Operator claims Orange sample not representative after O2 judged to be the fastest
Orange has hit back at Ofcom research that found O2 to have the fastest average broadband speeds.
The research conducted by the regulator looked at advertised speeds for broadband and the actual average speed delivered. However, Orange has said that it is ‘disappointed’ with the sample used to test its service, saying it was not representative of its customer base.
An Orange spokesperson said: ‘Orange has played an active role in Ofcom's development of its broadband speed's code of practice, and are committed to continually improving our own broadband speed delivery, so it's disappointing to see the outcome of this speed research, which has surveyed less than fifty Orange customers, representing only tiny fraction of our customer base, and therefore not credible representative sample (0.006%).
‘Orange has made significant improvements to our broadband delivery in the last year, and have seen some encouraging signs start to emerge already. In addition, we recently launched a new Broadband Excellence programme in the UK, part of which allows us to introduce a comprehensive speed improvement within the next 12 months for all broadband customer's lines, so we would hope to see Orange move up the rankings in the next report.’
Meanwhile, the research also found that consumers are often not given the level of service advertised. Broadband advertised as providing between 8 and 10 Mb per second on average delivered 3.3Mb per second – less than half the advertised speed.
Orange advertises speeds of up to 8 Mb/s per second, but the results of the survey showed an average speed of 3.3 to 4.2 Mb per second when downloading a single file over the course of 24 hours. O2 in comparison had an average speed of 4.3 to 5.0 Mb per second.
But despite the difference between advertised speeds and actual speeds, the survey found that overall UK broadband speeds have increased.
The research was conducted during May, with over 18 million separate service performance tests carried out in over 1,500 homes.
Ofcom said: ‘The research sample allowed Ofcom to robustly compare the performance of those ISP packages with more than 250,000 residential connections.’
O2 head of home and broadband Felix Geyr said:‘I am delighted to see that O2 and Be Broadband are shown as having consistently the fastest speeds of all the DSL providers in the UK. However, I strongly believe that consumers should be looking at what they need access to the internet for, as well as checking what speed they can get.
‘We were the first to launch a commercial ADSL2+ service, we continue to unbundle exchanges across the UK and want to continue to ensure as many of our customers get a great experience as is possible.’
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