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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
UK watchdog Ofcom tells broadband firms: '30 days to sort your speeds'
Ofcom is tightening the screws – sort of – on broadband providers that play fast and loose with speed promises by imposing a deadline to fix problems or allow customers’ to end their contract early and without a penalty.
Punters are able to exit a deal if velocity slips below a minimum guaranteed level and the provider can’t rectify it, but providers currently have an unlimited resolution time before letting customers leave.
The major update to the code of practice, to be implemented in a year from now, will mean that providers must promote “realistic” speed estimates and “minimum” speed guarantees at the point of sale.
[...] Average download speeds for residential punters in peak hours (8pm to 10pm) are 34.6Mbit/s, and average maximum speeds are 39.1Mbit/s, according to the regulator.
[...] All of the major broadband players have signed up to Ofcom’s code of practice - it covers around 90 per cent of customers in the UK. But there is no legal imperative for these companies to comply with the code.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Friday March 02 2018, @06:00AM (4 children)
"Average" is very strongly misleading.
My BT professional "superfast" fibre broadband was delivering 56kB yesterday evening.
It may be 10x faster than a 56kb dial-up line, but when dial-up was common, people did not expect us to download 2GB files.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @08:00AM
BT users deserve no better than total shit though.
Pick one of the smaller boutique ISPs and you too can have 95% of theoretical maximum bitrate, 100% of the day and night.
*Checks uptime* Ha! Over 9 consecutive months. You wish your connection would stay up for 9 consecutive hours BT luser.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Friday March 02 2018, @08:26AM (2 children)
The problem is that even if you do cancel your contract because of low speeds, it's not like you can get better speeds somewhere else. Most of the low speed problems are due to crappy copper telephone lines which affects all ISPs equally. The only non-ADSL option in most areas is Virgin, so if they are oversubscribed too (as they are in my area) you are buggered.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Friday March 02 2018, @09:27AM (1 child)
Yes, but...
This move by Ofcom will only be a temporary pain in the arse for ISPs. Instead of giving their customers the right royal run-around ("no, we've looked into it and computer says 'no'"), now they'll agitate to have the problem solved. It probably takes collectively less effort to actually solve the problem (bad copper, whatever) - even if it isn't technically "their fault" - than repeat the same blame-shifting script to every single customer who ever has an issue. At the end of the day, subscribers want Internet, and both ISPs and telecommunications companies get paid to provide a service. It's a fairly simple calculation: get paid, provide service.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Friday March 02 2018, @10:48AM
BT Openreach, who are responsible for the phone lines, don't give a single fuck about the shitty speeds and never will. Doesn't matter how much ISPs and customers complain, there is no alternative. Maybe you can get Virgin, but other ISPs can't use their cable network so if ADSL is your only option then Openreach has you by the short and curlies.
Openreach doesn't even install fibre to new builds, they put in copper. There is no incentive for them, especially because with fibre people will just want internet service and not pay for the phone line rental which is a massive cash-cow for them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)