I NEARLY choked on my porridge this week when I read that the Advertising Standards Authority had upheld a complaint by BT about Virgin's "Hate To Wait?" broadband campaign. BT claimed the ads were misleading because Virgin's download speeds were slower than it advertised them to be. Pots, kettles and the colour black came to mind.

Last year, when Computeractive magazine had its readers take part in broadband speed tests, it found 62% of them routinely received less than half of the top speed advertised by their provider. Some 28% of them found they received less than a quarter of their maximum advertised bandwidth. I'll wager a good few of them were with BT too.

More action needs to be taken to stop internet service providers (ISPs) misleading us. ISPs can make ample use of adjectives like "unlimited" and "superfast", flanked by multiple hyperactive exclamation marks, provided two unobtrusive prepositions -"up" and "to" - are also dropped into the sentence. Somewhat counterintuitively, the "up to" speed, it appears, has precious little bearing on actual speed. It simply represents the best aspiration of your ISP on a good day when there isn't a sparrow perched on your phone line, the wind is in from Africa, and North America is sleeping.

Rejoice! Ofcom has decided to get tough. Or so I'd thought. The communications regulator has just unveiled an awfully gentleman-like voluntary code of practice, cooked up with our ISPs in mind.

No wonder most ISPs have promptly signed up to it; they can't exactly be quaking in their boots.

The new code contains a lot of guff about monitoring speeds and fair use limits, but when it comes down to it, ISPs are still allowed to make fast speed claims and continue to advertise something they know they cannot physically provide, as long as their sales staff mention that fact when potential customers ring up.

I can just imagine the script being written for call centre sales calls: "Dear Ms Blythman, I am required to inform you that from time to time, despite our very best endeavours, it is possible your line speed may not always operate at the rate quoted."

I can't see that caveat standing out among the morass of information delivered by phone from some distant- sounding call centre, embedded among confusing technical and financial details about call and broadband packages.

This is like allowing a company to sell you an "egg-rich" cake nominally containing eight eggs on the understanding it might contain only two because the egg delivery was late, or the baker didn't bother to count the eggs he was slopping into the mix. Ofcom should have forced ISPs to advertise an average or guaranteed minimum speed, not a theoretical best one.

Still, the code does call on ISPs "to work harder to identify and resolve individual customers' line problems". But I am wary about finding this encouraging.

When I tried to report the snail speed of my broadband to BT, I found myself at the centre of a one-woman job creation boom in Bangalore, or some other outpost of the BT empire. I struck up a correspondence with a charming Mr Sengupta from the BT Total Broadband Support Response. This may sound like the telecoms equivalent of a crack police SWAT squad, but Mr Sengupta and his charming colleagues - who put you on hold and check your records with each new number dialled even though they have already given you a pin number - are schooled in the art of soft soaping and apology. Despite every email and call starting with the ominous phrase "I am sorry to note that you are inconvenienced with the broadband service", I was still passed on to another remote control centre that promised to contact me, but didn't.

I don't blame Mr Sengupta and his colleagues. I bet they're all smart, young Indians, hideously over-qualified for the thankless job they have of palming off apoplectic First Worlders with nebulous promises of some resolution. They speak charming, Olde Worlde English: Be assured, BT's engineers are "doing the needful" to check the possible fault. They arm me with freephone numbers to call while I drum my fingers, waiting for the pimpernel-like BT engineer to check my line and internal wiring.

The very mention of internal wiring is enough to make me despondent. After spending some £250 with BT to get it to investigate poor line quality, I was informed it takes no responsibility for wiring in the house, even though it installed it.

However, BT offered to install new wiring, at a potential cost of £200 or thereabouts; even then, it would only be guaranteed for one year.

Hacked off, I swapped my line to OneTel, which assured me I would receive exactly the same service as I had from BT, only cheaper. This was fine and dandy, until there was a further fault on the line.

OneTel then informed me it would take 22 days to get an engineer out. Why? Because the lines were owned by BT, and not being a BT customer meant I was way down the waiting list: a little matter OneTel had not thought to point out when touting for my business?

How does the telecommunications industry get away with such nonsense?