Ofcom reveals lagging broadband speeds

A report published on Tuesday by Ofcom, Britain's telecoms regulator, highlights the gap between the broadband speeds that Internet companies advertise and the online experiences of their customers. The report, the first to quantify the gap, compares the speeds of the nine largest fixed-line Internet service providers. Speeds are important because more and more people want to watch video over the Internet, on services such as the BBC iPlayer and Google's YouTube. The most common broadband packages in the UK are those offering download speeds of "up to" 8 megabits per second. Ofcom found that Tiscali and AOL, both owned by Carphone Warehouse, supplied average download speeds of 3.2-3.7Mbps and 3.3-3.9Mbps respectively in April to customers on the packages offering up to 8Mbps. Ofcom found that AOL, BT, Orange and Tiscali had capacity constraints in their networks that meant Internet customers suffered slower broadband speeds at peak usage times. BT described Ofcom's report as "unreliable", adding: "BT Retail provides broadband to customers in rural areas?.?.?.?this means we have customers whose lines are at the limit of broadband service, with resulting lower average speeds."