Internet Speed Not As Advertised

[malmsteenisgod]

A friend of mine has AT&T's Broadband Express, which is advertised to have a download speed of 1.5mb/s and an upload speed of 384kb/s. She said she never got close to that kind of speed so I went over to check it out. I went to speedtest.net and it consistently hit around the rate that AT&T advertised, but when actually downloading something from various websites, the maximum I could ever achieve was in the 150-160kb/s range. 1/10th the speed that AT&T advertised.

 

Now I know that nobody ever gets the download speed that is advertised, but this is ridiculous. Is it possible that AT&T is limiting her download speeds? Will calling AT&T and complaining help the situation?

[nVidia_Freak]

Something tells me you're confusing megabits with megabytes. For sake of simplicity, we'll say one megabit is exactly 1/10 of a megabyte. That means that 1.5 megabits (1500) would equate to 150 kilobytes, which is the advertised speed. I remember when I first got broadband I had AT&T's cheapest service (they haven't changed) and those are the speeds I got.

 

There's no false advertising here, just a confusion of units.

Edited November 29, 2008 by nVidia_Freak

[silkster]

/Schooled

[MINDSCI]

Something tells me you're confusing megabits with megabytes. For sake of simplicity, we'll say one megabit is exactly 1/10 of a megabyte. That means that 1.5 megabits (1500) would equate to 150 kilobytes, which is the advertised speed. I remember when I first got broadband I had AT&T's cheapest service (they haven't changed) and those are the speeds I got.

 

There's no false advertising here, just a confusion of units.

Thanks: An Ah-Ha! moment for me.

[ir_cow]

yep when you see ads just remember to add a zero, remove the . and that is your speed. so 1.5 is really 150kb. all the companies do this.

 

 

i like road runner because unlike dsl theirs only one speed and that is 1.1megabyte down and 100kb up.

[malmsteenisgod]

Something tells me you're confusing megabits with megabytes. For sake of simplicity, we'll say one megabit is exactly 1/10 of a megabyte. That means that 1.5 megabits (1500) would equate to 150 kilobytes, which is the advertised speed. I remember when I first got broadband I had AT&T's cheapest service (they haven't changed) and those are the speeds I got.

 

There's no false advertising here, just a confusion of units.

 

Ahhh. Well that sucks lol. I guess I'll have to break this news to my friend that she needs to ditch AT&T or pay more. <_<

Edited November 30, 2008 by malmsteenisgod

[uneedav8]

The speed obviously matters but even if your connection is blazing and consistent, it does not mean it will be from the host side when you try to download a file. I am getting a pretty consistent 20-23 mbps download speed when I run a speedtest. Even at this speed, not every download is super quick.

[nVidia_Freak]

Ahhh. Well that sucks lol. I guess I'll have to break this news to my friend that she needs to ditch AT&T or pay more. <_<

 

Well it's not like they charge an arm and a leg for their service, each step up is only $5 more than the last. The 6Mb service is pretty good, which would only frun another $10. Even for another $5, the 'Pro' service is decent too, but best bang/buck ratio is the 'Elite' service.

Edited November 30, 2008 by nVidia_Freak