More than 50 percent of ADSL broadband users in the UK can only achieve half the download speeds promoted in ISPs' ‘up to 8Mbps' adverts, a new Ofcom study shows.
Ofcom report reveals ADSL ISP download speeds
What's more, the communications regulator's research reports that the highest download speed someone with an 8Mbps package can achieve is actually 7.2Mbps.
The figures have been released following an Ofcom study earlier this year based on 60 million performance tests in 1,600 homes.
According to the research, less than 10 percent of households on ‘up to 8Mbps' deals could receive 6Mbps or more in practice, while 20 percent had to make do with less than 2Mbps. The average download speeds achieved in April were 4.1Mbps. However, this was an improvement on January, when average speeds were 3.7Mbps.
The study also highlighted the broadband slowdown in rural areas. Ofcom said average speeds were 4.6Mbps in urban areas, compared with 3.3Mbps in rural areas.
There was good news for Virgin Media, however. Ofcom said average speeds on the company's ‘up to 10Mbps' cable broadband network were between 8.1Mbps and 8.7Mbps, twice that achieved by ADSL users.
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"As the Ofcom speed tests show, Virgin are the best bet for a package that delivers on speed and this is a result of significant investment in their network," said James Parker, broadband manager at MoneySupermarket. "People need to check how their providers fare when picking a broadband package, as the Ofcom test shows, the faster products can often be poor value for money."
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| ISP and package | Average speed |
| AOL ('up to' 8Mbit/s) | 3.3 to 3.9Mbit/s |
| BT ('up to' 8Mbit/s) | 3.8 to 4.2Mbit/s |
| O2 ('up to' 8Mbit/s)* | 4.1 to 5.1Mbit/s |
| Orange ('up to' 8Mbit/s) | 3.8 to 4.5Mbit/s |
| Plusnet ('up to' 8Mbit/s)* | 3.8 to 4.9Mbit/s |
| Sky ('up to' 8Mbit/s) | 4.0 to 4.7Mbit/s |
| Talk Talk ('up to' 8Mbit/s) | 3.8 to 4.6Mbit/s |
| Tiscali ('up to' 8Mbit/s) | 3.2 to 3.7Mbit/s |
| Virgin Media('up to' 10Mbit/s) |
8.1 to 8.7Mbit/s |
Comments
WebMaster at fasterbb.info said: Must agree with Alan Keith In my area the copper must be about 6km I use 3 mobile most of the time but if there was Fibre to the Cabinet it would be under 300 metresAll the speed test services suggest 2 to 3 Mbps I used to get 7 Mbps when I was close to town centre and Opal is offering up to 24 Mbps on that exchange nowTheres a petition on the Number10 website calling for the Govt to fund Fibre for Rural areas first as the cities have 1624 Mbps services and often cable too
Cyteck said: The main thing that really really infuriated me from day 1 was the way BT marketed there broadband products And as a result of BTs highly misleading claims the rest of the UK ISP market used the same misleading advertizing too The blame for misleading ALL uk broadband customers is firmly to be laid at BTs door in my opinionBT marketed DSL MAX as an upto 8Mbps service which was always NOT the entire truth lets be honest here Nor should BT have claimed that their new ADSL service was always on that was another often spurious claim tooa BT should have been far more honest and marketted DSL MAX as there New Rate Adapted Broadband Service with potential speeds upto 75megsb The service should have been marketed as an almost always on connection product because that would have been more truthful amp honest
adslgeek said: In reality there are always packet overheads etc one of the most common issues that limits throughput is the TCP receive window and in practice so few people understand how this is a factor Luckily Vista does tune this and from what I have seen from Windows 7 it is even more optimised CheersADSLgeek wwwadslgeekcom