Broadband

At last! The great broadband scam is being curtailed by Ofcom, and not a moment too soon. The old ‘up to 8mb’ line so beloved of broadband providers has finally come under harsh criticism by Ofcom.

The recommendations are that on purchase, customers are advised of the likely speed they will actually get, and be able to switch to a lower/cheaper/different package if they do not receive that speed in the first two weeks.

However, what they don’t address, and which is a bigger problem for me, is line contention. During the day the speed of my broadband at home (Tiscali up to 8mb, never more than 4mb) is absolutely fine. But in the evenings, and at weekends, it is pitifully slow. I mean so slow that simple web pages like the Google home page won’t load. The reason is that you share your broadband ‘pipe’ with, usually, 30-50 other people. Therefore, if everyone uses it at the same time (such as evenings and weekends) the speed drops dramatically.

As more and more people use broadband, I would like to see companies do something about this. My previous broadband provider, plus.net, had a specific policy whereby they prioritised normal web traffic, such as viewing websites, so we were always able to check the news at a decent speed and check our emails, no matter what time it was. The trouble is, with so many online TV and video services, streaming is becoming more popular, and using up loads more bandwidth that was previously the case. I’m not interesting in streaming - but I am interested in fast email, and fast browsing.