Is your broadband a fraudband?

It seems that many of us still aren’t getting what we pay for when it comes to broadband, according to a survey by the BBC radio’s digital programme iPM .
The survey asked people to test their own computers using these simple steps and then post the results online.
Many people found that the speeds were a lot lower than those they were paying for – particularly with 8mb packages.
Robert of Withington was one of those who took part in the survey and his comment fairly typical: “Pretty poor really”.
The issue was raised back in September when a study by Computeractive magazine found that 62% of 3,000 readers who took part routinely got less than half of the top speed advertised by their provider.
At that time regulator Ofcom said it was aware of the issue and was “investigating” as well as working with the Advertising Standards Authority to ensure people were not misled by offers.
And in October, Which? got involved and resulted in the Ofcom Consumer Panel asking several top internet service providers (ISPs), including BT and Carphone Warehouse, to consider changing their sales practices.
However this new radio listener’s survey seems to confirm that nothing much has changed.
iPM’s George South said: “We got almost 600 responses which we’ve now crunched – and it appears a great deal of people paying for high-speed internet aren’t getting even half of the speed they signed up for.”
Putting pressure on Ofcom to act seems to be the only course of action for consumers to address this situation.
There are details of how to test your system, and complain, here.