EE UK to Increase Standard Home Broadband Speeds up to 16Mbps

Mobile operator and ISP EE (Everything Everywhere) looks set to follow Sky Broadband and some other ISPs by quietly increasing the advertised download rate (“typical speed“) of their standard (ADSL2+) based packages “up to” 16Mbps (Megabits per second).

At present the related packages, which cost from £2.50 a month with “unlimited data” and free UK weekend calls, promote speeds of “UP TO 14Mb/sec“. However, just like Sky’s move last week (here), EE has now felt that it too can safely promote the products alongside a slightly higher rate.

It should be said that it’s still the same old copper ADSL / ADSL2+ technology under the hood and thus most customers should not expect to see a tangible improvement. In fact ADSL2+ can deliver theoretical top speeds of up to 20-24Mbps but new rules introduced last year (here) require ISPs to only promote advertised speeds that are achievable by at least 10% of users (typical speed).

Meanwhile Ofcom’s latest study of fixed line broadband speeds (here) didn’t appear to show any significant speed improvement for major ADSL2+ based products over the previous report, which was published six months earlier. In fact KC’s ADSL2+ solution in Hull appeared to deliver the best “maximum average speed” and that was only hitting a peak of 11.5Mbps.

But while most of the big ISPs seem happy to play this game we do also note that a significant number of smaller providers continue to flout the ASA’s guidelines and other providers now prefer not to state any speeds, which is arguably a lot more confusing.

At the time of writing EE has not yet updated their website to reflect the change but the word has gone out so it shouldn’t be too long.