I have to suggest that any one that is happy with Virgin is ether very very very lucky or it is a made up comment from the company. I pay £25 a month for what is meant to be 4mb but after checking it for several months now it is hardly ever over 1mb and never over 3mb. It is theft plain and simple

martin, glasgow,

Last year my broadband service seemed very slow so I started to monitor the speed several times a day. I created a chart with the results. Often my "Up to 8 Mbps" was 0.05 Mbps.

Check out the resulkts at,
http://www.peterloud.co.uk/talktalk/Talktalk_Broadband.html

Peter Loud, Milton Keynes,

Tiscali are if not the worsed. I'm on Max, and used to get 5.5Mb no matter what time of day or night. Now it different, I'm only getting 860kbps to 2.5Mb, they say that's all my line is capable of, and I'm only 800METERS away from exchange. They even had he cheek to send me a letter "advising" me to DOWNGRADE to 2Mb.

Even BT say I should be getting at least DOUBLE what i'm getting now, but Tiscali in their infinate wisdom disagree.
I'm looking for pastures new.

easy, Blackpool, UK

I see this survey was tested in "more than 300 households" - hardly a relevant study really !! I have been with Virgin for about 3 years now, & was always advised that I would never get full speed due to the distance from the exchange. I'm on an 8mb deal, speeds average around 3mbs.The only problems I've ever had have been with the phone lines, & Virgin have always been great at getting BT to sort this ASAP, & compensating me immediately. A prime example was a couple of years ago when both my phone & broadband went down after very high winds. Called BT, they said couldn't get an engineer out for 10 days due to the widespread problems. Called Virgin, & an hour later BT were on my mobile asking if it would be convenient for an engineer to call the following morning !!
I agree with Paul in York, it's BT who need to get into the 21st Century.

Richard, Paignton, Devon

I use BE and receive around 6-8mb because of the distance from the exchange so whilst they offer 24mb this is a lot better than the 2mb on 8mb service I used to have. It is not the ISP that is to blame as such but the ageing infrastructure, can we really expect BT to rip up every bit of Copper for Fibre Optic?
Of Course not, it would be impractical and vastly expensive, instead we just have to come up with new technology, such as cheaper Satelite broadband, with an ADSL up load.

John Nelhams, London, UK

I connected to Be Broadband earlier in the year and they give 24 meg, BUt I get about 10... So would say if you want speed and good service go with them

Fergus, London,

Ofcom, the OFT and the ASA should be investigating this issue now, not in a years time when all of these crooks have made their fortunes and disappeared off into the sunset !!!

I would suggest that only the speeds acheived by 75% or more of an ADSL providers customers may be quoted as a realistic figure. If an ADSL provider has 75% of customers who have a 960Kbps then they will obviously be forced out of the market, allowing the better performing providers to prosper. Okay so some of us aren't going to get the best performance, we can accept that, but if someone says 'up to 8Mbps' then it is obvious that we are going to expect closer to 8Mbps than 960Kbps !!!!!

Dave, St Albans, Herts

I paid for 20Mbits/sec from Virgin Media , but only received 4Mbits/sec. I called them up in July and got a free new modem that now works at +16Mbits/sec.

Lyndsay Williams, Cambridge, UK

After 3 years with a particular ISP at 2Mbs we were livid to find that they had left us on 2Mbs for the last year when we could have been on 8Mbs. We upgraded to 8Mbs (our line is good and we're right next to the exchange) and our line should get 8. We got exactly the same speeds; sub 1Mbs as before (never ever above 2) with dialupeqsue speeds at peak times and a small cap. We dropped them as an ISP and found another one. We're now on upto 16Mbs. Typical Speeds are 3-4Mbs which I'm very happy with as we can now watch video and there's no cap. When it's in a really good mood it's done 12Mbs on downloads and speedtests.

I just wish BT would get a move on with 21CN.

Paul, York, UK

Orange users are submitting their speeds on a website which is publishing the speeds, categorised by UK regions related to tehir telephone exchange. This I think gives a much clearer picture of what speeds people are getting. The regional speeds are on www.orangeproblems.co.uk ( http://www.orangeproblems.co.uk ) if you want to take a look!

From what I know, this is the biggest survey of broadband speeds conducted on any one individual ISP - and the speeds are nowhere near the up to 8Meg speeds promised in most regions!

I'll be keeping an eye on it as it's useful info - showing that the biggest companies are not necessarily the best!

Tim Shaw, liverpool, united kingdom

Couldn't agree more. When I upgraded from 2meg to 8meg with BT, I was told that my maximum linespeed was 6.5meg, but I have never, ever seen speeds as fast as that. Most of the time (ie 95% of the time) it's no faster then when I was on the 2meg tariff. Just occasionally, it gets up to 3-4 meg, but that's as fast as it gets.

Doesn't stop BT from charging the full amount every quarter, though.

Bill Roberts, Pencoed,

Caveat emptor! In my experience the advertising says "UP TO xMbps". If the punter took the trouble to ring BT (or whoever is their landline supplier they would be told the maximum bandwidth capacity of their line.

I was offered 'up to 16mbps' but one call to BT told me the line would not support more than 2.7.

David Garfield, London, UK