Broadband speed myths debunked
This August, the Which? mystery callers made 180 phone calls to 15 major internet service providers (ISPs), posing as potential customers.
According to Ofcom guidelines, ISPs are obliged to provide broadband speed estimates to any potential customer when speaking over the phone, and while our callers received estimates, these were often explained away with a baffling range of excuses and conditions.
The reasons for unpredictable line speed are numerous, but which are truly the most important in determining internet speed?
Distance from the exchange
IMPACT: HIGH
If you live in a remote location, your broadband speeds may be significantly slower
Quite simply, this is the most significant factor when it comes to the most common broadband wiring across the country (ADSL).
The signal degrades over distance and the further you are from your exchange, the slower the speed.
When you’re speaking to a broadband provider as a potential customer, make sure they give you an estimate of your likely broadband speed before you agree to any contract.
This estimate ought to be based on your home’s location, and ISPs are obliged by Ofcom to provide such estimates to potential customers.
Internal house wiring
IMPACT: MEDIUM
Your home wiring can play a part in slowing down broadband speeds
This can create significant interference within the home, particularly with wiring around phone extension sockets.
If you’re experiencing slow broadband speeds, your home wiring may play a part, but this shouldn’t be used as an excuse by an ISP when they give you a likely speed quote.
Distance from the exchange is more important, and no ISP can give an estimate based on your home’s likely wiring, only its location.
Noise from traffic or electrical equipment
IMPACT: LOW
Noise from traffic or electrical equipment can have a small impact
This is less likely to be the root cause of slow speeds, but it can make a difference if electrical goods around your house are faulty.
If your broadband performance is erratic, consider what’s being used in the house when it slows down.
Short of attempting to connect to the internet on the banks of the M1, it’s unlikely that passing motorway traffic is likely to be a key reason for your slow broadband slow speeds.
Rain and wind
IMPACT: VERY LOW
Only the most extreme weather is likely to affect your internet speeds
Only in extreme cases should the elements have an effect on your internet speeds, and even then it’s likely to be minimal.
Adverse weather may increase the problems on an existing line fault, but short of a monsoon, it’s unlikely that the elements can entirely account for a slow service.
If an ISP tells you over the phone that they can’t give you a speed estimate since the weather can play its part, explain to them that you would like your speed estimate based on your home’s location.
Busy websites
IMPACT: ISOLATED
Busy websites are rarely the main reason your internet connection always seems slow
It’s true that when there are an unusually high number
of visitors to any one website, it can cause the website to run slowly.
Similarly, websites with busy flash tools and video content can easily slow down your internet browser.
Still, this shouldn’t be used by an ISP as a general reason for why your overall internet access speeds seem slow.
Multiple users in the house
IMPACT: MEDIUM
Lots of people in your house connecting at once can slow down your broadband speed
When several people are sharing a broadband connection and are all using the internet at once, it can certainly slow down internet speeds.
If a laptop, a tablet and a smart TV are all accessing the web at once, that’s potentially a lot of information being downloaded.
But this can’t always account for slow speeds, so if you feel your service is suffering, test your speeds with only one device connected at a time.
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- Broadband reviews – the ISPs rated, and hated, by Which? members
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Mr Eric Stewart
I’ve found that when my Broadband speed is getting slow, after turning my computers off completely, then back on, I then De-Fragment my main drives, then repair Disc Permissions, the speed usually returns back to normal.
There are lots of free Speed Checkers available in your area if you just Google for them. Good Luck
Tony Green
Until recently i was employed by a major UK telecoms provider involved in the network design for Britains broadband. So if i may clarify one or two points?
Distance from the exchange; Yes important if your network has not been upgraded with fibre overlay. If it has been upgraded then distance from the new green cabinet (Dslam) to your house is important-preferably less than 1Km. If your exchange has not been upgraded yet then you should complain as existing copper cabinets are sometimes fed by different cables which in turn have different losses which in turn affects broadband speed.
Home wiring can have a big impact as long and poor wiring acts as an aerial picking up interference and severely degrade speeds. In ideal world a short as possible cable from the master socket to the router.
Talking of routers, position is important and configure it to 2.4Gz assuming your computer is less than 4 years old. Going wireless will always knock down speeds, if a permanent desktop consider connecting direct from router to computer via Cat5 lead.
Busy websites; Different broadband providers operate different “contention ratio’s” In laymen’s you are bundled together with other users at the exchange and share a high speed link. Obviously at peak times the more users bundled together or higher contention ratio then more likely lower individual speed. Again complain or change your broadband provider.
surfer-dude
Distance from the exchange only matters if you are a DSL customer.
This is totally different for cable (virgin media) customers who don’t typically have this issue.
To correct a previous post, configuring wireless for 5ghz (typically works with newer devices – watch for apple hardware ad it isn’t always 5ghz compatible) reduces interference and improves speed.
Final comment not mentioned in this article is “traffic management” of your connection at busy periods. This is basically slowing your speeds at the ISP.
Adrian Bond
I’ve had my ups and down’s with a certain well known ADSL Broadband Provider, with the down’s due to ageing copper wiring, but a reported speed of about 6Mb is what most people should be able to get, especially with the Fibre roll-out (I’m a good 1/2 km of wiring and 7 manholes from our green box.)
