A Which? survey says that generally, no they aren’t. Advertised speeds are pie-in-the-sky as far as most users are concerned, with most people experiencing between 20-25% of this advertised speed. So, is the problem with the telecommunications networks or with the expectations of the end-user?

All ISPs advertise the maximum theoretical speed of their connections in their marketing headlines. It is a big number, and sure to impress an unwitting consumer. Now they have to specify that these speeds are seldom reached by the time the cabling reaches your house, and that depending on your distance from the local exchange (as with ADSL), you could get a vastly reduced capacity. People have become used to this now, but for some reason when it comes to mobile broadband, there is still a level of misunderstanding.

With most companies promising that speeds of up to around 4mbit/s are available, people seem to expect this from their connection and are surprised when it only averages around 1mbit/s. The main reason for this is that, just like a mobile phone, signal varies depending on your geographical location. Another factor is the network load at that moment in time – with 3G networks still relatively youthful, the infrastructure that we came to expect over time with mobile phones is still not quite there (remember being unable to get through to anyone on the phone around New Year’s Eve!).

So in many ways, it is both the advertising and the customer who are at fault. The advertising claims top speeds which will never be reached by the vast majority of people, and would need perfect conditions to reach in any case, while the customer expects this to be the verbatim truth of what they can expect 100% of the time. Maybe it is the steady speeds we experience with home broadband packages that have made consumers more demanding.

When you come to sign up for a mobile broadband package, don’t pay any attention to the top speeds the network claims you can get. Instead, look around to see how reliable their network is. No signal is a lot worse than poor signal, remember!