Broadband Tax and Real Speeds Confuse the UK Consumers

The British government has threatened the landline users of the country with an annual tax of 6 GBP, mainly with a view to expand their broadband comparison network. This has been amidst a new technology’s claim that the present network only delivered half of the committed speeds.

The tax, which is expected to be introduced by April will go on until 2017. This tax has been proposed mainly to support the upcoming super-fast broadband network of the country based on fibre-optic, which is said to be faster than the copper wire system used by many operators like BskyB and th BT. A research published in the Sunday Times by Thinkbroadband said that companies like the Virgin Media have been using fibre optics and were still providing only half the advertised speed, de-facto.

Virgin Media’s 50 Mbps, which is Britain’s fastest speed available at present that cost about 46GBP a month, provides only 19.2Mbps as average speed. Meanwhile, the 20 Mbps service of the UK ISP, even while charging GBP 31 a month provides only 9.3Mbps speeds in real. The 10 Mbps service tagged GBP31 a month has delivered only 5.8Mb according to the research.

However, Virgin Media has in an attempt to refute the test figures, have complained that these speed test were misleading as many clients were getting the advertised speed. In spite of these protests ,Virgin Media accepts Thinkbroadband as one of the approved speed testers in the country. A member of the steering group Francesco Caio says in a report to Digital Britain that there will always be a gap between the real speed enjoyed by the people and the advertised speed. He was of the belief that by upgrading the network the country’s overall speed could be improved.

O2 and BSkyB copper wire networks according to the speed tests, provided a less reliable speed. O2’s advertised 20Mb service only provided 8.8Mbps as BSkyB’s 16Mbps service’s average rate was 5.9Mbps according to the tests. The former chief executive of cable and wireless, Fransesco Caio tipped the government to give detail knowledge about the speeds that can be realistically achieved by the customers. By doing this, the customers would be well placed to decide, based on the quality of service than the advertised speeds.

The government is planning to develop the country’s broadband network and has promised to give 2Mbps speed of universal broadband to all households in the UK by 2012. Experts say that it is already too slow and by 2012, a 2Mbps service would be quiet stodgy.