ISP Utility Warehouse Adopt Average Advertised Broadband Speeds

While updating our database of around 200 UK ISPs today we noticed that the Utility Warehouse had just joined Sky Broadband and the Post Office by adopting average advertised broadband download speeds, which sit alongside their old ‘up to‘ (fastest 10% of customers) figures.

At present most ISPs tend to promote headline speeds using the “up to” prefix, which requires that advertised speeds should be achievable by at least 10% of their customers (i.e. the fastest 10% on a specific connection). This only applies to generally advertised speeds (i.e. those shown to everybody on a public website or in print) and is separate to the personal speed estimate that many providers offer after you start the order process.

However, the above rule is due to end on 23rd May 2018, when the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) adopts a new guideline that effectively requires all broadband providers to start promoting “average speeds“. This will reflect a median measured at peak time (8pm to 10pm) on their public packages (here).

So far less than a handful of ISPs have adopted the new guidelines and today they’ve been joined by UW. Much like Sky, UW has decided to retain their old ‘up to‘ speeds and add the new measure of average performance alongside.

We expect each provider on Openreach’s network to have a slightly different average for the same connection technologies, which is due to the variable balance of customers with different line capabilities (e.g. some ISPs may have more subscribers with faster FTTC lines than others). This appears to show below as the figures are a little bit different from the same plans on the PO and Sky.

Utility Warehouse Advertised Speeds

STANDARD BROADBAND (ADSL2+)
11Mbps average download speed
16Mbps top download speed

ULTRA FIBRE BROADBAND (FTTC / VDSL2)
35Mbps average download speed
38Mbps top download speed

ULTRA+ FIBRE BROADBAND (FTTC / VDSL2)
63Mbps average download speed
76Mbps top download speed

Curiously UW doesn’t use ‘up to‘ on their old speeds and prefers to list these as “top” speeds, which they define as the “maximum possible speed for this product.” This is technically incorrect since the “top” speeds only reflect the fastest 10% but some very good lines can go a little faster than this (e.g. we could get 18-19Mbps on the standard broadband package).

I should say that we aren’t going to highlight every single provider that introduces the new measure. Instead we’re only noting those mainstream ISPs that have introduced it early, before the recommended guidelines are formally enforced. In addition, some of the early averages we’re seeing appear to be a little.. optimistic (hard to independently verify as the test data isn’t public).