Broadband speeds will be at the centre of 2009 plans by Ofcom

A code of practice that will improve on service to customers and prevent customers from being given misleading broadband speeds has been implemented by ISPs in the UK on a voluntary basis.

Ofcom, the telecoms watchdog are set to release proposals that have yet to be defined, which will enforce protection policies for consumers that help them to switch providers of broadband access and punish anyone mis-selling it. ISPs will then act once Ofcoms proposals are released.

An examination into the market for mobile broadband will be made in the 2009/10 draft annual plans by Ofcom and it hopes that by deregulating controls the cost per-megabyte will be further reduced due to the competition between mobile operators.

Follow large numbers of complaint in the past with regards to slower-than-advertised bandwidth, the provision to provide promotional material showing more accurate data speed estimates that are actually achievable has been agreed by over 40 ISPs that include Sky, BT, Demon, Be, Virgin Media, Tiscali, Pipex and Plusnet.

Research vice president at analyst Gartner, Scott Morrisson said “ISPs were advertising 24Mbit/s and 8Mbit/s maximum speeds when those speeds were not available. It was not made clear to customers that there was no un-contended bandwidth back to the internet, even if they could get 8Mbit/s from their house to the exchange,” he said.

The concerns with ISPs and Ofcom last year regarding broadband speeds would be addressed by this new code said Anna Bradley, chairman of the Communications Consumer Panel. She said “[There is a] mismatch between the speeds that consumers think they are buying and what they actually get.”

For a long time now a big item on Ofcom’s consumer agenda has been switching and the viewing of the Code of Practice should be in line with other consumer protection work, said Matthew Howett, an Ovum analyst.

He said “Ofcom has mainly focused on mobile mis-selling to date, but it is now shifting to fixed line mis-selling, which is considered to be just as much of a problem.”

In an effort to make its fair usage policy clearer to customers BT broadband advised that the company has made clarifications so users know where there are download limitations and under what circumstances it uses traffic management.

A spokesman for BT said “BT is as much a victim of switching problems as anybody else – the number of those has fallen, but there are still some unscrupulous operators who demand that customers pay fees up front before they release the MAC codes needed to switch accounts.”