We are an independent broadband news and information site helping you to get the most out of your broadband. We pioneered broadband speed testing and provide a range of tools to help you diagnose, troubleshoot and fix any broadband problems.
Have a look at our latest broadband maps tool or visit our broadband notspot & slow-spot site
Latest Blog Article: Poll Results: Broadband Universal Service Commitment
Rutland County Council, which covers a mere 17,000 homes and businesses, has signed a £3 million contract with BT, to deliver fast, affordable fibre broadband to 90% of Rutland by the end of 2013.
It was known that Rutland was going to sign with BT back in March, but now the final public contract signing has taken place at Oakham Castle more detail on the roll-out plans have been published.
Openreach is to deploy its FTTC solution which is available as a wholesale service, this currently offers a maximum of 80 Mbps downstream and 20 Mbps upstream. The actual speed received is governed by the distance between a property and the cabinet. The roll-out will not stop at the 90% figure, as it appears Rutland County Council has access to additional funding that should let them push coverage to a level of 97%. The remaining 500 or so properties will see their connection speeds uplifted to 2 Mbps or faster, by the end of 2013.
The funding gap that the newspapers and tech press got worried about is being addressed with BT adding £800,000 to the project. Rutland County Council are contributing £2.2 million of which £710,000 was from the BDUK fund.
While FTTC is seen by some as old-fashioned and out of date, given the funding everyone wants to spend full fibre is not feasible. Where people are willing to pay the additional costs (you will need to live in an area with FTTC) once FTTP on Demand from Openreach is released, they will be able to get a full fibre connection installed to a property in 2013. While the cost is not fixed estimates of £500 to £1500 abound, and there may be options to spread the payments over the term of a contract. Rutland Telecom connected Hambleton in Rutland with a full fibre service in 2011, with a £50 monthly fee (25GB usage allowance) and £1000+ setup costs.
Openreach is keen to drive take-up in areas where it has full fibre (Fibre to the Premises) available, and while many will focus on the fastest services, these are also the most expensive. The Generic Ethernet Access 80/20 product which was recently launched in FTTC areas, is also available on FTTP, the advantage being that the connection speed is guaranteed.
The standard price from Openreach for the 80 Mbps download, 20 Mbps upload service is £18.34+VAT per month, an offer starts on 11th June that will see this reduce to £8.95+VAT per month, and the £80 activation fee is also reduced to £60. There are many other price elements to be added, but it means the FTTP service will be the same price as the FTTC service for the duration of the offer.
So far the full fibre service with its limited footprint has seen limited adoption from retail providers, hopefully the rash of lower priced deals will see more providers offering it as an option.
Full fibre connections are the future, and even Openreach appears to recognise this with its fibre only exchange trial. It took some years for majority of the BT board and management to accept first generation broadband, and the cycle of caution is repeating itself. Even the alt-net arena is following the same cycle, just rather than copper fed wi-fi hotspots, the alt-nets are embarking on more fibre rich deployments.
Every three months we publish the quarterly results for the main providers, as well as providing an indicator of where the growth in broadband numbers if coming from, the reports can also provide an indicator of a companies plans for growth.
We are a little late with the Orange (Everything Everywhere) results for the quarter ending 31st March 2012, and finding the actual release took a few clicks, and downloading a zip file which had the PDF buried in it. The only reason we spotted that they had been released was Mark at ISPreview.
In terms of fixed broadband, there is no change, with customers remaining static at 713,000. This is the third quarter where numbers have remained static, which after the steady decline since 2007 is likely to be seen as reasonable performance. Interestingly the summary states "We have achieved double digit fixed broadband revenue growth year on year with 90% of new customers in Q1 taking fixed broadband, line rental and mobile.". Which means that where Orange is getting new sign-ups, they are buying more services than those customers who are leaving.
The weekly ASA adjudications have been published, and while the adjudication is upheld against TalkTalk in this case, the fact that it revolves around the operators website based line speed checker that all providers signed up to the Ofcom Voluntary Speeds Code of Practice need to use on their website has implications across the industry.
"Ad
A speed checking facility, for a broadband service, was viewed on 10 December 2011 on the talktalk.co.uk website. When the complainant entered his postcode, it stated 'Your estimated speed 3.8 Meg Your estimated speed range is between 2.1 and 5.3meg ...'
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the ad was misleading, because he was a Talk Talk customer and had been informed that the maximum speed available to him was less than 2.1 Mbit/s.
