20th June 2012 – Over half a million homes are losing around 4Mbps of broadband speed due to poor in home set ups – according to new research released today by home phone, broadband and mobile firm TalkTalk. That’s equivalent to 2.3 million Mb of speed being lost every second. It takes 3.2 Mbps to stream BBC iPlayer in HD which shows just how significant this is. TalkTalk also believes that a further 2.5 million homes could see a smaller – but still significant – increase to their broadband speed just by making some simple changes themselves.
The research from TalkTalk shows that over the course of a year British homes will leak 72 billion gigabytes of bandwidth capacity, which is more than enough to power YouTube around the year*.
TalkTalk Bright Sparks engineers have carried out 25,000 free home visits to help customers stop their bandwidth leaking.
The most common problems found were:
- 31% - speed lost through poor wiring
- 20% - router needed to be set up or reconfigured
- 17% - phone socket not properly set up
- 14% - new ADSL broadband filter required
- 13 % - other problems such as customers not connecting to the router to the master socket
“A bit of basic home maintenance and some re-jigging of the wiring in the living room could speed up internet connections no end,” said XXX, one of TalkTalk’s Bright Sparks engineers.”
Other measures which can reduce broadband waste include plugging routers or modems directly into the master socket and fitting filters to stop other devices connected to your phone line from interfering with your broadband signal.
“You can lose anything up to 4 megabits per second of speed simply due to a poor in home set up,” said TalkTalk Bright Sparks engineer Dan Downham. “When you consider that the average home gets a broadband speed of 7.6 megabits per second, that’s an awful lot of bandwidth going to waste.
”The megabits are coming into your home but they’re going to waste before they can be put to good use,” he said. “People need to think of broadband in the same way as water and electricity. It’s a commodity that can go to waste if you’re not careful.”
Most issues can be solved quickly and easily by customers themselves, with help from TalkTalk Speed Checker, otherwise TalkTalk BrightSparks can help.
TalkTalk customers should use speed checker to see if they qualify for a free visit from a Bright Sparks engineer otherwise book a Speed Optimisation visit for just £50.