I’m having broadband speed issues here at work and have been going through the usual rigmarole of testing with BT and my ISP. I happened to notice this acceptable rates listed for the various advertised line speeds by BT:
BT minimum acceptable speeds for broadband service:
100kps or more – acceptable on 512kbps products
200kbs or more – acceptable on 1Mb products
400kbs or more – acceptable on 2Mb, 4Mb & 8Mb products
Let’s just study that for a moment shall we. What this basically says is that a line advertised as having a maximum speed of 8Mbs is considered acceptable if it is performing at 400kbps. That’s 5% of the advertised rate!
Let’s draw an analogy or two.
- Say I buy a car that has a advertised top speed of 100mph. By this definition it would be reasonable for the car to only actually have a max speed of 5mph and this would still be with specification. Would you be happy?
- You buy a packet of crisps advertised as weighing 50g. it turns out to only weigh 2.5g.
- You buy an iPhone that’s advertised at having a battery life of 20 hours and it only lasts 1 hour…Oh no, hang on, that seems to be the reality there too.
Give me strength..Or a leased line.