Broadband

OFCOM have today published a voluntary code of practice for the advertising and selling of broadband products, designed to reduce consumer confusion especially about speed of services. Some 37 ISPs have signed up at the time of writing, representing about 90% of the market. Signatories are expected to fully implement the letter and spirit of the code within 6 months.

The main points are :-

• providing customers at the point of sale with an accurate estimate of the maximum speed that the line can support, whether it is in the shop, over the internet or on the phone;
• resolving technical issues to improve speed and offering customers the choice to move onto a lower speed package when estimates given are inaccurate;
• ensuring all sales and promotion staff have a proper understanding of the products they are selling so they can explain to their customers the meaning of the estimates provided at the point of sale; and
• providing consumers with information on usage limits and alerting customers when they have breached them.

The code falls short of requiring ISPs to declare the available network capacity per user or the contention ratio so it will still be difficult to assess how generously provided a network is in advance of using it.

The first point may come as a suprise to many as Samknows has provided line speed estimates for several years using publicly available data from BT and other sources. Most ISP websites use line speed estimators as a part of their on-line ordering process but there are a few exceptions, and it appears that the bigger problem is probably telephone, doorstep or retail shop selling where the desire to capture the sale sometimes exceeds the salesperson’s understanding or realism about the actual service.

Many ADSL ISPs do not have pricing based on speed so some of the second point is probably moot, and the “I’m paying for 8M and not getting it” brigade will still have to do some self education.

It will be good to see ISPs giving useful advice on improving line speeds and resolving problems however the sort of call centre operative who asks you to “clear your cookies” or says “none of the exchanges in Derby can do more than 2M” is probably beyond hope.

The clarity on usage limits, FUPs, speed restrictions, capping etc will be generally welcomed but it remains to be seen what prominence the information is given and how weaselly the wording is in practice.

In the Code the various speeds are defined in some detail :-

1. headline or advertised speed - This is the speed that ISPs use to describe the packages that they offer to consumers. They are often described as ‘up to’ speeds but these are often only a guide as to the speed an ISP can provide and at what price.
2. access line speed - This refers to the maximum speed of the data connection between the broadband modem and the local exchange or cable head end. This constitutes the maximum speed a consumer will be able to experience.
3. actual throughput speed - This is the actual speed that a consumer experiences at a particular time when they are connected to the internet. This figure is often dependent on factors such as the ISP’s network, its traffic shaping and management policy, the number of subscribers sharing the network at the same time and the number of people accessing a particular website.
4. average throughput speed - This is an average of actual throughput speed for each different broadband product offered by an ISP.

We are also pleased to see that training of staff is given a high priority as the 1st principle of the code :-

1. The ISPs must use their best endeavours to procure that all of their representatives (including all of their officers and employees and any agents or sub-contractors) involved in selling or promoting their broadband services are trained appropriately and that they have sufficient understanding of the products and services they are promoting and selling.

We look forward to seeing the improvement, but suspect this will be a long and slow journey. Achieving “sufficient understanding” in a call centre with a high staff turnover or on another continent may be simply unachievable in practice.

ISPs will be required to display clear information on the details of their product as follows :-

Fair usage policies and usage limits

1. The ISPs should publish, in a clear and easily accessible form, any criteria they use for determining breaches of its fair usage policy (e.g. total usage, specific percentage of users etc).
2. The ISPs should publish, in clear and easily accessible form, the actions they intend to take should a user exceed a usage limit or breach a fair usage policy (e.g. the size of any extra charges or nature of any speed restrictions etc).
3. Where it is reasonably possible to do so, ISPs should provide a means by which users can measure their usage over the relevant billing period.
4. ISPs in possession of a user’s email address should provide users with email notification when users exceed a usage limit or breach a fair usage policy which informs users about the precise consequences of doing so, e.g. additional costs, information on speed restrictions imposed etc.
5. The ISPs should also consider providing advance notification to subscribers approaching a usage limit.

Traffic management and traffic shaping

1. Where ISPs apply traffic management and shaping policies, they should publish on their website, in a clear and easily accessible form, information on the restrictions applied. This should include the types of applications, services and protocols that are affected and specific information on peak traffic periods.

Such clarity can only be helpful to the consumer trying to make an informed choice. We would have liked to see some fundamental measure of network capacity provided as means of assessing likely quality of service. A few years ago we had 20:1 and 50:1 contention ratios advertised, however these terms have disappeared and the actual contention ratio in current products is now probably far higher. Readers may be surprised to know that some large ISPs only provide 25 kbits/s of network capacity per end user, so if you have a 4M connection the contention at that point is 160:1.

High contention ratios do not necessarily mean a slow service, but does point to the need for ISPs to manage the demand that its users place on the network - hence the proliferation of caps, traffic shaping, FUP and other policies to prevent a few users running off with the whole network capacity. Ultimately it is the economics that rule the roost, if a network costs £100 per month per Mbit/s to provide then an end user isn’t going to get much capacity for £14.99 per month.

For more information, the original ten page Ofcom document is available here.

Tags: OFCOM