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nPerf Launch New Broadband Speed Testing App for PC and MAC

Tuesday, Apr 9th, 2024 (5:55 pm) - Score 1,640

Internet connection speed benchmarking firm nPerf has today announced the launch of a new app for PC and MAC users, which is said to be capable of testing broadband speeds of up to 10Gbps, with streaming (using the VLC enginer) and browsing tests (using Chromium) now also included. The latter is rare for general speed testers.

“Powered by advanced technology developed by the nPerf team and supported by a global network of servers (+3,000), the nPerf desktop application guarantees accurate and reliable results,” claims the announcement. But assessing such things is notoriously difficult and, in our experience, few broadband speed testing platforms are perfect and often suffer from a mix of different caveats.

As usual, broadband speed testers can be affected by various issues, such as slow Wi-Fi, limitations of the tester itself, local network congestion, the performance of remote internet services and so forth. Take with the usual pinch of salt.

Tags: Statistics

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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.

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Mobile giant Vodafone UK and Sky (Comcast) have reportedly two among several "groups" that have approached budget conscious fixed broadband ISP TalkTalk about a potential deal (most likely an acquisition), which in theory could create a much larger provider with more influence over the industry. Just to recap. In 2020 TalkTalk became the subject of a £1.1bn takeover by Toscafund - controlled by hedge fund tycoon Martin Hughes (here), which including debt valued the broadband provider at around £1.8bn. The deal took the ISP private and gave them more financial flexibility for their future plans. Since then, they've backed Freedom Fibre (here) and this week made the notable acquisition of Ethernet provider Virtual1 (here). According to the FT (paywall) and Sky News, TalkTalk is now said to have asked investment bank Lazard to review its options after allegedly being approach by several groups, including Vodafone and Sky (Sky Broadband). Lazard is a logical choice as they recently acted as Financial Advisor to TalkTalk on the Virtual1 transaction. Some industry analysts have reportedly suggested that TalkTalk itself could now be worth "at least" £3bn. But this seems rather optimistic for an ISP that doesn't have any significant fixed line broadband infrastructure to call its own (excluding their old unbundled LLU network) and largely just piggybacks off Openreach (BT), CityFibre and Freedom Fibre. But TalkTalk do have a strong business and wholesale side. Funnily enough, Sky Broadband are in a similar position with their own fixed line base, while Vodafone also likes to piggyback off Openreach and CityFibre. At present, Vodafone has a fixed broadband base of 991,000 customers, while Sky Broadband is estimated to be home to around 6.7 million and TalkTalk has approximately 4.2 million. Suffice to say, anybody gobbling up TalkTalk would instantly become a much larger provider, giving them a greater say in how the UK broadband market develops and more opportunities for convergence (Vodafone with mobile, and Sky with mobile and TV). Crucially, TalkTalk's consumer base is mostly made up of those on older copper and hybrid fibre lines (i.e. ADSL and FTTC / VDSL2), which are ripe for a future migration to FTTP. At the time of writing, all of the aforementioned operators have decline to comment on the reports, and TalkTalk has yet to receive any serious formal offers. In other words, we strongly suspect that this is largely just an exercise in spin to help TalkTalk drum up some more productive interest in the idea. But at the same time, it's not unreasonable to suspect that they might succeed, as the interest seems genuine. On the other hand, we see reports like this every year or so and only a very few ever convert into a serious offer. Time will tell. Much may depend upon whether or not TalkTalk’s new owners are more flexible and pragmatic about doing a deal than the previous lot. Arguably, TalkTalk might have gone much further by now had they taken some different decisions a few years ago (e.g. co-investing in FTTP instead of Pay TV).

Cost Cutting Sees UK ISP TalkTalk Scale Back Support for Internet Matters

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Cheapest Big ISPs for 100Mbps+:

Community Fibre £21.00

150Mbps (150Mbps up)

Vodafone £23.00

150Mbps (27 - 150Mbps up)

Virgin Media £23.50

132Mbps (20Mbps up)

Plusnet £25.99

145Mbps (30Mbps up)

NOW £26.00

100Mbps (18Mbps up)

Sky £27.00

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Comments

7 Responses

DL says:

April 9, 2024 at 6:42 pm

FYI, Mac hardware and macOS are not all capitalised, unlike the networking acronym MAC.
1. Mark Jackson says:
  
  April 9, 2024 at 6:55 pm
  
  I did it just to wind you up :).
2. DL says:
  
  April 9, 2024 at 7:00 pm
  
  As long as you don’t start spelling ‘fibre’ as ‘fiber’ as many of the commenters seem to…
3. Anonymous says:
  
  April 10, 2024 at 10:48 am
  
  @DL – aha I’ve seen that one far many a time!
RaptorX says:

April 9, 2024 at 7:58 pm

Small typo: “VLC enginer”. 🙂
Daniel says:

April 13, 2024 at 11:33 am

Just trying the Windows app. After installing it and running, all I get is the error – ‘An unexpected error occurred (AE120)’. Any ideas ?
1. greg says:
  
  April 28, 2024 at 5:37 am
  
  i have the same issue but i didn’t take time to notice that it’s british software. that explains, dunit old man? cherio! guvna!