Why Are We Waiting?

Broadband is often not up to speed.

There's a huge gap between advertised broadband speeds and the actual speeds users can achieve, shows research by which.co.uk.

More than a third of Which? members now have broadband packages offering speeds of 'up to' 8Mbps or faster. However a speed test found that customers promised up to 8 Mbps actually achieved 2.7Mbps on average, with the lowest speed achieved just 0.09Mbps.

The Advertising Standards Agency says that using the words 'up to' is acceptable if most people can get close to those speeds. But which.co.uk says that the advertised speeds can be misleading and wants Ofcom and Trading Standards to investigate providers' claims.

The test results are published alongside which.co.uk's twice-yearly ISP satisfaction survey, which shows that just 30 per cent of Which? members on average are very satisfied with their service. Smaller providers Global, Waitrose and Zen come out top, with big names AOL, BT and Virgin Media rated below average.

Malcolm Coles, Editor, which.co.uk, says, "It's shocking that internet service providers can advertise ever-increasing speeds that seem to bear little resemblance to what most people can achieve in reality. If it's unlikely you'll reach the advertised speed it should be made clear up front, so that you know with some certainty what you’re buying.

"Do your research to check what speed you're likely to get before upgrading, and if you think what you're getting differs vastly from what you've paid for, speak to your provider - or if they won’t help, report them to Ofcom."

which.co.uk ran a speed test among more than 300 customers offered various speeds from 27 UK ISPs. Mbps stands for megabits per second - a measure of data transfer speed. Speed is advertised as 'up to' because it can be affected by many factors including the time of day, how far the phone line has to stretch to the telephone exchange and the contention ratio - the maximum number of people sharing the same connection to the exchange. Some very slow speeds may have been due to technical problems.

14,642 Which? online panel members took part in a survey about their internet service provider (ISP). Global, Waitrose and Zen have more than 70 per cent very satisfied customers, and were all shortlisted for the Which? Award for Best Broadband Provider in June 2007. The Award was won by Waitrose. Six providers are named as Which? Don't Buys - including the 'free' broadband ISPs Orange, Sky and TalkTalk.

The results of the ISP satisfaction survey are online at which.co.uk and a full article Is UK broadband up to speed? appears in the August issue of Which? magazine.

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