Assessment
Upheld
We noted that some speed issues experienced by consumers could relate to their own particular circumstances and, to that end, the complainant's issue might be a customer service one, rather than an indication of the general reliability of the line checker. However, because we had not seen directly relevant evidence to support the impression that was likely to be taken from the ad – that the speed checker was indicative of the likely actual throughput speeds consumers would achieve in the majority of cases – we concluded that the ad breached the Code. "Extract from ASA adjudication
The premise of the line checkers is to provide a pre-activation estimate of what a line can achieve, i.e. something that is within the ball-park for a particular phone line. In this case the complainant received an estimate previously that appears to have changed, though looking at the figures it is possible that old estimate received may have been from a time when checkers only ever showed one figure rather than a range. A key point missing from the ASA adjudication, is that the checkers have no influence on what actual speeds you will receive, the checker is simply a database that is mainly fed from Openreach line length data.
Where there is a potential problem for almost all providers now is that the ASA has ruled the checker needs to be very clear whether it is talking about access line speeds, or throughput. The ASA appears to be leaning towards providers having to quote actual throughput speeds. In theory this is easy enough, just reduce any estimate by around 15%, but with the recent advertising changes that say advertised speeds drop, one wonders if this enforced shuffling is more confusing to the general public.
The DSL based services (ADSL, ADSL2+ and VDSL2) are all heavily influenced by the wiring in the home, and even if magically the UK got full fibre overnight, there would be still be broadband speed complaints, as throughput rather than line length would become the biggest factor.
Ofcom has a duty to monitor and regulate broadband providers, and to that end it has carried out a mystery shopper exercise taking place during December 2011 and January 2012. Providers websites and telephone sales were tested as part of the process, but with the BCAP/ASA changes to broadband advertising happening only a few weeks ago it is possible that the landscape has changed significantly.
In the past Ofcom has focused on the big half dozen providers, but for this exercise it has looked at some of the smaller providers, though it has grouped the smaller and medium sized providers together, making it difficult to draw conclusions about an individual provider.
| Percentage of assessments where a speed estimate was/was not provided on the telephone | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Provider | % calls providing a speed estimate | % calls where prompting was needed | % calls ending without a speed estimate | % calls ending without estimate - identified reason | % calls ending without estimate - no reason identified |
| ALL | 93 | 34 | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| Large | 96 | 38 | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| Medium | 93 | 34 | 7 | 3 | 4 |
| Small | 83 | 22 | 17 | 3 | 14 |
| BT Infinity | 90 | 33 | 10 | 3 | 7 |
| BT Total Broadband | 96 | 48 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Karoo | 98 | 22 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| O2 | 96 | 41 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Orange | 91 | 39 | 9 | 7 | 2 |
| Plusnet | 99 | 32 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Sky | 93 | 21 | 7 | 3 | 4 |
| TalkTalk | 95 | 48 | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| Virgin Media (ADSL) | 91 | 34 | 9 | 3 | 6 |
For the observant, the reason Virgin Media (cable) is not in the table because cable providers are not required by the Speeds Code of Practice to provide a speed estimate.
On an initial viewing of the data, things don't look too bad, but when you look at what proportion needed prompting for the sales staff to give some form of speed estimate, it is clear that there is still a lot of working to done in terms of training sales staff, and providing tools that ensure they have the information to hand.
Providers gave various reasons for the lack of estimates, and it seems some sales calls were dealt with as a pre-sales, rather than being an order that was going to procede. This goes against the spirit of the code that providers have signed up that tries to make the provider give an estimate as early in the process as possible. Another problem was that of fully unbundled lines, these become invisible in terms of speed checker information for many providers, which perhaps means there is a case for more work and co-operation between the wholesalers, unbundled operators and the retail providers.
For now BT and TalkTalk have following discussions with Ofcom agreed to address staff training and their sales processes to increase their level of performance in this area.
One of the joys of having broadband is of course that you do not have to deal with sales staff, and can peruse retailers at will using your broadband connection. Ofcom did research this and the summary figures are shown below:
| Analysis of data provided by Ofcom of GFK looking at providers websites | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Provider | % website visits resulting in a speed estimate | % website visits ending without an estimate | % website visits ending without an estimate - identified reason | % website visits ending without an estimate - no reason identified |
| ALL | 87 | 13 | 8 | 5 |
| Large | 95 | 5 | 2 | 3 |
| Medium | 82 | 18 | 11 | 7 |
| Small | 64 | 36 | 17 | 19 |
It seems the results on websites are still less than ideal, though many providers in March/April 2012 revamped their websites, with some removing all speed references, forcing potential customers through their telephone checker system to get a speed estimate.
"Discussions with the Advertising Standards Authority and their Advertising Code-making bodies CAP and BCAP on the clarity of broadband advertising following our response to the CAP and BCAP consultation on reviews of "Up to" and "Unlimited" claims and the publication by CAP and BCAP of guidance in September 2011. The reviews have in our view led to significant improvements in how broadband is advertised, and we continue to have an interest in how ISPs advertise their broadband services to ensure that consumers are given clear, consistent and accurate information."
