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Only one of top 12 ISPs raised listed speed after new truth-in-advertising rule.
Most broadband providers in the UK "have been forced to cut the headline speeds they advertise when selling deals" because of new UK rules requiring accurate speed claims, according to a consumer advocacy group.
"Eleven major suppliers have had to cut the advertised speed of some of their deals, with the cheapest deals dropping by 41 percent," the group wrote last week.
The analysis was conducted by Which?, a brand name used by the Consumers' Association, a UK-based charity that does product research and advocacy on behalf of consumers.
"BT, EE, John Lewis Broadband, Plusnet, Sky, Zen Internet, Post Office, SSE, TalkTalk, and Utility Warehouse previously advertised their standard (ADSL) broadband deals as 'up to 17Mbps,'" the group noted in its announcement on Saturday. "The new advertised speed is now more than a third lower at 10Mbps or 11Mbps."
"TalkTalk has completely dropped advertising speed claims from most of its deals," the consumer group also said. "Vodafone has also changed the name of some of its deals: Fibre 38 and Fibre 76 are now Superfast 1 and Superfast 2."
The new rules were implemented in May by the Committees of Advertising Practice, the UK ad industry's self-regulatory body. Which? said it had been "campaigning for an advertising change since 2013."
Previously, ISPs were allowed to advertise broadband speeds of "up to" a certain amount, even if only one in 10 customers could ever get those speeds, Which? wrote. "But the new advertising rules mean that at least half of customers must now be able to get an advertised average speed, even during peak times (8-10pm)," the group said.
The entry-level speed tiers were apparently the least accurate before the rule change. While advertised speeds dropped the most on entry-level tiers, there were drops in higher-speed tiers as well.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday August 07 2018, @06:59PM (13 children)
That's nice. It really is. But it sounds like the exception that proves the rule. Now if only all ISPs were like that.
Big ISPs take advantage of the fact that most people don't even know what Mbps is. How to measure it. What it means in practical terms. And to know if they're really getting what they're paying for. It's like not really being sure exactly what "1 gallon" actually means.
Then the ISPs rely on the fact that nobody will check. If if they check that nobody will complain. And if they complain that nobody will do anything about it. And under the present administration, they're right about that last point. The FCC can outright brazenly lie about feedback on an important issue.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Tuesday August 07 2018, @07:10PM (11 children)
To be fair, the ISPs do have the classic WIntel problem: any speed gain they deploy is quickly absorbed by code bloat, and people lose the absolute reference.
You used to quickly browse the web on a T1 connection, the same way that you had a pretty quick desktop on a Pentium 70MHz under Win95 (between crashes). Multiply the speeds by 50, and somehow it doesn't feel any faster because we need 10MB to code whitespace and not resize JPGs.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday August 07 2018, @07:53PM (4 children)
I understand that is a problem. But what most ISPs do is the equivalent of selling you a 128 GB memory when it only has a measly 32 GB of memory.
It doesn't matter whether we're talking about hardware or network bandwidth. Or gasoline, or butter or milk.
Why does the US not have strict requirements that a gallon is a gallon, and a Mbps is an Mbps?
Remember back in the day of AOL's Pave The Earth campaign? The goal of which was to sink the North American continent into the ocean under the weight of AOL floppy disks. They didn't not succeed. But they were able to get a lot of people to sign up to AOL. But AOL did not keep up it's capacity to accept inbound telephone calls. So people started complaining about too many busy signals. It came to a point where at least one attorney general was involved, who said something about this might be like selling 10,000 tickets to a theater that has only 3,000 seats, and that it would definitely be a crime that could be prosecuted. Soon after that AOL began expanding its capacity.
It seems like we've gone back to those bad old days. (For you young 'uns, this is back in the horse and buggy daze.)
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @11:05PM (3 children)
> Why does the US not have strict requirements that a gallon is a gallon ...
We have this in NY state -- there is a county bureau of weights & measures (don't remember name) that randomly checks gas stations to make sure the pumps deliver the gallons indicated on the display. Same for scales in the produce dept at food stores. No idea if they are straight or crooked (maybe the inspectors are all being paid off?), but I have seem someone from this agency at a gas station, filling calibrated volumes from the pumps.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Wednesday August 08 2018, @12:38AM (2 children)
Most counties or states have such an authority. Gas station pumps, grocery store scales, taxi meters are measured and sealed by the authorities, and there are some very heavy fines and even jail time associated with violating these seals.
http://consumerservicesguide.org/articles/csg_california_weights_and_measures_office [consumerservicesguide.org]
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:35AM (1 child)
I want to invite one of these weights & measures inspectors to my house to check the cable speed, see if I'm getting what Spectrum (former Time Warner Cable) advertised!
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Wednesday August 08 2018, @04:30AM
I don't think they measure virtual items. That would be the realm of the FCC, and I am sure Ajit Pai would love to come provided the 'honorarium' was high enough to meet his hourly salary as a poster child for a telecom industry shill.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 07 2018, @07:55PM (5 children)
oh, no, I think SIZE isn't why things feel slow.
It's fucking wrapping everything in 10 layers of AJAX calls, shadowdom wrappers, and analytics scripts.
Go to a twitter page, and you don't get a flat html page with tweets in it. Oh no. You get a content wrapper, and have to wait on a second request to load offsite script dependencies(starting with the ad ones). Then those finally get loaded and kick off a onload() event driving some AJAX request to get the actual URL's real content. Except that is queued after all the ad loading scripts. The slowness of a typical modern webpage doesn't even have to do with bandwidth.
(Score: 4, Funny) by bob_super on Tuesday August 07 2018, @09:07PM (1 child)
> Go to a twitter page
Can't believe the internet got to the point where so many discussion has to devolve into terrible insults and shameless curses.
"Go to twitter", "Check my facebook", "See this instagram post", "Read the Fox News article" ... Go wash your mouth with soap ! Can we get back to cursing people moms, bodily parts and/or fluids ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 08 2018, @08:04AM
I avoid trying to load a facebook page like the plague. I have a five year old Celeron, with only a 2 GHz single core, and only 4 Gigabytes of RAM memory.
It chokes. It does my CAD work just fine, but social media pages, ( and even YouTube these days ) will lock it up. I can still see the videos, but generally I have to download them first and convert them to .MP4 before they will play. The older stuff works great, but the newer stuff is a real pain, hence my ignorance about the later music stars.
I am older and I really don't give that much of a damm anymore anyway. Its not like I have to impress anybody that I know who the latest Hollywood heartthrobs are anymore. The last one I had heard much about was some dude named Beeber, and I became aware of him only because he kept showing up on the news a lot... I never figured out just what he did.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 08 2018, @01:39PM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday August 08 2018, @08:11PM (1 child)
It's so you don't copy and paste a link to share and put your friends on a "lower engagement site layout"
Much more important to capture as many advertising dollars as possible compared to making a product people actually like, when you're a tech monopoly.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:24AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @04:43AM
ISPs also take advantage of the fact that most people don't even know what 'upload' means.