Christopher J. Buckley

My ISP, entanet, has yesterday taken the bold, and equally brave, move of publishing the ADSL BRAS profiles of their customer base as an MRTG style graph. The move is brave because ISPs are coming under strong pressure from the regulator OFCOM to explain why customers are not getting the speeds advertised. IT new-site, The Register, has covered this story with an equal blaze of publicity.

Here’s a recent image of the graph [it updates every hour].

 
Three things strike me first off about this graph:

• The lack of a bell curve. Though, I would explain this by noting that given the percentage of people able to obtain very close to the 8128 maximum sync rate is 37.8% - not the fairest, or most even, distribution of spread. Remember, Enta is a professional ISP attracting net-savvy users; I would hazard a fair guess that a lot of people specifically move to a location that is in good reach of their local exchange - I know i did. When BT releases 21cn i would expect a bell curve to exist around the 6000-10000 mark. Only time will tell, mind.
• As referred to above, Which? magazines continued insistence that broadband provider’s are setting too high a customers’ expectation as to speed’s possible on their ADSL line appear to be inaccurate. Setting aside the reasoning for the graph’s data in point 1, there is a significant proportion of customers on a very acceptable BRAS profile.

  My personal opinion is that Which? magazine is making an issue where there is none. I have never experienced an ISP stating that they will provide 8mbit services, but rather can provide, if your line is suitable. If I was a cynic I would state that Which? are creating publicity for themselves by writing these reports. Unfortunately, I am only adding to their publicity.

• Not directly related to the graph, but to the ISP publishing it: Enta have taken an exceptionally positive step in publishing this data. At a time when ISPs are under-fire (see above), they have chose to make their data public for the world to inspect. Well done, Enta!
   
  NB: I fully recommend Entanet reseller, UK Free Software Network.