ISPs Lie About Broadband "Up To" Speeds 547
Haffner writes "Ars Technica has an article detailing the difference between ISP advertised 'up to x Mbps' speeds and the actual speeds, in addition to some possible solutions. They find that on average, the advertised speeds were 'up to 6.7 Mbps' while the real median was 3 Mbps and the mean was 4 Mbps. This implies that ISPs were falsely advertising by at least 50%."
Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite. (Score:5, Informative)
They find that on average, the advertised speeds were 'up to 6.7 Mbps' while the real median was 3 Mbps and the mean was 4 Mbps. This implies that ISPs were falsely advertising by at least 50%.
"Up to" doesn't mean "median" or "mean". "Up to" means "up to", as in "maximum".
That being said, it is rather sneaky to advertise a product by focusing on a theoretical maximum that you may (or may not) experience on the rarest of occasions. It's kind of like selling a limited service as "unlimited". But no one would ever do that, right?
Re:So just what am I paying for? (Score:1, Informative)
The answer: FIOS is faster.
Re:Technically correct (Score:4, Informative)
Many years a US discount retailer would make up prices and discount off these prices. The ad copy basically said they were made up, but in such a way that the consumer would think there were based in fact. This enabled the retailer to offer 50% savings on almost everything, though the prices were comparable with any other discount retailer. The company, whose name slips my mind, is out of business.
A department store, maybe Foley's, also got in trouble due to a tactic that many would think was legitimate. They would offer clothing at a rather high price,then advertise a sale discounting off the high price. Now, these products were actually offer for sale, so the retail price was legitimate, but it was still seen as deceptive as there was no intention by the retailer to actually make a sale at this price, just to set a price for advertising a discount. There might have been some sales at the high price, but that was not an issue. This practice is not illegal, but one will see ad copy that states no sales may have occurred at the advertised high price.
So really, on one hand this is not a big deal. The 'up to' might be enough. But given these two cases, and the fact that so few people get the 'up to' amount(much les than 10%), I would say additional ad copy would be required to make this legit. At minimum I would think a note saying that nearly no one achieves this speed. Ideally I would like to see a listing of the speed that the second and third quartile gets, in this case 0.5-2 mb. This would be most useful for the consumer as it would at least help the consumer know the kind of speeds they are likely to get. The fact that this is not done clearly indicate the 'up to' numbers are meant to be deceptive.
Re:Sneaky, yes. Lies, not quite. (Score:3, Informative)
"Up to" means "less than" (Score:5, Informative)
It's standard marketing bullshit. Every time you see "up to" in an ad, replace it with "less than". "Up to 10mbps", "up to 80% shinier hair", "up to whatever". If one out of the entire sample/customer base experienced an anomalous outlier result, they will claim "up to" that. You're statistically unlikely to be the anomalous outlier, therefore you will experience less than what they're claiming.
"Less than" is more accurate anyway. What you experience may be anything in a wide range of values below that, but you KNOW you won't experience more. So do the mental substitution, and I promise your perception of advertising will change as a result.
Re:Only 98% lies. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm curious... do these speed issues pertain only to certain countries? or certain technologies?
The reason I ask, is that my ADSL connection is advertised as "up to 15 Mbps"... the speed I get? 15 Mbps. now that doesn't mean 15 Mbps from any site, (you loose a fair amount just by virtue of the fact that you aren't always the only one going to a specific site, and there are often busy routers in between) but it DOES mean that I have 15 Mbps available, this is usually easy to see by downloading several things from different places and seeing a total of 15 Mbps.
Further though, I'm not a rarity here, I am an ADSL tech, I go to people's houses when they complain that they aren't getting the full speed they were expecting. What I've found is that there are only a few reasons why they wouldn't get the maximum:
- They don't understand that they can't download at 15Mbps from a server hosted on a private ADSL line somewhere else in the world that only has a 600kbps upstream rate!
- Their computer is so laden down with garbage that IE takes 25 mins to even load, let alone transfer any data
- Their P2P program in the background is using 14.999999999999Mbps of their 15Mbps total leaving them with nothing.
- And lastly, and extremely rare, is someone stuck in an area that just can't do more than 1Mbps (long lines back to the DSLAM), This is quite rare at this point, but more than that, it means that they won't be paying for a 15Mbps connection because we won't sell them one if they don't qualify. they'll be paying for a much lower speed (and if they somehow DO get on to one of the higher plans, they get changed to a slower plan as soon as we realize we can't provide that speed)
Now that said, our largest competitor, a cable company, used to quote speeds that weren't even physically possible with the equipment they were offering... but even they are quoting much lower speeds than they used to (though I don't know if people actually get those speeds on the shared cable topology)
Re:ISP's want your money... (Score:3, Informative)
Even the lawmakers have managed to catch up to this one in Sweden. ISPs now have to say 5-10 Mbps or similar.
Missing option... (Score:4, Informative)
You DO get 6.7 MBit/s - connecting to your ISPs servers and network.
But from your ISP to wherever... well... they can't really vouch for that. So they don't.
And they put a clause saying exactly that in your contract.
Then again, most people don't read contracts.
Just think of all those EULAs you've OKayed over the years.