In Berlin at the end of last week, German and Japanese scientists pooled their resources to smash the world record for data transmission. Using a fibre-optic cable, which I imagine as being about four foot thick, they achieved a nippy rate of 2.56Tbps – the equivalent of 60 DVDs worth of data every second. However, while the magic of pulsing light gives these lucky scientists the opportunity to shunt home videos back and forth over Germany in the blink of an eye, UK broadband customers such as myself continue to indulge in their favourite pursuit: moaning about the speeds they’re able to attain. Last weekend – working independently of any scientists – my attempt to download a grainy 5-minute video clip took 20 tedious minutes, which I immediately followed up with a disgruntled visit to a speed-checking website to test my connection.

Internet service providers get a lot of stick – as their technical support departments will no doubt confirm – but a number of factors always compromise connection speeds. Firstly, there’s a common supposition that a 2Mbps connection means that you should be able to download at a rate of 2 megabytes per second, when it’s actually 2 megabits (one eighth of the speed). Rates vary wildly depending on the server you’re downloading from, how fast it’s able to send the data to you, and how many other people are trying to do the same thing. But, naturally, this doesn’t stop complaints from those who’ve been lured with a 2Mb promise. “A 2 pint bottle of milk has to hold 2 pints of milk,” says a slightly irritated chap called Rob on an online forum. “I think we are being taken for fools.”

Aware of our dogged pursuit of a fat, faultless data pipe, companies are always dangling upgrades in front of us. Friday will see BT launch its wholesale ADSL Max service to ISPs, having upgraded over 5,000 exchanges across the UK. This will give 99.6% of the population access to broadband, and guarantees 78% of them a rate of between 4 and 8Mbps. As BT isn’t charging ISPs any more than they currently do for providing an existing 2Mbps connection, there should be some free upgrades in the offing. In the meantime, 24Mbps speeds are being offered in certain areas by UK Online and Be Unlimited, who have both introduced ADSL2+ technology into some local exchanges, and NTL is trialling 100Mbps broadband over their cable network. But while the future of download speeds might be rosy, the chances of emulating those German scientists and sending files at high speed is slim; this will continue to be thwarted by a combination of the technological limitations of ADSL, and an unwillingness on the part of the ISPs to offer a service that might allow us to host a website on our computer or, god forbid, make file-sharing easier. So if you find yourself with 60 DVDs to send and don’t have a fibre-optic cable to hand, it’s probably better to pop them in the post.