There is no greater rip-off being perpetrated on the public than the selling of consumer broadband services. What you sign up for is certainly not what you get.

Here in Rome, I pay Telecom Italia €25 (£18.90) per month for what they enthusiastically advertise as a 20 megabit-per-second (Mbps) line. Out of frustration, I check the speed frequently, logging on to one of the many free broadband speed tests you can find online. The top speed I’ve ever recorded is about 9 Mbps. This is a stark improvement from the slow days of December when I was consistently getting a top seed of just over 3 Mbps, but certainly nowhere near what Telecom Italia advertises. By my calculations, I receive anywhere from nearly half to less than a sixth of what my contract stipulates.

If Telecom Italia were in the soft drink business, I imagine they would be selling anywhere between one and three full cans of soda per six-pack.

Remarkably, the situation is worse in Britain.

According to a recent survey by Broadband Expert, a British outfit that measures Europe’s most dreadfully slow broadband market, the average Briton maxes out at 2.95 Mbps. Bottom of the league table is Tiscali, the survey of 18,558 speed tests reveal, with Tiscali customers clocking in on average at 1.72 Mbps. Be Broadband scores a more reasonable 6 Mbps plus to take the top position.

At 2.95 Mbps, Britain has barely budged from its position at the low end of the world’s most developed nations. According to a global study last autumn by the Information Technology and Innovation Forum (ITIF), Britain had been plodding along at 2.6 Mbps, the group says.

A slow connection is frustrating in itself, but when you consider that you are being enticed into a contract on promises of much higher speeds, the delays are maddening. Consider Tiscali. As Broadband Expert points out, Tiscali advertises superfast download speeds of "up to 8 Mbps" and yet consistently delivers speeds of less than a quarter of that promise.

The phrasing “up to” is the key. Thanks to a recent stern warning from the UK telecoms watchdog Ofcom, ISPs now have to emphasise those two words in their adverts. The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that companies should only claim speeds of “up to 8Mbps” if a significant number of customers would achieve that figure, but there is little evidence that this vague standard is being enforced. Never mind actually delivering the promised speed to all customers, or even a majority of them. No, the industry appears more willing to ratchet up the marketing investment to lure in punters than to spend the money on digging up the streets and improving the speed of the service.

Of course, establishing a uniform broadband speed for a given market is nearly impossible for an ISP. A host of issues – how close you are to the central switch, how many broadband users are between you and that switch, and how many broadband users ahead of you are clogging the line with gigabytes worth of movie downloads – all create a drag on the line, slowing down your surfing experience to even that of your neighbour up the road.

That’s the reality consumers must deal with, but it still does not excuse the fantastic claims endemic in the marketing of broadband. Competition is fierce, which is a good thing for consumers as it naturally keeps prices down, But coinciding with stable and even declining broadband prices across Europe we have seen an escalation in outrageous speed claims by ISPs.

The easiest way to solve this problem is to outlaw disingenuous maximum speed claims. The phrase “up to X Mbps” should be replaced by “an average speed of X Mbps,” and these average speeds should be audited every six months by national regulators to bring a much-needed dose of reality to the market. Under such a scheme, I would suggest, ISPs could only advertise the speeds approved by the national regulator.

Call it honest marketing, something the ISPs seem to have abandoned long ago.

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Bernhard Warner, a freelance journalist and media consultant, writes about technology, the internet and media industries. He can be reached at techscribe@gmail.com

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