A report that has been released by the comparison site Uswitch has revealed that UK broadband speeds drop by an average of 35% during the peak times of internet use. The researchers obtained the results by conducting two millions broadband speed tests.
It has been revealed that the peak internet surfing times are between 7pm and 9pm and it is between these times where millions of internet users suffer from the reduction in broadband speeds. It was also noted that the best time to be surfing the internet is between 2am and 3am. The report has also revealed that there are significant regional variations between evening and morning surfing times.
According to the report, broadband users in Evesham, Worcestershire, suffered the most dramatic decline in broadband speeds with a staggering 69% drop-off between off-peak morning and peak time evening surfing.
Those living in Weston-super-Mare don’t have it much better, with the broadband speeds dropping a massive 64%.
Even those living in the more rural areas of the UK have to put up with the drop in broadband speeds, even though the peak speeds are slow. This was most evident in Wadebridge, Cornwall, where speeds nearly halved from 4.1Mbps at off-peak times to 2.1Mbps at peak times.
Ernest Doku, Uswitch’s technology expert stated “It really is surprising just how much broadband speeds fluctuate at different times of the day, with drop-offs of almost 70% in some areas of the UK. Not many internet users enjoy the maximum headline broadband speeds offered by providers, and certainly not during the working week.”
Broadband speeds are becoming more and more important each day as services such as on-demand TV become more popular. Ofcom, the UK’s Telecoms regulator, recently revealed that British households download an average of 17GB’s of data each month over their home broadband connections.
One of the main problems that have been expressed by critics is that many consumers are being misled by internet service providers. They claim that the service providers continue to advertise their maximum broadband speeds, even though the majority of users don’t get them.
The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) has created a new rule which will be implemented from April next year. This ruling will only allow the service providers to advertise their maximum speeds for net packages if more than 10% of its customers receive them.
Ofcom have reported that almost half of broadband users are on packages which advertise speeds above 10Mbps but receive speeds of 6.8Mbps on average.
