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Adverts often show broadband speeds as 'up to 8MB' which implies that customers will receive 8MB, however the speed depends on how far away you live from the exchange. In the majority of cases it would be almost impossible to receive such a speed.

Computeractive magazine asked over 3000 of it's readers to test the speed of their broadband online and compared it to what they expected it to achieve. A broadband checker toll was added to it developed by Broadband Choices to test the current speed of its reader's broadband service. The tool checked single connections an average of 19 times by downloading a 10MB file, this totaled around 100,000 checks overall.

The survey found that more than half of the broadband subscribers tested received less than half the bandwidth advertised by their ISP. 28% of readers received only a 1/4 of their advertised speed. Customers did not expect the results in some cases to be so low, even though they understood the advertised speed of 'up to 8MB' was not always achievable the results where still shocking. One Sky Broadband subscriber living nearby to the exchange was paying for a 16 Mbps service but only receiving 9 Mbps.

Computeractive have taken their results to Downing Street along with a petition to stop such unfair actions and misleading information. They would like Ofcom to force ISPs to provide clear information on actual speeds, instead of advertising the maximum speed they should advertise a 'typical' speed, much like the APR on credit cards.

A similar survey was carried out by Which? magazine last month, and found that the average speed of 300 customers tested was just 2.7Mbps. The lowest speed obtained was 0.09Mbps (practically dial-up speed) and the maximum speed came in at just 6.7Mbps.

Which? Informed Ofcom and Trading Standards of their findings and asked them to investigate Broadband based on their results. Ofcom made a statement at the time saying they would monitor the situation. The new survey carried out by it should hopefully prompt an official investigation, which will lead to more honest and clearer broadband advertising.

This and many other articles on mobile phones and the latest mobile phone deals was written by John Gray.

John Gray's writing can often be found at http://www.onecompare.com