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AAISP Pokes Fun at Sky Broadband’s 55Mbps “Minimum Speed Guarantee”

Monday, Sep 18th, 2017 (9:54 am) - Score 3,574

Internet provider Andrews & Arnold (AAISP) has attempted to spoof modern advertising practices and Sky Broadband’s recent offer of a 55Mbps “Minimum Speed Guarantee” by proposing to go one further with a 56Mbps guarantee. Naturally they’re quick to explain the caveats.

Last month Sky added a 55Mbps guarantee to their FTTC (VDSL2) based ‘up to’ 76Mbps Sky Fibre Max package (here), although it wasn’t the same sort of bandwidth guarantee as we’re used to seeing from business ISPs. Instead customers who failed to receive at least 55Mbps from Sky Fibre Max (within the first 30 days of service) were offered the option of either claiming back their costs and cancelling, or being moved to Sky’s slightly cheaper ‘up to’ 52Mbps Sky Fibre Unlimited Plus tier (i.e. downgrading from an 80Mbps to 55Mbps FTTC profile).

The speed of a hybrid fibre optic technology like FTTC (VDSL2) depends primarily on your location (e.g. length of the copper line from your local street cabinet) and the quality of that line. Related VDSL2 lines usually deliver anything from a minimum of around 2Mbps (sub-2Mbps is usually considered a fault) and up to 80Mbps.

However Sky’s approach is simply not to sell you the Max package if you can’t achieve a stated minimum speed, which is a clever bit of marketing but one that isn’t a true bandwidth guarantee in the more traditional sense. Naturally AAISP has figured out that they can have a bit of fun with this by proposing a 56Mbps guarantee.

AAISP’s Proposed 56Mbps Guarantee

One metric which people do focus on is speed as measured at the modem/hub (the sync speed), and this is what this other ISP are prepared to guarantee. Speed to specific parts of the internet may be lower as is speed when sharing with other users in your premises, as is speed using wifi and certain slower devices.

The problem with focusing on the speed at the modem is that this depends on the technology and wires involved. So for VDSL, as provided via Openreach cabinets and wires, the sync speed you get is the sync speed you get regardless of which ISP you choose (providing they can access Openreach VDSL services).

The ISPs do have options such as capping at 40, 55 or 80Mb/s, but assuming you are happy to pay for the package that gives the speed you can get, then the speed at the modem is the same for all of the ISPs using that same technology and access. An ISP that offers to guarantee 55Mbs does not actually offer you higher speed than one that does not, on the same technology.

So how do they manage to offer 55Mb minimum? Well, the same way we could offer a 56Mb minimum!

If the address check for your line shows you can get VDSL/FTTC, and has a Downstream Handback Threshold (Mpbs) of at least 56Mb/s, then we are happy to guarantee you will get 56Mb/s at the modem. If such a line does not manage that speed, once the line is stable after 10 days, and within 30 days, and you ask us, we will back out the install and refund the costs. If your address does not have that handback threshold, then sorry, this guaranteed minimum 56Mb service is not available to you. Simple.

If later the speed drops to below the guaranteed minimum, we are happy to move you to one of our other services which don’t guarantee a minimum speed (which in our case cost the same).

This is the same as the guarantee that other ISP offers, as far as we can see, except we picked 56Mb not 55Mb as the level to which we will apply the offer. In practice we can do the same for any level.

At this point AAISP admits that they’re “not really serious” about offering a special guaranteed 56Mbs minimum and are merely having a bit of fun spoofing another ISP’s advertising approach, which helps to highlight a general problem with such promotions.

We can pick any speed you like and make the same guarantee … what we would like to see is more honest marketing in the first place. This latest move seems to stem from some suggestions by the likes of Advertising Standards, and really does not help people compare ISPs, as you can see,” said the provider.

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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