Stuart Corner
Saturday, 29 September 2007 08:38
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
The campaign has already met with a swift rejection from ISPs. ComputerActive reported: "ISPs have said they will not change the way they advertise and supply broadband services, despite public support for the Crystal Clear Broadband Campaign. We contacted the leading ISPs, including Orange, BT, Virgin and TalkTalk for comment.
"The ISPs insisted that technical limitations stopped them being able to give consumers a true idea of what speeds could be delivered. BT said it did make it clear to its customers what speeds could feasibly be achieved as it tested the lines. 'We do not believe we are pulling the wool over people's eyes when it comes to broadband speeds. Like all other ISPs we do advertise an 'up to' broadband limit but what a specific customer can get is verbally outlined to them after we test their line,' [A BT spokesman said."
The situation is very similar in Australia. Almost exactly a year ago the ACCC chairman, Graeme Samuel, took issue with misleading broadband advertising and as I commented in this column at the time http://www.itwire.com/content/view/6661/1095/ he was repeating a message he had given two years earlier.
That latest initiative by the ACCC resulted in January in the publication of and information paper
Broadband Internet Speed Claims and the Trade Practices Act 1974 developed to assist internet service providers comply with the Trade Practices Act 1974 when advertising broadband Internet services and prevent consumers being misled as to the speeds achievable on various technologies.
However, this has not solved all the problems. In those guidelines, the ACCC stated that an ISP should describe the maximum speeds it can provide only where network tests indicate that those speeds will actually be provided to consumers by that ISP, and can continue to be provided over time as use of these services grow (ie there is sufficient capacity in the backhaul network to match that of the total of individual customer services in use at any one time.
