This is due to advertising standards. They are required to advertise "average speed", although how this is actually calculated is nebulous.

A&A not advertising can just say what the link speeds actually are on the product pages.

Other ISP's could do this too, but it would cause confusion having one figure on the advert and one figure on the product pages, and they might get in trouble if they link to the product pages in the adverts.

Couldn't they just list link speed and average speed (however that is measured, before or after protocol overhead for example) as two separate lines on the product page?

It’s still nonsense. Everyone doing FTTH is using passive optical networking (PON, or NGPON or XGPON or XGSPON or …) which actually has a line rate of 10Gbps. It then uses TDMA to give each subscriber enough time slots to send and receive at a particular speed. My ISP, Ziply Fiber, just gives every subscriber enough time slots to send at the advertised speed _after_ protocol overhead, even at gigabit and higher speeds. If you buy the 500 Mbps service it really will speed test at 500 Mbps. If you buy gigabit it really will test at 1000Mbps provided you have faster than gigabit Ethernet between you and the router. The router that they rent connects to the ONT at 10Gbps, so speed tests done on the router itself always test at the speed you’re subscribed to.

At 10Gbps and above they start using direct–attached fiber (DIA) instead, so the speed you subscribe to is the line rate and it will test lower due to protocol overhead. But if you can max out a 50Gbps link then I think the overhead will not bother you much.

They also allow residential customers to run BGP and use their own addresses. They’re a great ISP.

As others have said, Fibre is a postcode lottery.

A&A is expensive for me. 1Gbps down and 115Mb/s up with a 1TB/mo quota for £75/mo. I get similar speeds (with no download limit) from BT for £34.99/mo.

Community Fibre is £63/mo for symmetric 5Gbps and "unlimited data".

I'm locked into a contract with BT for another year but I don't have any real need for anything faster than 500Mbps right now.

I'm focusing on making my homelab network 10GbE to cover the day that I do manage to get >1Gbps broadband.

It's not true either. Openreach offer a 1.6gbit/sec product now, which ISPs can resell.

I don't understand why he says it's the most expensive places to get internet. You can get 900mbit (really 1gig pre overheads) for ~£30/month on openreach infrastructure which is not the cheapest in the world but it certainly isn't the most expensive.

And if you're covered by an altnet (who build their own infrastructure instead of reselling openreach) like cityfibre, community fibre or netomnia you'll get far faster speeds for even less money.

A lot of these providers do rent the poles and ducts off openreach, but then lay their own fibre over it

It's not just A&A either. I know I'm lucky as I live in an area that's had a relatively new CityFibre XGS-PON install, but I've got 2300Mbps symmetrical and 5000Mbps is coming Q1 this year.

Virgin Media also do Gigabit plus speeds and you can upgrade to symmetrical (they don't seem to advertise this though). That's definitely a household name.

I used to live in the UK and thought double-digit broadband was pretty good, actually.

Now I live in a slightly remote corner of Europe and I had 6Gbps fiber installed yesterday, for €15/month. (Nominally 10Gbps, measures as 6, which is... pretty good, actually.)

Not only do A&A offer good speeds, their customer service is exceptional. There are chat rooms on which engineers and enthusiasts reside and if you phone them you get an engineer.