Ofcom Voluntary Code of Practice on Broadband Speeds: Mystery shopping research
Hopefully the web based shopping will be revisited in the near future, as we feel that some providers are committing the sin of omission by not giving any indication of the technology used or the speed ranges, until the potential customer has given some form of identification, which generally is in the form of a telephone number.
The broadband market is getting more complex with the increasing availability of VDSL2 based services, and it is not clear whether advertising rule changes have improved matters, or the confusion arising means people are spending more time to try and understand the speed issue. Ofcom needs to look closely at the rule changes, given the results from our poll back in April, which ran shortly after the new rules came into effect.
Ofcom in theory has access to lots of data from providers, and should thus be able to produce statistics easily on what services are available to parts of the UK, and an interesting UK wide figure has emerged. To quote exactly "Customers who are unhappy with their current speed could also consider switching to a faster package or provider, particularly if superfast broadband services are available to them (63% of UK households now have access to superfast broadband )."
Inexplicably the figure was buried in amongst the latest round of mystery shopper research published by the telecoms regulator. On immediate viewing the figure looks far too high, as Openreach superfast coverage has only just reached 38% of the UK, and Virgin Media cable services only cover 48% of UK households. The solution seems to be that there is not a total 1:1 mapping between Openreach and the Virgin Media cable network, which some have accused Openreach of having. The 63% figure is feasible if 15 percentage points of the Openreach FTTC and FTTP coverage are outside Virgin Media areas. The actual figure for Openreach outside Virgin Media areas may be a few percentage points lower due to the presence of alt-nets, e.g. Digital Region has a footprint of around 3% of UK households.
Update 20:30 Added a figure for Digital Region, who provide VDSL2 in South Yorkshire via sub-LLU, though their coverage does overlap some Virgin Media and Openreach FTTC areas too.
The date for when the new FTTP 330 Mbps product trial starts from Openreach has previously been announced as 11th June. The Openreach price lists have updated now to provide some pricing information, though it should be remembered these prices only cover getting the data from the home to the exchange where the data is handed over to BT Wholesale or your LLU provider. Crucially to ensure reasonable levels of early adoption there is an offer that will run from 11th June to 31st January 2013.
| Prices as of 11th June 2012 (per month, ex VAT) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Product | Standard Price | Offer Price |
| Up to 330 Mbps / 20 Mbps | £24.61 | £15.61 |
| Up to 330 Mbps / 30 Mbps | £51.61 | n/a |
What jumps out immediately is the difference in the standard price between the 20 Mbps and 30 Mbps upload variants, an extra £27 a month to get the fastest upload speeds. The £80 activation still applies, which is actually very low considering previous reports were that each install including get the fibre the last few metres to the outside wall of a premise took around seven hours.
A big advantage to the full fibre service is that it removes any of the problems that can arise from radio frequency interference and the variability in the local loop speed that forms part of the 'up to' clause is removed. This does not remove the need for 'up to' in advertising, since the actual speeds users experience from their home to the data server in some distant data centre will still vary based on many factors.
The slow drop in fixed broadband customers continues at O2/Be, though a drop of 2,500 is not exactly massive in the financial results for the 1st quarter of 2012. Though as most of the other large providers are showing reasonable levels of subscriber growth, it is clear O2/Be are not attracting the new fixed broadband customers. The number of fixed broadband customers now standing at 617,800.
The drop in retail customers, was actually offset by the growth in wholesale access, which saw an addition of 4,700 customers to 31,400 subscriptions. The fixed telephone service is proving very popular though, growing just under 100,000 lines since the last quarter to 315,800.
No mention of finance or commitment to network upgrades or any date for selling the Openreach FTTC was in the financial statement. Fibre services are mentioned in other countries, Brazil has some 70,000 using fibre services, VDSL in Chile and 177,000 fibre customers in Spain (15% take-up) where Telefonica is the incumbent.
With more and more people ordering up to 80 Mbps and up to 100 Mbps services, the speed limits of 802.11n are sometimes being pushed to the limit. This is where devices like the Devolo HomePlug dLAN 500 devices come into play, allowing people to network around their home, without having to install Ethernet cabling.
We have reviewed the AVTriple+ Starter Kit, and also took the opportunity to speed test some older dLAN 200 units.
In the past we have jokingly suggested that if consumers took to services like proxies and VPNs en-masse to circumvent site blocking, that new laws and licensing may appear. Well the Dutch Court appears to be edging down this path, with an order placed upon The Pirate Party in the country to stop publishing information on how to get around blocking that is in place in the country. One must really wonder now how far will the copyright holders and courts take their course of action.
The Dutch Court has ordered five providers to block access to The Pirate Bay, with a fine of €10,000 for every day beyond the ten days given to implement the block.
The old adage that all publicity is good publicity in terms of raising the profile of a person or product, appears to be holding up with regards to the blocking, as on 1st May, Pirate Bay had 12 million more visitors than ever before.
