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Customer experience firm Espirito has completed a five month study that has found ‘real life’ speeds of mobile broadband far removed from the advertised speeds on the websites of the country’s top mobile broadband providers.
The average speed from the test was actually under 1 Mbps, far slower than most ADSL connections and a far cry from the 7.2 Mbps advertised by some providers. While some providers only claim maximum speeds of 3.6 Mbps, the fastest agents in the study only managed a rather meagre 1.8 Mbps – less than the speed proposed by the government as the minimum for nationwide broadband access.
The data was collected by handset based application ‘Isposure’ and was used on over 1,300 handsets between December 2008 and May 2009, recording well over a million test results. On average, the application noted a 20% performance drop in speeds during peak times.
Although these speeds are disappointing, they aren’t unexpected. We’ve been advising consumers to be careful of maximum speed advertisements for some time and to be careful about selecting a provider which can offer them good coverage.
There is some good news for people on a mobile broadband deal though – the data suggested that mobile broadband speeds have risen by 11% since Christmas last year. However, the improvement was not equal across all of the providers in the study which included all the big names in mobile broadband including Orange, O2, 3, T-mobile and Vodaphone.
Sadly, data concerning the individual results of these companies has not been published – something that has become a trend in recent independent surveys in the sector.
Concluding their research, Espirito said that currently “No mobile broadband ISP equalled an equivalent ADSL fixed line service provider in terms of overall performance.”
While we hope mobile broadband speeds continue to increase, it would be nice to see the Advertising Standards Authority do something about adverts that are claiming speeds that are simply pipe dreams for most users of the service.
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