Copper load of that: Ofcom claims HUGE jump in 'average' broadband speed
What do you mean you don't believe it?
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Britain's communication watchdog claimed today that "average" broadband speeds had "doubled" in the space of two years.
The data published by Ofcom was fairly limited in scope given that, for example, it only included ADSL customers within 5km of the exchange but not outside of that range.
The regulator used broadband monitoring outfit SamKnows, which tested speeds of 12 packages provided by the country's eight biggest ISPs. It recorded 643 million results in 2,019 homes on during November last year.
Ofcom happily trumpeted that more consumers were getting - on average - a faster broadband connection as they continued to subscribe to new packages with the major telcos, many of whom market their products around headline speed claims.
If we follow the watchdog's enthusiasm for these figures, which only account for 60 per cent of ISP packages available on the market, then the "average" residential UK broadband download speed hit 12Mbps in November 2012 compared with 6.2Mbps two years earlier.
BT - like a fat pig in a mud bath - soaked itself in the figures. The telecoms giant couldn't resist having a dig at rival Virgin Media, either, over its peak time throttling methods. It said:
Virgin may claim to have the ‘Ferrari’ of broadband services but this report clearly shows it gets stuck in rush hour traffic. BT fibre on the other hand is far more reliable ensuring customers enjoy an open road however fast they’re travelling.
The stats spewed out by Ofcom today found that superfast broadband products were far more likely to suffer crippling lags in speed during peak hours, with Virgin Media coming off a lot worse than BT on that criteria. The regulator noted:
In this category, the proportion of panellists who, on average, received more than 90 per cent of their maximum speeds at peak times ranged from 35 per cent for Virgin Media’s ‘up to’ 30Mbit/s service to 91 per cent for BT’s ‘up to’ 38Mbit/s service.
The findings suggest that, while there was relatively little congestion in BT’s fibre network in November 2012, levels of contention were higher in Virgin Media’s cable network.
The report - which you might want to print out, soak in water and then sling at the ceiling - is available here. ®
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COMMENTS
The data published by Ofcom was fairly limited in scope given that......
ODFO
effing useless regulators
In other news ...
... workers commute durations have been found to average less than 10 minutes - providing they live within 5km of their work and don't travel in peak times.
Apart from OFCOM coming up with meaningless, unrealistic drivel (as usual), what exactly is their point?
Are they trying to imply that somehow their "regulation" powers have had something to do with this? Are they really saying that internet speeds are something they simply don't understand - or know how to measure properly? Maybe the subtext is that even with them not doing a single dam' thing to (ever) make anything better, that it's still possible to fudge the figures to make it appear that they've done some good?
Why do they keep wasting our time ...
Re: Lies, damn lies, ...
Of course it is lies, but from OFCOM, not BT. That's the only way that the UK will get "best broadband in Europe" by 2016, and since the government lie about everything else (expenses, inflation, debt, immigration, growth, unemployment, health etc etc) why should broadband be the odd one out and rely on mere facts?
Ed Richards may well know nothing about broadband, on the other hand he probably knows that he gets paid about £32k a month. Will he continue to get that hard-earned loot if OFCOM show ministerial promises as wilfully dishonest, and their arbitrary targets as flagrantly unmet?
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