Fed up with slow speeds and constant buffering, many customers across the UK have taken the plunge and upgraded to a more expensive fibre broadband connection, in the belief that this would end their buffering woes once and for all.
Fibre optic broadband is advertised as a much faster and more efficient service, in fact terms such as ‘super fast’ are used to help sell the service. Over the year’s customers have become aware of the limitations of the old copper cabling which transmitted the signals, having endured years of slow connections which dropped out constantly. The problem is the further a customer lived from the exchange the slower their connection would be as the information had to travel further along these old copper cables.
Fibre broadband was billed as a superior service delivered though these shiny new fibre cables, with promises of faster speeds and a more reliable connection. Unfortunately, 80% of the UK’s broadband customer base is served by BT’s Openreach network. Whether the billing is done by BT or another provider, in 80% of cases the network is run and maintained by Openreach.
Perhaps through ignorance, although more likely by omission, many believed this fibre broadband supplied through the Openreach network was delivered through fibre optic cabling directly to their address. This is, in the majority of cases not actually the case. The Openreach network connects fibre to the cabinet (FTTC), rather than to customer’s homes directly (FTTH). So once again the further away the customer lives from the exchange the slower their connection will be. From the cabinet to the address the connection is exactly the same standard copper cabling that irritated users previously.
A study by Cable.co.uk found that 68% of people are unaware of this fact, they were under the impression that their fibre connection came straight in to their home. When asked how they thought the rest of the distance was covered only 9% thought it was through copper cabling. 1 in 5 people questioned admitted to having no idea whatsoever how their broadband connection reached them.
While some would argue that the way in which the connection reaches their home is irrelevant as long as it works, others feel that it should be correctly labelled. Benoit Felten, who has worked for leading telecoms companies in France and Belgium compares the misleading nature of broadband advertising to the horse meat scandal. He says;
“It’s time for the marketers to clarify and sell what they advertise,”
“There’s a reason we don’t have ‘meat’ on food labels instead of ‘beef’ or ‘pork’. There’s also a reason why horse meat lasagna was a big scandal in Europe: it’s not that they were improper for consumption, it’s that when you buy beef, you should get beef.”
The advertising standards agency, (ASA), chose not to uphold a complaint about BT referring to it’s Infinity service as ‘fibre optic broadband’ back in November 2014. They felt that customers were interested in the improved speeds that could be achieved, rather than the way in which it came into the home. They said:
“We therefore considered the use of the term ‘fibre optic’ to denote a broadband connection which primarily comprised fibre optic cable whilst including non-fibre optic cable as a small proportion of the overall connection was unlikely to mislead the average consumer,”
A FTTH connection is much more expensive than the current solution, but BT say that this is an interim solution which allows customers to have a fibre connection with no disturbance to their property or garden. Most will agree that the FTTC fibre service is a vast improvement on the standard broadband speeds which were achieved in the past. Although perhaps for now buffering has not been completely eliminated.