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On the one side we've got Telecom and Business NZ claiming that recent surveys put its offerings right up there with the best in the world -- in terms of price and speed.

Of course the fact that the chairman of Business NZ also just happens to be a member of Telecom's board was not very well publicised was it?

This kind of sleight of hand is rife throughout the entire Telecom spin on the matter so some of Theresa's claims need some deeper investigation before we can see the facts.

The broadband benchmark survey that Theresa and Business NZ have been referring to was commissioned by Business NZ and I have a feeling that its results may have been badly biased by accepting the company's spin at face value. Could this be one of those surveys where the commissioner presents the results and then asks the survey company to come up with data to suit?

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First-up, what about speed?

Yes, 3.5Mbps is a very respectable speed by today's standards and so we should all be very pleased and accept this as a great step forward by Telecom -- right?

Wrong!

Read the fine-print and you'll find that we'll get *up to* 3.5Mbps but in reality, are almost never going to get even close to this figure.

Why?

A little thing called the contention ratio -- which is the number of people who are all vying for a single piece of bandwidth. If absolutely nobody else is trying to use that bandwidth you might just hit 3.5Mbps but the odds of that happening are very remote because most of the time you'll be just one of more than 140 users each getting a tiny slice of the pie.

In virtually all other countries this contention ratio is far, far lower than that offered by Telecom. Given the number of Kiwis that have to share a pipe, Telecom could offer 10Mbps and it wouldn't cost them a penny more -- because the actual difference in speed experienced by users would be imperceptible.

Some of the information I've read indicates that the actual amount of bandwidth guaranteed per DSL user is as low as 24Kpbs -- that's less than dial-up!

So, although Telecom are claiming we're as fast as the rest of the world, the reality is that we're still way slower. Think of Telecom's broadband as a Ferrari fitted with such a small fuel-line that it starves and falters when you try to go over 100Km/H. A fast car with a very powerful motor -- yes, but one that can't realise anything like its full potential because its fuel supply is choked to death.

Then there's the issue of data-caps.

Telecom doesn't actually like to talk about the size of its caps or how they compare with the rest of the world -- and there's good reason for that.

Data caps are an anathema to the whole concept of the Net -- an awful restriction on an otherwise unfettered medium.

The very idea of a broadband connection which imposes a data-cap of just 200MB is almost unbelievable in this day and age -- so why even bother with such a lunatic option?

Simple -- it lets Telecom crow about offering DSL packages that are as cheap as anywhere in the world -- even if the reality is that they're virtually unusable as a general-purpose connection due to that tiny cap.

So it's no wonder that a carefully crafted survey commissioned by a decidedly biased party (Business NZ) can produce a report that puts them in a favourable light.

Let's hope however (perhaps in vain) that our politicians aren't swayed by this biased document based on taking spin at face-value and instead look at the real facts before deciding what to do.

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