Fraudband Britain - Ofcom wants to hear from YOU

You told us how unhappy you are with the speed of your broadband. Today, Ofcom has cracked the whipped. Broadband firms face formal action if they fail to get their act together.

Ben Wallis from Ofcom's Consumer Panel has been looking at your comments and has written this for the iPM blog. Please let him know what you think. ..

"The Ofcom Consumer Panel, the independent body that advises Ofcom, has asked Ofcom to take a lead in tackling consumer concerns about advertised broadband connection speeds.

Surveys by Which? and Computer Active magazine in the summer showed that most people get their broadband at far slower speeds than the “up to 8MB” speeds that figure so prominently in the advertising. This gap will only grow wider with the arrival soon of ADSL2+ and more packages of “up to 24MB” and beyond.

In October we wrote to the chief executives of the UK’s six largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) (PDF). We made suggestions about how they could give their customers clearer information to understand the factors that influence the speed of their broadband connection, and more flexibility if the service doesn’t live up to their expectations.

After hearing from the ISPs, we wrote to Ofcom asking the regulator to lead discussions with the industry. We asked them to produce an enforceable code of practice to give customers the best information during and after the sales process. We also want customers to have the flexibility to move freely to different packages that reflect the actual speeds with which their ISPs are able to provide them.

We’ve also asked the Advertising Standards Authority to tighten up the advertising of broadband speeds so that, instead of being found in the small print, much greater prominence is given to the range of factors that affect the speeds you can get. Ofcom responded (PDF) immediately to the Consumer Panel, welcoming the lead we've taken and outlining the ways in which it plans to tackle the issues we raised.

We would love to hear your views.

Ben Wallis, Policy Executive, Ofcom Consumer Panel

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