Personally I don’t (currently) have a problem with my broadband at home and I’m quite happy with it so I don’t have an axe to grind here… but…  I did find this interview quite amusing.  I don’t know what job Mr. Ahmad does for Virgin Media but I suspect and hope it is on the marketing siade rather than anything that involves maths.  In answer to a question about broadband speeds he says:

So in the case of Virgin Media and our 10 Megabit per second (Mbps) product, we are providing 8.7 out of that, so that’s 87%. That’s nearly 90% of the actual speed we are advertising, so in our case, yes, people are getting as close to that speed as possible.

Where do I start?   You have to appreciate the attempt at sleight of hand with 8.7…  that’s 87%…  which is nearly 90%… which is nearly 100%     I would like to see him visiting the doctor to be told his temperature is 38.8, which is as good as 37 which is NEARLY 40 DEGREES! Call an ambulance!

As for the assertion that 90% is as close to 100% as possible…  has this man never heard of, say, 91%?

What he says is probably true.  You would have to be blindly optimistic to expect the full possible speed on your connection unless you were downloading files from your ISP’s own server, connecting to your modem via ethernet, not sharing your connection at all, and certain there was nothing running in the background, but that doesn’t excuse teh sloppy maths.  These days it feels like 100% is taboo: it is either “90% is as close to 100% as possible” or “I’m giving 110% effort”