Gadgets and gizmos

moneysupermarket.com carried out broadband line tests throughout the month of May in the hope of turning up the best, and indeed worst, Broadband providers in the UK. While it highlighted that O2 offered the best 8MB connection with actual speeds reaching 5.39MBps, the average speed is a rather pathetic 2.97MBps.

O2 was way out in front in the tests, a considerable distance ahead of Sky in second place with speeds of 3.59MBps and TalkTalk in third with 2.99MBps. Even more interesting is the fact that those surfers paying the extra to get improved Broadband speeds are those that are getting the lease value for money – 16MBps being the worst performing speed band. The average speed of a 16Mbps
connection is a pathetic 7.02MBps.

Happily, moneysupermarket is taking the opportunity to yet again champion the cause of consumers. They have already been quite vocal in their belief that broadband providers should advertise an actual speed rather than whats is essentially a meaningless maximum speed because very few, if any, consumers even actually achieve the maximum advertised speed.