Your fears confirmed: "up to" broadband speeds are

[Red Squirrel]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/20...-advertised.ars

Broadband providers in the US have long hawked their wares in "up to" terms. You know—"up to" 10Mbps, where "up to" sits like a tiny pebble beside the huge font size of the raw number.

In reality, no one gets these speeds. That's not news to the techno-literate, of course, but a new Federal Communications Commission report (PDF) shines a probing flashlight on the issue and makes a sharp conclusion: broadband users get, on average, a mere 50 percent of that "up to" speed they had hoped to achieve.

After crunching the data, FCC wonks have concluded that ISPs advertised an average (mean) "up to" download speed of 6.7Mbps in 2009. That's not what broadband users got, though.

"However, FCC analysis shows that the median actual speed consumers experienced in the first half of 2009 was roughly 3 Mbps, while the average (mean) actual speed was approximately 4 Mbps," says the report. "Therefore actual download speeds experienced by US consumers appear to lag advertised speeds by roughly 50 percent."

The agency used metrics data from Akamai and comScore to make this determination, though a more accurate direct measurement is currently taking place under FCC auspices. The more accurate measurement will put small boxes in people's homes for weeks at a time, recording actual line speeds in thousands of US homes at all times of the day and night. But, until that data set is complete, Internet traffic data from Akamai and comScore will have to suffice.

(more)

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5179, old post ID:39459

[Red Squirrel]

I pretty much knew this, working for an ISP myself. The advertised speed is basically the speed from your modem, to the ISP's equipment. In some cases many users connect to that same piece of equipment, and there is a low bandwidth uplink that cant actually support all those users at once.

The philosophy is that not all users will be using it at once.

But this is also why internet is cheap. What I do find odd in that article though is that graph. When I go on forums where people post their net speeds most people get 50+ mbps.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5179, old post ID:39460

[Triple6_wild]

But this is also why internet is cheap. What I do find odd in that article though is that graph. When I go on forums where people post their net speeds most people get 50+ mbps.

Graph looks like it's all of those users are paying for 10mbps but only getting 1-2 which is very sad.

Looks like your seeing the graph as what people pay for.
Being a techwise person also means your probably gonna be on forums that interest you. Similar people are also gonna have similar interest so seeing alot of people with heavy connections doesn't mean much in that case. Most people like to save money if they can and grandma checking email doesn't need 100mbps, Nether does soccer mom doing online schooling, Kids arn't paying the bill even if they are a heavy user so if mom and pop don't need it. etc, etc, And most of these same users probably never even ran a speed test on there internet. What you see with 50mbps is defiantly not average

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5179, old post ID:39464

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah could be that too, tech forums would tend to have more people with 100+ mbps connections. I would just figure if one ISP offers that in a certain area, then all of them would have to offer it to stay competitive. Some people pay like 20/mo for 100mbps in the states. They are way more advanced then we are here.

Or maybe it's all those 100mbps users taking bathwith from the 10mbps users haha.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5179, old post ID:39466