ISPreview Study Finds UK People Want to End Misleading Ads for Broadband Speed

London, United Kingdom, August 03, 2016 --(PR.com)-- A new online survey of 1,267 ISPreview.co.uk readers (*), which is a consumer information website that covers developments in the United Kingdom's Internet access and telecoms market, has claimed that 81% think the way ISPs advertise their broadband speeds is "misleading" and 89% want tougher rules to tackle it.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has already announced a new study, which will examine whether the broadband speed claims being made by Internet Service Providers are fair.

At present the ASA only requires that the headline speed being promoted by an ISP is achievable by at least 10% of their customers and all speed claims must be preceded with an "up to" qualifier, as well as a description of any caveats that could affect the connection's performance.

However, Ed Vaizey MP, the Government's former Digital Economy Minister, recently called for a "crack down on how providers advertise their speeds" and suggested that "at least 75% of people should be getting the speeds that the broadband providers are advertising." Most UK consumers seem to agree.

Question - What % headline speed rule would you pick?

Option - (Result)

75% Speed Rule - (48.3%)
50% Speed Rule - (24.3%)
Other method - (14.5%)
10% Speed Rule (current method) - (7.8%)
25% Speed Rule - (4.8%)

"Most of our readers show a clear desire for change, with only around 8% supporting the current rule. Never the less we must not forget that broadband speeds can fluctuate due to all sorts of reasons, such as traffic management policies, long copper lines, peak time network congestion. Sometimes even issues like slow home WiFi or poor home wiring can play a part and ISPs cannot control those," said ISPreview.co.uk's Founder, Mark Jackson.

"On top of that many ISPs would perhaps point out that they are beholden to Openreach's (BT) national copper network and its many limitations, yet Openreach are not directly held to account by related rules and so only ISPs suffer the main punishment when performance drops below a certain level, even if it's not always their fault," concluded Jackson.

* Online poll conducted between 20th June to 29 July 2016 with 1,267 Internet connected readers of the ISPreview website.