Hi Magic

I just want to make one point that ISPs never seem to tell their customers and that is the speed you sign up for is, in most cases, not the speed you get.

For example, I originally signed up last year for 16MB download speed however, I recently found out that my telephone exchange (sorry, I don't know what you call them outside of the UK) is not capable of handling 16MB, it can only handle 8MB.

Now, I live about half-a-mile from my exchange and, on a good day, my top download speed is 5.0xMB. A work colleague of mine who lives 5 to 10 minutes (walk) away from his exchange gets a max download speed of 5.8MB.

The point I'm making is that, on the whole, very few people actually get what they think they signing up for. So don't be too disappointed if you find out that the 6.0MB download speed you signed up for really turns out to be between 3 to 4MB.

In the meantime, you may want to read this article:

BBC NEWS | Technology | Broadband speeds under scrutiny

Now, what I have said and the article may not apply to you because you are in a different part of the world but you usually find that ISPs are multi-nationals and if they can get away with dodgy practices in one country they will certainly try it in another.



UK Bob