What if ISPs Had to Disclose Minimum Speeds?

No matter where you live, a common gripe that many of us can share is the half-truths told to us by our ISPs. We’re promised one speed, and usually get another. Is it too much to ask for to simply have an ISP give us straight facts, rather than us have to discover them for ourselves? Well, unless a law is put in place that forces them to, like the one in Hungary, then no.

Yes, believe it or not, in Hungary, ISPs are forced to “guarantee” a minimum bitrate, and so far, that figure tends to be rather small (no surprise). For example, at the H1 Telekom ISP, the minimum guaranteed speed for the 5Mbit/s package is 1Mbit/s, and for the 10Mbit/s package, it’s 3Mbit/s. Then for the top-end 25Mbit/s package… it’s 4Mbit/s. A guaranteed 4Mbit/s for a 25Mbit/s service… ouch.

Such small guarantees aren’t too surprising, though, because in reality, it’d be impossible to guarantee them much higher. There are far too many factors that come into play, like congestion, the wiring in your house, and other things that aren’t always under the ISP’s control. But still, a guaranteed figure is good for the consumer, and if anything, it should help for ISPs to tighten their infrastructures and improve the quality of their services overall.

Still, I’m not too sure how important these metrics are, since the minimums are on the extreme low-end. It almost seems like common sense that your ISP isn’t going to be 100% all the time, so what these numbers will help prove, I’m not sure. Still, and measure to force more transparency from our ISPs has got to be a good thing.

For instance, Deutsche Telekom’s Hungarian subsidiary T-Home sells its products by both maximum and minimum line speeds—and those minimums vary by technology. The 5Mbps package guarantees a mere 500Kbps when ordered on a cable line, while the same package guarantees a 2.5Mbps minimum on fiber.