Achieved vs advertised broadband speeds: Sky falls while Virgin is on the up

Virgin Media has come top of the league for delivering on its speed promises to customers. Point Topic has compared the advertised downstream speed sold to consumers by ISPs to the speed that they believe they receive to reveal the Achieved Speed Perception Index (ASPI).

It shows that Virgin customers believe they are getting closer to the speed advertised by their operator than packages from any other major ISP. All the other major ISPs have improved in customer perception as well. Sky, which was top of the pile early in the year, is the only ISP to have suffered a downturn.

Figure 1: ASPI – ratio of advertised to achieved speeds reported for major ISPs (2Mbps+ packages and reported speeds)

Analysis from Point Topic’s recent consumer broadband surveys* shows that Tiscali and BT have also significantly improved on their promise to delivery ratio.

“The damage to Sky seems to be mostly in its 8 and 16Mbps packages, where take-up has increased but reported downstream speeds have decreased in proportion,” says Oliver Johnson, CEO at Point Topic.

Overall consumers believe that the broadband speeds experienced are getting closer to the promises of the operators in up to 16Mbps downstream segment when compared to 6 months previously. Speeds over 20Mbps appear to be less achievable compared to the previous data.

However over 20Mbps is where ADSL2+ and cable packages increase their significance in the UK. Speeds experienced by cable users approach advertised speeds in packages advertised over 20Mbps more frequently than in the case of DSL services where there are significant technical barriers to achieving high end performance.

“Consumers still regard speed as a key benchmark of their ISP experience and are less likely to leave an ISP that lives up to expectations. It can be dangerous to promise more than can be delivered and operators appear, for the most part, to be taking this to heart,” concludes Johnson.

*BBUS Consumer surveys 5 and 6. Jan and July 2008, 6000+ respondents per survey. Conducted for Point Topic by Ipsos MORI and YouGov.

***END***

For more information and associated charts and tables, please contact:

Point Topic:            Oliver Johnson

Email:      oliver {at} point-topic(.)com

Tel.        +44 (0) 20 3301 3303

About Point Topic

http://www.point-topic.com

Point Topic is an analyst company focusing entirely on broadband. Point Topic’s international services have a global reputation for providing the most up-to-date and authoritative user statistics, supplier profiles and applications reports on DSL, FTTx, cable and other broadband services worldwide.

Point Topic, reg. in England 3503830.  61 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X  8TL.