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March 25th, 2010 @ The Royal Garden Hotel, London
The third annual PCR Awards is set to be the social event of the year for anyone involved in the PC retail sector, and a well deserved celebration for the nominees.
Competitive Package
UK - London
Which of the major UK ISPs provide the fastest service?
As part of Ofcom’s comprehensive study on UK broadband connection speeds, the regulator has published findings on which ISPs are providing the fastest service.
Sampling over 60 million service performance tests across 1600 homes, the regulator was able to graph the speed performances of the UK's nine largest ISPs.
For packages of “up to 8Mbit/s” connection speeds, the Ofcom results show that Orange, O2, Talk Talk, Sky and Plusnet generally have the best-performing average speeds for these packages.
Individual results for those five can be found below, with an average speed range given for each in Mbit/s.
Sky - 4.0 to 4.7
Talk Talk - 3.8 to 4.6
Orange - 3.8 to 4.5
O2 - 4.1 to 5.1
Plusnet – 3.8 to 4.9
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(Ofcom adds that the o2 and Plusnet results are from notably smaller samples and should be treated “with caution”)
The Ofcom cites Tiscali, AOL and BT as the worst performers for the “up to 8Mbit” packages, with Tiscali being outperformed by all listed companies.
BT - 3.8 to 4.2
AOL - 3.3 to 3.9
Tiscali - 3.2 to 3.7
Meanwhile, though it doesn’t have an “up to 8Mbit” package, Virgin Media’s 10Mbit service saw average speeds between 8.1 and 8.7Mbit/s; a striking degree ahead of its rivals.
The survey did, however, show that the vast majority of UK-bound broadband customers were happy with their service.
Why no mention of "BeThere" with their ADSL2+ up to 24Mbs service? And, why can't BT and other offer this too at a similar price?
I think that offering 24Meg service with only an approimate 11.5meg max at 8 miles from the exchange on copper would look bad @ 50% although fantastic compared to a measly up to 8meg with only 3 at the consumer.
I am running @ 11.8Mbs day and night for £16 mth.
So what are OFCOM going to do about it? In their usual way probably nothing as they do not want to disturb their cushy existence and future! Just like many other OF... and Quangoes.
Looking at the figures and wearing my statisticians hat, what does an 'average range' of 3.6 to 4.7 really 'mean'. An average is one figure (usually the mean, ie arithmetic mean, though it might depend on the underlying distribution of the figures) but an 'average range' is a new term to me. Could it be the middle 50% of the data (statistically from the lower quartile point to the upper quartile point)? Or, knowing that rural areas are much more poorly served than urban areas could it be the rural average (mean) through to the urban average (mean)?
Details aside, I would be more than happy with any of those figures/averages. I have the misfortune to live in a rural area (not that remote, being midway between towns of 100,000 and 20,000 which are just 10 miles apart in North Yorkshire). I also have the misfortune of using AOL (have so for 10 years and my email address is ingrained in so many things that it would be very difficult and costly to change it). I get at best 2.1Mps though it's very frequently way below this - last Sunday evening for example it was 0.1!!
I have used all of the main measuring sites/tools and they don't differ very much so I'm pretty sure the figures I get are a reflection of reality. A pretty disgusting service and when I hear Gordon Brown and his ministers going on about fast speeds and supporting the rural areas and being truthful, well do I laugh or do I cry!
how did they do these tests? because it dends on the customers phone lines, I'm with BT and pay for 8MB but only get 1.8MB, but that's because my phone is so long. Is ofcom telling me I could get faster with another service provider???????
Martin Minett seems to have a good angle on this - we just don't know what 'average' really is and when the study firmly focusses on the largest of ISPs in the UK it does not give the full picture of the market either. There are many smaller ISPs providing a much better service than the big guys and they barely get a mention in the report and likewise there are some that are very poor and should be weeded out. Focussing on the big providers does not foster competition - perhaps highlighting ISP champions amongst the smaller providers would encourage more people to seek a better service and push the big guys to improve. That is what an industry regulator ought to be doing improve the service to the consumer. With many recent mergers and acquisitions, the top 5 now hold about 70% of the market in the UK - surely an excuse for the competition commission to start looking at this more closely. Until we can grow many more of the smaller providers, there is little incentive to improve speeds. With regard to customer satisfaction, the report admits that most of those surveyed did not know how to check their speeds and were fairly ignorant of the standards of service that would be expected. The point of it all beats me.
British broadband speeds are among the slowest in Europe according to an independent think tank. From the 23 European nations shown in the study, only six other countries delivered speeds lower than the UK's 2.6 Mbps.
....on what plannet are they on ,broadband measure is a line
for how much money you have to spend out,and how much money the larger companies can make out of you ..