What I am angry about, though, is the UKs cable provider that still hasn’t woken up to home-workers over VPNs. This is affecting 4 of my Cable Connected colleagues that doesn’t affect any of my ADSL colleagues (or myself). They boast a cable connection of 30+Mb on their own machines, but less than 1Mb for a dodgy VPN that often fails.
I know that they’ve on just woken up to all-in-one Modem/Router hubs for its customers, but can Which? speak up for us and rattle their cages over this?
Ty
Jollytronics
Copper? Try aluminium! I live in a residential area constructed in the 1960s, and much of the original underground cable remains. I’m also on the last remaining working pair from the street. (BT won’t renew until this also fails.) Add to this the fact that I’m about 3 miles from the exchange, my downstream speed averages about 3Mb/S. It’s worse in hot weather when cable losses (and hence errors) increase due to resistance.
anthony blackmore
We had aluminium cables. In a ditch, not a conduit, and had to be spliced when farmer, cleaning the ditch, cut it. So we had ali-copper splice-ali, which didn’t help.Over 4 km from Boroughbridge exchange. But BT were persuaded to relay most of the distance in copper in a conduit, so we now get broadband of a sort! But the old ali cables are still there for anyone wanting a second line.
AB
stellab
If you are unfortunate enough to live in an area yet to be reached by modern technology and suffer from slow broadband (ours was 0.3Mbps) there is a solution if you are prepared to put in a bit of research and effort – community wi-fi. There are companies out there who can arrange a radio link between an area with high speed broadband and more remote communities. Search for such companies on the web and canvass your local community for interest in such a scheme. In our case it required between about 30-50 subscribers minimum to be economically viable. In some areas local authority schemes already exist to assist both in practical and financial terms.
I won’t bore you with all the technical details of how it works but in our case we could expect to receive speeds of up to 20MBps for a fairly competitive price. In the event our scheme did not actually go ahead because BT stepped in at the 11th hour by upgrading us to fibre to cabinet. Did our community plan put the pressure on BT to do that? We shall probably never know but at the end of the day our village got high speed broadband with only a little community effort and no actual financial cost. Even though, in the circumstances I cannot personally vouch for the effectiveness of community wi-fi, during my research and planning I contacted other groups who have succesfully set up such schemes and I inspired a friend in a neighbouring area to do so and that is working well.
Barbara Casey
I am very interested in the community broadband as here in the Lake District in the rural areas we have pathetically slow broadband speeds.
BT have been saying for years that they will upgrade the exchanges but nothing ever happens.
Perhaps if we like stellab could say we were going dpwn that route it may spur them on to do the upgrade.
I should be grateful if anyone could give details of companies/groups who can improve local broadband speeds.
I may add that I pay top dollar from Sky for this slow broadband but as they explain they have to rent the line from BT at, wait for it, £24.99 per month.
Micheal Sword-Daniel
I also live in a rural village that BT refuses to upgrade as it is not economically viable. We get 0.3 to 0.5. This is in the South East of England not far from Brighton where I hear they are on 60 to 80 Mbps. This makes working from home very difficult if not impossible. Government grants to the counties are available specifically to boost rural broadband but again only to the lowest standards on cost grounds. Rural communities are seriously being left behind.
Baron Hardback
60 to 80 Mbps?! Er, more like 0.6 to 0.8Mbps! I’m in BN2 and with Virgin Media, and I can honestly say that the fastest connection I’ve had is 10Mbs (about 6am on a Sunday). The weekday average is about 1-2Mbps.
Andrew Johnson
surfer-dude makes the point that “Distance from the exchange only matters if you are a DSL customer. This is totally different for cable (virgin media) customers who don’t typically have this issue.”
This is also my experience. I have a cable contract with Virgin Media for 10 Mb/s and achieve actual download speeds higher than 9.5 Mb/s. By upgrading my contract, Virgin offer 30 Mb/s to my address. The most that ADSL-based providers can provide is 2.5 Mb/s.
I am bemused by Which?’s advice on broadband switching (Which? Sep 2012) which gives Virgin Media a 3-star rating for both cable & LLU connections as against 4-star ratings for a number of ADSL-based providers. I can only assume that these are averages. The Which? report does state “To find out what speed you’ll receive at your address, contact your provider”, but this is in the small print at the foot of the table. I would have thought that this advice should be emphasised in the body of the report. Many of my friends & neighbours have subscribed to broadband services without checking on actual speeds for their address, some on the basis of Which? reports and have been very disappointed.
Gonzo
I’m with O2, who advertised that I might get a maximum of 20Mb/s but due to distance from the exchange would only receive 5Mb/s. As I was getting just under 1Mb/s, I called their helpdesk. A very helpful technician at their end talked me through some tests and it emerged that it was the age of my telephones wiring and sockets causing the problem.
She told me to take the front off my main socket and plug my telephone line into the “test socket”, which is hidden there. Doing this enabled me to reach about 4Mb/s, confirming her judgement on the age problem.
Others of you may like to try this. There are no technical issues in taking the front off the socket; just undo the two screws.