American download speeds

[norm.h]

My sister-in-law in Kentucky is trying to confirm the satellite download speeds to her Toshiba laptop.
She has tried several speed check sites and the results have returned speeds of between 2 and 8 Mbps. Her provider (Exede) claims up to 12 Mbps for the service she has signed up for.

Given that time of day, and ethernet / wifi can make a difference, what other factors could influence the discrepancy in these results, and would the distance of the speed check server from her router be a factor?

[Habitual]

...(Exede) claims up to 12 Mbps...

"up to" is marketing/sales BS IMO.
"save as much as...", "prices as low as...", "plans starting at...", "speeds up to..."

Technically, "up to" includes her speeds of between 2 and 8 Mbps.
There may in fact be another reason, I just don't believe claims made by any marketing campaign but I'd be willing to bet that she could get 12Mbs download if she called and asked how much it would cost to realistically get that. http://www.wildblue.com/overview/satellite-vs-dial-up says "Fast Download Speeds (up to 1.5Mbps)"

Their own footer/disclaimer says "Comparison for exede12 areas only. Comparison is based on published speed of exede12 service and 3.1 Mbps average DSL service as reported by the FCC study"

Someone less cynical than I may actually have more input on this subject.

[norm.h]

My query was not so much to do with matching the provider's claimed speed, but more to do with why there should be such a discrepancy between the results of different speed checkers.

The reason I asked: "would the distance of the speed check server from her router be a factor? "
is because she couldn't find a speed check server in Kentucky, and the 2 she tried were in Kansas and Michigan - both some distance from Kentucky, and giving conflicting results.