Pipex lays bandwidth woes at BT's door

Pipex has denied it has oversubscribed its ADSL service despite growing complaints from customers that download times have become unacceptably high.

It has instead laid the blame at BT's door, saying the performance drops have been caused by the technical limitations of the technology itself, and BT's reluctance to help ISPs cope with the extra demand created by the recent broadband price cuts.

Pipex claims that it's now attracting 500 new customers per day - but that the degraded network performance is not its fault.

Pipex says there are two factors at work. It points out that because ADSL is a 'contended' service, users share a finite amount of bandwidth. The more DSL customers that sign up, the worse the performance is likely to be, especially at peak times.

Secondly, it believes BT has failed to do all it can to balance the extra demand now being placed on the pipes linking ISPs' servers to BT's infrastructure.

David Rickards, managing director of Pipex, said BT was simply shoving as much data as possible down Pipex's single 155 Mbps pipe.

This compounds the problems of users experiencing a reduced level in their expected 512 Kbps connection speeds, as ADSL is a shared-capacity medium.

Rickards said: "ADSL is a contended service, where up to 50 users have to share one 512 Kbps pipe. The problem with ADSL currently is customer expectations, which are high because so far one pipe has been shared by very few users due to low demand. That's the difference between DSL and leased lines.

"We said to our customers, 'If you want a half megabit service guaranteed you're going to have to pay £10,000 a year for a leased line. ADSL is not a half feed.' I don't think people understand just how expensive bandwidth is."

Andrew Parker, senior analyst in technology leadership at Forrester Research, said new internet users and others have bought into ADSL marketing hype that has promised massive bandwidth availability.

He commented: "Users may legitimately ask their ISP, 'Why did you get me to sign up by saying this is miles better than what I've experienced with a modem, but then tell me it's only when you say so?'"

Parker added: "This is like the early days of internet dial-up services revisited. Popular ISPs of the month would be the most unpopular the next month because they'd be overloaded with users and unable to provide the expected quality of service."

Parker said Pipex's fat pipe problem can be expected to hit other ISPs soon.

"We've predicted a major shake out in the ISP market for two years now - that over time users will migrate to more established and reliable providers. This kind of issue will just accelerate that shake up," he said.

Pipex has now resolved its troubles by spreading its users over another two pipes. However, users are still paying for the upkeep of one pipe, making Pipex's business model appear in need of a revamp.

BT was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.