The ISP industry only has itself to blame for its bad reputation – Guest Editorial

There is a perception problem in the ISP industry. And it’s certainly not getting any better. If anything, we are falling into the same traps we always have. Lessons we should already have learned are not being heeded.

Arguments over what constitutes “fibre“. Use of terms like “up to” and then use of averages and percentiles. Conflating sync speed with usable bandwidth. Complex pricing and bundles.

It’s become normal and indeed easy now to blame your connectivity provider when something related to the internet doesn’t work. There are many reasons for this, but I think it’s worth exploring that the industry – and by that I mean not just ISPs but regulators (Ofcom, ASA), governments (local and national), journalists, analysts – is itself to blame for this massive perception problem.

As an industry we over-promise, we under-deliver, we spin and we downright lie. No wonder customers blame us for everything.

Never ending roll outs and mis-set expectations

In July, the UK government published its Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review, which among other things set notional dates for when everyone in the country should have a fibre connection to the internet. Like every date so far announced in the last 20 years, they will be missed.

One of the key aims, supported by the head of Ofcom, our regulator, is the switch off of copper services, in favour of these full fibre connections. My reaction at the time was “I’ll believe that when I see it“.

But if there is a single problem in our industry it’s that we never learn from our mistakes. How are we expected to replace all copper cable with fibre by 2033 (15 years away) when we still haven’t finished what is the infinitely easier task of upgrading every ADSL Max line to ADSL2+?

We live in an era of more different types of connection than ever. ADSL Max, ADSL2+, FTTC, Cable, FTTP, G.fast, 3G, 4G, satellite – the list goes on. Part of that, though is that we never finish a roll out. And this is when customers started to get weary of the promises we made.

“Sorry that product isn’t available where you live.”

“Yes, you do have the latest broadband technology, but you’ll be lucky to get a tenth of the speeds we advertise at.”

Superfast. Ultrafast. Arguments over whether 20mbps is “super“. Maybe 24? How about 30?

The outright mis-use of terminology

At one end we have EU directives declaring that EFM (a service comprised of bonded copper pairs) is classed as “Next Generation Access” and therefore can be subject to a government subsidised connection voucher, while declaring that a service comprised of bonded FTTC lines (in almost every way better, including not failing if a single pair fails) cannot qualify even when it is demonstrably “superfast“.

At the other end we have consumers being marketed to with hijacked terms like “fibre” or downright lies like “no line rental” or “no contract”, or my personal favourite “unlimited”.

Is it right that we have redefined words in the English language? And not just that but to actually mean the exact opposite? Since when do we apply limits to something that’s unlimited? This is like something straight out of the Ministry of Truth.

How can there genuinely be an argument that “fibre” should include cables that have perhaps hundreds of metres of copper in them? It’s not like genuine, real, actual fibre cable doesn’t exist.

Terms that are unfit and poorly communicated

When it comes to measuring bandwidth (or speed as everyone calls it, mostly incorrectly), “Up to” became the first of what would become a series of vague, misleading over-promises.

Of all the terms used to advertise speed I actually think “Up to” isn’t misleading as a piece of the English language. But it was certainly not communicated well as a technical characteristic by the industry – which is basically the problem. “Up to” means any value from 0 up to that figure. That obviously covers everything. The problem is that it was used to cope with the distance dependency of broadband technology, as well as fluctuations and faults, and importantly the congestion and contention of ISP’s networks.

90th Percentile and now averages are not the solution either.