Broadband Quality<< Connectivity Ironies at a WiMAX/WiFi Conference | Main | Project Kangaroo Goes Over-The-Top >> IanFogg | June 14, 2007, 11:47 AM How much worse does broadband have to get? Here's the dilemma I wrote about last year (and also here). ISPs need to get together and sort this or everyone loses out: lower per customer broadband revenues for ISPs, unhappy consumers, plus hostile articles in the press or on consumer affairs TV like Watchdog attacking individual ISPs, and slow broadband hindering Internet businesses offering Internet TV or other innovative services. My concern is that too many in the ISP industry are using the quality of telephone lines as an excuse. It's not. Too often consumers' telephone lines are operating at a much much higher speed than the actual broadband speed they are receiving. Most consumers will not realise their telephone line is capable of more and is not the bottleneck, and just complain that the service is slow. ISPs pass the buck between retailer and wholesaler or blame technology limitations (that do exist but are frequently used as incorrect scapegoats). Almost all consumers will find it impossible to decide which ISP is better/worse as all ISPs are opaque in their marketing of broadband packages. Here's an example of some speed tests(see the end). These results are using the official BT broadband speed tester on a DSL service retailed by a small ISP, but which based on a BT Wholesale business grade service. The 'IP profile' of 7150 means the DSL modem is synchronised at 8128kbps or "8 Meg", which is the fastest possible on a BT Wholesale-based service (for now). 7150kbps is the maximum actual speed the telephone line is capable of delivering (it's lower due to error correction and other technology overheads). But, the actual speed delivered is much much lower, as demonstrated by the speed test results. The average speed over a period of a month of testing, across 10 separate tests, was just 29 percent of the 7150kbps theoretical maximum. This is not an isolated example.
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