The article is about the UK. Previous OFCOM rules told providers they must advertise only a speed that at least 10% of customers can reach. So yes, people got faster than the advertised speed, about 10% of people. It makes no difference to the whining unfortunately.
The effect is, for say 40MBps VDSL (the service most UK households with "broadband" use, almost always ultimately delivered through a copper telephone cable from BT's Openreach last mile subsidiary) all the ISPs will advertise that as "up to 38Mbps" because at least 10% of their customers can get 38Mbps out of that link. Nobody gets 50Mbps, the link layer is throttled because they're on a 40Mbps product, but plenty of people absolutely will get 40Mbps even though the advert said "up to 38Mbps".
That includes my very tech-savvy ISP which is obliged to say "up to 38Mbps" in big print everywhere even though it explains that you're buying the 40Mbps VDSL service and talks about deep network internals, and even though its customers usually know exactly what speed they'll get (I get 40Mbps) because they're technical people and know how to measure.
Now, suppose you're one of the people getting 30Mbps from the 40Mbps VDSL product. Should you upgrade? There's an "up to 76Mbps" product advertised by your supplier, surely that would be faster? No. All the "up to 76Mbps" product does is change the throttle to 80Mbps, and you aren't impacted by the throttle so the product will simply cost more and achieve nothing.
Now, in fact under those rules an ISP had an incentive NOT to sell you the expensive product, because if they give you the 80Mbps product then you hurt their "up to 76Mbps" averages and make it harder to sell the product.
The result of _that_ change to the market was ISPs would have a headline product advertised heavily e.g. "Guaranteed at least 60Mbps for £24.99 per month" and then if they couldn't meet the guarantee for a particular customer they wouldn't magically fix things to go faster, they would simply say "Ah, you don't qualify for that offer, you can have a refund and the service stops, or pay £9.99 per month for our other product "Guaranteed 10Mbps" which we're meeting.
The ideology behind all this stuff is that our old friend the "invisible hand" will fix it. But er, no. There is actually only one last mile technology involved (for people in most cities there is a competitor, Cable TV cables, but that's a whole separate ball of wax) and it's VDSL offered at speeds set by the wholesaler. It will perform exactly the same whether you buy your "service" from an ISP with a call centre staff in India that uses a purple logo and has a chimp mascot, or you buy "service" from two blokes named James who work out of a rented office in Liverpool, because the "ISP" part is trivial and largely irrelevant except for branding, and the last mile part is a natural monopoly provided always by the exact same engineers, same copper cables, same everything.
The effect is, for say 40MBps VDSL (the service most UK households with "broadband" use, almost always ultimately delivered through a copper telephone cable from BT's Openreach last mile subsidiary) all the ISPs will advertise that as "up to 38Mbps" because at least 10% of their customers can get 38Mbps out of that link. Nobody gets 50Mbps, the link layer is throttled because they're on a 40Mbps product, but plenty of people absolutely will get 40Mbps even though the advert said "up to 38Mbps".
That includes my very tech-savvy ISP which is obliged to say "up to 38Mbps" in big print everywhere even though it explains that you're buying the 40Mbps VDSL service and talks about deep network internals, and even though its customers usually know exactly what speed they'll get (I get 40Mbps) because they're technical people and know how to measure.
Now, suppose you're one of the people getting 30Mbps from the 40Mbps VDSL product. Should you upgrade? There's an "up to 76Mbps" product advertised by your supplier, surely that would be faster? No. All the "up to 76Mbps" product does is change the throttle to 80Mbps, and you aren't impacted by the throttle so the product will simply cost more and achieve nothing.
Now, in fact under those rules an ISP had an incentive NOT to sell you the expensive product, because if they give you the 80Mbps product then you hurt their "up to 76Mbps" averages and make it harder to sell the product.
The result of _that_ change to the market was ISPs would have a headline product advertised heavily e.g. "Guaranteed at least 60Mbps for £24.99 per month" and then if they couldn't meet the guarantee for a particular customer they wouldn't magically fix things to go faster, they would simply say "Ah, you don't qualify for that offer, you can have a refund and the service stops, or pay £9.99 per month for our other product "Guaranteed 10Mbps" which we're meeting.
The ideology behind all this stuff is that our old friend the "invisible hand" will fix it. But er, no. There is actually only one last mile technology involved (for people in most cities there is a competitor, Cable TV cables, but that's a whole separate ball of wax) and it's VDSL offered at speeds set by the wholesaler. It will perform exactly the same whether you buy your "service" from an ISP with a call centre staff in India that uses a purple logo and has a chimp mascot, or you buy "service" from two blokes named James who work out of a rented office in Liverpool, because the "ISP" part is trivial and largely irrelevant except for branding, and the last mile part is a natural monopoly provided always by the exact same engineers, same copper cables, same everything.