behind O2’s broadband service, is partially due to the ADSL2+ technology which allows much greater speeds to be achieved. Most providers currently provide their broadband connections through the more traditional ADSL technology.
Current advertising campaigns like the one for Tiscali broadband promise superfast broadband download speeds of up to 8Mbps. Someone somewhere (and probably in a suit) is obviously telling porkies, as Tiscali came bottom in the test results with an average actual download speed of just 1.72Mbps. Call that superfast? Despite ongoing pressure from Ofcom and various consumer groups, broadband providers are still misleading us over broadband speeds, and it really isn’t on.
For heaven’s sake, stop confusing my poor Mum & Dad (not that they know what the numbers mean anyway) by stating maximum broadband speeds that are often only achieved by a very small percentage of subscribers in central London (we stand no chance in the 'sticks'). Instead, clearly state the average download and upload speeds achieved by your broadband subscribers. This would give us a better idea of the sort of speeds we are likely to receive and would encourage providers to deliver better broadband products.
PreviousComments on this post
I second that motion.
I recently had a nightmare with tiscali who for one reason or another stopped supplying the internet to my house. Im a networker so i knew my local area network was sound and that it was a problem with my ISP, however i ended up speaking to morons in the call center who would listen to everything i said about how i diagnosed the issue and ask me to open cmd, its like i've done this. £12 in phone calls later its sorted kind of there seems to be a real speed issue though maybe im one of the 1.72MBps people.
This brings me on to say had i been your average run of the mill subscriber i would have cried with what they asked people in my household to do, it was totally out of line, they asked someone to ping the adsl router, which obviously they did and got replies, to then say thats your problem there is no conectivity on your LAN!!!!!!! As a result normal people would be forced to ring an Engineer who has the knowlege to tell the ISP the facts, his could cost in excess of £100 for something that is the ISP's fault. Surely they should be liable for this bill. I'll use an analogy, if your drain in your property blocks and you call someone to drain it, it then turns out to be the mains drain you are entitled to a refund on the money you paid the company to drain your drain. Is this the case with ISP's and i just dont know?
Offshoring seems to be increasing but my impression with tiscalli is that it is not a good idea.There is an obvious lack of skills and no qualifications held by the support staff, and as a result they are unable to assist in anyway, even when i finnaly managed to get escalated by a half decent guy, (who had to fill in a form which took five mins, which is probably why the others refused to escalate) the second line support people didn't seem to have much of a clue. In some cases there were also some distinct language barriers and at least three people i spoke to did not understand basic networking terms, it is not acceptable and something should be done to improve situations on the whole.
ISP's we've had enough !!!!!!!!!!!!!
What you're promised and what you get can vary alarmingly. If your mum and dad want to find out how fast their connection is, they can always use ZDNet UK's Broadband Speedtest tool: http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/speedtest/
This is the same Tiscali that are lobbying for charging content providers for bandwidth usage, they complain that services such as BBC iPlayer and Chanel4 OD are chocking bandwidth. How ironic that they come off worst at fulfilling the promises made to customers.
I've been doing research into ISPs as I am looking to move out of London and don't want to be stuck with snail web.
So far I've read that the bottom for service and speed seems to be Orange, Tiscali, and TalkTalk with Sky not to far off. With Orange TalkTalk and Sky it's understandable as they offer their service for free to customers of their other services but Tiscali charge as much as any other ISP and sometimes more and the service is a joke. When I used to do tech support call outs for home users the Vast majority of the time it internet issues were with either Tiscali or TalkTalk - They would have called Tiscali support and being told it's their computer and I would be called out and find it was the ISP. After working in telecoms and IT support for years they still try to 2nd guess me when I call them and ask me "have I tried restarting the computer" or "ping the router" and other non-sense that they shouldn't be asking a pro.
I don't think it's a matter of ofcom forcing anything on ISPs. Where there's a rule there's a loop hole and ISPs will do up to the letter of the law and then everything they can around it or sacrifice service in other areas. What we need is users to make their point by voting with their wallet and moving away from ISPs that provide poor service. Unfortunately with LLUs becoming more common switching ISP is getting more difficult and in many cases switching away from a provider will mean significant down time because you are using your ISPs equipment at the exchange and need to be switched back to BT before you can change ISP. The worst thing is ISP don't need to inform you when they are switching you onto their equipment and don't always pass on the savings this makes them and won't cover any cost incurred if you do ever switch back.
Seems like an opportunity to tell you guys about internet load balancing from Xrio.com plug in 2 or more ADSL links for multiplied bandwidth and optimised link usage both up and down with automatic failover should a link fail.
I suppose I should say that I'm still happy with Virgin, which rather shockingly seems to deliver more than it's supposed to (I've seen 12Mbps continuous on a nominal 10Mbps link). It does clog up when I try and get more than around 800Kbps up the spout, though, so I try not to do that.
I think they know who you are and they're keeping you happy Rupert! lol. I did the test last night and got only 920kbps !!! on an 8mb connection but i would rather remove my teeth with rusty pliers than speak to tiscalli tech support, i may aswell speak to my great nan she'd be in a better position to help me out.
Rupert I agree, Virgin are pretty good, I had them in my student house at Uni and never had a single hickup in an entire year, despite being on the cheapest package!. but i guess it helps that they have their own cable infrastructure independent of BT!
Hello,
Have your tried www.broadbandcheck.net, it tries to help broadband buyers work out whether it's their provider giving them low broadband speed or the adsl line.
Just to be different. I've had Telewest/Blueyonder/Virgin cable for many years and have found its service deteriorating to the point of frustration. To the contrary, I've also had TalkTalk since its early days and find it an improving service delivering more speed and reliability than my Virgin cable (currently turned off). At the same, the number of glitches, freezes, errors and losses of transmission in my cable television reception has substantially increased.
Notwithstanding this, I have a friend with TalkTalk who, several years ago, was unable to get her internet connection and, being non technical, was given the runaround for weeks until she lost her temper spectacularly, whereupon the her connection was restored almost instantly.
