Ofcom is once again patting itself on the back for a job well done on its new broadband Code of Practice. “Which? magazine has hailed the code, which comes into force tomorrow, as a broadband speed victory,” the regulator’s homepage proudly proclaims. Utter cobblers.

Let’s look at the detail. The centrepiece of Ofcom’s Code is that broadband providers must “provide consumers at the point of sale with an accurate estimate of the maximum speed that their line can support.” Can you name me one major ISP that hasn’t already been doing this for months? BT has an online ADSL Line Checker that’s been spitting out this information for years.

Even then, knowing your “maximum line speed” is about as much use as knowing the top speed of your car: it’s utterly irrelevant. It’s the actual speed of the connection – what people will see in their day-to-day surfing – that really matters.

(more…)

More than half of Britons haven’t got the first clue whether their broadband connection is dawdling along at dial-up pace or delivering data to their door at warp speed, according to Ofcom’s newly-published (and ironically titled) Consumer Satisfaction report. “The proportion of broadband customers unaware of their connection speeds has continued to grow - 55% were unaware of their connection speed (actual speed),” the report claimed.

Who’s to blame for this widespread ignorance? The ISPs, who continue to advertise “up to” speeds that are often so detached from reality they make the X-Files look like a documentary? Ofcom and its equally toothless cohorts at the Advertising Standards Authority who’ve allowed the ISPs to get away with marketing these fantasy speeds? No, apparently it’s us meddling journalists.

(more…)

We’ve seen recently just how muddled a regulatory body Ofcom seems to be. There was the nonsensical claim that rural households in Britain are as well connected as their urban neighbours, swiftly refuted by a ThinkBroadband.com survey - and anyone who’s ever been outside a major city.

There was the bottling of speed sanctions on ISPs in favour of a laughable broadband code, essentially giving ISPs carte blanche to continue attracting punters’ cash with fantasy headline speeds.

Then there’s the eight weeks Ofcom still expects disputing customers to wait until their case will even be looked at. Not to mention the no-win situation Ofcom’s been manoeuvred into by BT.

But for final damning evidence of Ofcom’s ineffectiveness, I point you away from the world of IT and towards this excellent, and deeply unsettling, New Scientist article. It explains (far more eloquently than I could here) how Ofcom has essentially given permission for documentary makers to pretty much make things up, on the basis that it’s only news programmes which need be presented with “due accuracy”.

If they won’t crack down on something as huge as that, what hope for an end to “up to” speeds?

There have been plenty of times in the past where I’d have happily fired Ofcom. But it seems BT has cleverly put a gun to the regulator’s head with the announcement of its planned fibre network.

The company says it’s prepared to spend £1.5 billion to bring high-speed broadband to ten million homes by 2012, but that depends on “ “a supportive and enduring regulatory environment”. In other words, give us what we want or we’re taking our football home.

That puts Ofcom in a no-win situation: if the regulator puts it foot down, it will be accused of stalling Britain’s broadband network; if it gives BT carte blanche, the former monopoly’s rivals will be crying foul.

BT has already demanded access to Virgin’s cable network in an exclusive briefing with PC Pro. What else will it demand in its negotiations with Ofcom? Oh, to be a fly on the wall in those meetings…