Monday, September 24, 2007

Broadband speed trickery: couldn't happen here

In the UK broadband firms advertise speeds using the words "up to". Shockingly, the reality is typically less than 50% of the "up to" number...
BBC NEWS | Technology | Broadband speeds under scrutiny

Broadband speeds in the UK are much slower than advertised by internet service providers, a study by Computeractive magazine has found. Some 3,000 readers took part in speed tests and 62% found they routinely got less than half of the top speed advertised by their provider. It is the latest in a series of questions over the way net firms advertise broadband services...
Scandalous. It would never happen here of course.

Seriously, the interesting bit here is that a trade magazine actually did something useful. There was never much life in the trade journals (except for BYTE) to begin with, and I'd thought the web had completely killed them.