Ofcom is trying to get "clarity" over broadband speeds by asking ISPs to sign up for a Code of Practice, and implement it within six months. The code involves:
* providing customers at the point of sale with an accurate estimate of the maximum speed that the line can support, whether it is in the shop, over the internet or on the phone; * resolving technical issues to improve speed and offering customers the choice to move onto a lower speed package when estimates given are inaccurate; * ensuring all sales and promotion staff have a proper understanding of the products they are selling so they can explain to their customers the meaning of the estimates provided at the point of sale; and * providing consumers with information on usage limits and alerting customers when they have breached them.
It's a voluntary code that will be tested using "mystery shoppers," but there's always the threat of regulation if that doesn't work. Some 32 ISPs covering 90% of the market have already signed up, from AOL to Zen.
Whether ISPs can actually provide accurate speed estimates, or find sales staff who know what they are talking about, is another matter. At least the code could make them try harder.
Ofcom is also going to investigate real broadband speeds around the country. It says:
The survey will use a representative sample of over 2,000 residential broadband connections attached to specialised monitoring equipment over a six month period and involve tens of millions of speed tests, thereby enabling the most comprehensive survey of actual performance across the UK to date.
One thing not mentioned is throttling. For example, an ISP could give an accurate speed estimate then deliver a lower speed due to contention or deliberate speed throttling in response to file sharing. The fact that your DSL2 connection can do 7Mbps doesn't mean you're going to get that speed all day every day.
