Digital Home Thoughts: Broadband Speed Not Necessarily as Advertised

"By this point, everyone should know that broadband providers always provide "up to" speeds with the connections they sell. By "up to" they usually mean under perfect conditions that you will never, ever see. But just what kinds of speeds should you actually expect? A new study in the UK found that broadband speeds tend to be about a third of the "up to" speed. The worst speeds were about one-eighth of the promoted speed. As the article linked here notes, is it really any surprise that only 30% of people claim they're satisfied with their broadband?"

Actually, while I'm sure the above is true, I'd venture to say that most broadband users would have no idea even how to check to see what their connection speed was. On top of that, unless you are downloading large files, the perceptible difference between high-speed connections is negligible. Add in the number of people who connect their broadband to a wireless router which then becomes the bottleneck rather than the broadband connection.