I have a question

[hemlock2005]

Why do ISP's and service providers feel that supplying a user with 10% of the service they are paying for is acceptable? You do a line test etc before you sign up, that indicates the speeds you can expect, and then you never see them, not even close, well not unless you feel like getting up at 3.30am to do a quick speedtest in the nano second oportunity you have to get something remeotely close to what you should be getting.

If all Shell petrol stations only gave you 10% of the fuel you paid for they'd be sued and closed down, if Curry's only delivered 10% of the TV you ordered they'd not be allowed to get away with it, so why in gods name do ISP's get away with giving you a small percentage of the service you pay for and then have the nerve to tell you it's an acceptable level?

If Currys take your money they have to have the rescources in place to fullfill their oblibgation, same for filling stations, shops, cafe's in fact everything I can think of except ISP's who are able to take your money and then deliver a small percentage due to them not having the rescources in place to provide the level of service required at all times.

Summats wrong somewhere.........

[Reines]

Well the difference is speeds advertised by ISPs say "up to" or "max", where as petrol stations don't advertise as offering "up to" X amount of fuel. Also the fact that petrol stations and Currys sell their product at a profit. If ISPs were to charge customers as much (or more, for a profit) than it costs for the bandwidth to guarantee the speeds, everyone would complain it was far too expensive, and a huge amount of capacity would be wasted when people weren't using their full 8mbit.

The analogies you're thinking of aren't quite relevant, you need to think of services not products. If everyone was to turn all their electric devices on at once, the power grid wouldn't be able to handle it. If everyone started running all their taps full speed I doubt the water supply would manage for long either. Same goes for phone calls (hence people often have issues at new year etc), and even roads.

Where you do have a point though is with what is considered acceptable. With broadband it's common for speeds to drop in the evening and weekends and Enta (and others) seem to think that's okay. If people only got a trickle of water or gas, or couldn't make phone calls at certain times of the day, that wouldn't be considered okay and I'm pretty sure some action would be taken.