4 January 2008
A new petition to the government, demanding better customer treatment from UK broadband firms, has been launched.
Campaigner Lee Sexton, who wrote the petition, claims that service providers are deliberately overloading their networks with customers, slowing broadband connections.
As bandwidth is a finite commodity, oversubscribing networks has the effect of reducing speed for all.
"The problem is [that providers] are selling a product by speed and are not offering this speed at peak times (anywhere from 4pm to 1am), which means the service you are paying for is not the service you bought or was advertised…[they] are quite clearly oversubscribing on their networks and are resorting to throttling speeds to lower congestion," Mr Sexton wrote.
"It is unacceptable that our service is being degraded and this needs to be investigated now, and thoroughly, as the state of broadband in the UK is now suffering."
The petition can be accessed at the Prime Minister's website, pm.gov.uk.
Thus far, it has gathered around 1,800 signatures from consumers.