Reno Charlton, award-winning writer, shares her financial expertise as a contributing columnist for www.credit-card-comparison-online.co.uk and www.personal-loan-comparison-online.co.uk.
With competition in the broadband market extremely tough at present most Internet Service Providers are keen to try and tempt customers from rival companies through a range of means and this includes dangling tempting headline broadband speeds in front of potential customers. Many customers automatically think that the speed advertised by broadband suppliers will be the speed that they get but this is not the case, as has been proven by a recent study.
The study was carried out by the UK communications regulator Ofcom, and showed that no broadband customers in the UK actually get the highest advertised speed from their providers and in fact the majority come nowhere close to receiving the speeds that are advertised by their ISP. This means that the vast majority are paying for speeds that they are simply nowhere near achieving and are keen to switch to the fastest broadband deals
The Ofcom study found that out of the millions of consumers that were on 8Mbps packages with their broadband providers around four million, or around forty five percent of users were getting speeds of just under 4Mbps, which was under half of the advertised speed from the provider. Worryingly, around twenty percent of those on these packages could not even get above 2Mbps speeds in most cases.
The company that has come out on top in the Ofcom study was Virgin Media, which uses advanced fibre-optic technology to operate its broadband service. Consumers that were on the 10Mbps service with Virgin Media broadband fared pretty well, with many coming pretty close to the top speed although not actually achieving the top speed offered on this package. Virgin has recently rolled out its 50Mbps broadband service to millions of households across the UK.
Following the report MP John Whittingdale, chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee, said that he wants the rules to be more stringent when it comes to advertised broadband speed compared to achieved broadband speeds. He said: 'If companies are advertising a particular speed, then they should be able to supply that speed,' he said. 'If that is not the position they should not be advertising it. It is highly misleading. "Up to" implies at least one person is getting it.'.
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