Europe's broadband 25 percent slower than ISPs promise

It's been long known that advertised broadband speeds rarely match up to the reality, but it turns out the disparity across Europe is in the region of 25 percent.

Consumers across the continent get on average three-quarters of the "up to" headline broadband speed advertised by their ISP, according to figures released by the European Commission. The EC survey involved more than 9,000 users in the 27 EU member states, as well as Croatia, Iceland and Norway, in March last year. It found that cable broadband offers the real-world download speeds that are closest to the advertised speeds, at 91.4 percent, while fiber users are likely to get speeds that are 84.4 percent of ISPs' headline speeds. xDSL subscribers however fare the worst, getting speeds around 63.3 percent of their provider's maximum.