BT Blasts Ofcom Broadband Report As Out Of Date

Responding to a recent report which stated that most broadband users were not receiving the top download speeds touted by broadband providers, BT has categorically mentioned that it finds the report “out of date” as well as “unreliable”.

The network operator was responding to a research carried out by the communications watchdog Ofcom, which claimed that it was not possible for broadband customers to receive the advertised headline speed of eight Mbps as some part of it is reserved for technical purposes.

In its report, Ofcom had claimed that it had discovered maximum speeds of only 7.2 Mbps, and that too was available to the customers living in the close vicinity of a telephone exchange.

While a majority of ISPs claimed to be offering downloading speeds of ‘as up to 8 Mbps’, the average speed people were receiving in practice was 3.9 Mbps, with around one in five customers are getting speeds of 2 Mbps only – the minimum target speed set for universal broadband by 2012 in the government’s Digital Britain report.

However, BT has played down the report from Ofcom by branding it as out of date, and dismissed the claims of slow broadband speeds being offered to all broadband users across the UK.

Rejecting the concerns shown in the report, the network operator said, “BT would urge people to treat the figures with caution as they are not consistent with much larger independent surveys that constantly monitor speeds and so we feel the data is unreliable”.