Broadband News

BT tops broadband survey results

(22-03-07) - BT is the UK’s best broadband provider, according to BBC Watchdog’s broadband survey results.

The survey asked Watchdog viewers to rate the performance of their broadband provider, based on customer service, ease of set-up, cancellation, value for money and reliability of service. Of the 50,000 respondents, over 18,000 were satisfied or extremely satisfied with BT’s broadband service.

The top five best providers based on positive votes are listed as:

1. BT Broadband - (visit www.bt.com)
2. Virgin.net (now Virgin Media) - (visit www.virginmedia.com)
3. AOL - (visit www.aol.co.uk
4. Tiscali - (visit www.tiscali.co.uk)
5. TalkTalk - (visit www.talktalk.co.uk)

BBC Watchdog also lists those providers that a large number of consumers are unhappy with. The top five providers are:

1. Orange - (visit www.orange.co.uk)
2. TalkTalk - (visit www.talktalk.co.uk)
3. BT Broadband - (visit www.bt.com)
4. Tiscali - (visit www.tiscali.co.uk)
5. AOL - (visit www.aol.co.uk

Chris Eagle, Commercial Manager at Broadband choices, comments: “It looks like companies like Orange and TalkTalk are still having problems trying to satisfy the ‘free broadband’ market, hence their poor results in the survey.”

The survey also looked at proportional rankings: The number of votes as a proportion of the total responses for that company. This is where the stats get interesting: larger providers like BT fared less well in these results, when their positive customers were viewed as a percentage of the overall response. Customers were satisfied or extremely satisfied with the following ISPs:

1. Global
2. Waitrose - (visit www.waitrose.co.uk)
3. Zen -(visit Madasafish - (visit www.madasafish.com)
4. Metronet - (visit read news article
5. Bulldog - (visit www.bulldogbroadband.com)
6. Orange - (visit www.orange.co.uk)
7. TalkTalk - (visit www.talktalk.co.uk)
8. Sky Broadband - (visit www.sky.com)

Chris Eagle, Commercial Manager at Broadband Choices, says: “Customers who are thinking of switching from Virgin Media to Sky should bear these results in mind. Sky has been highlighted as a poor performer by 51% of its customers, and is way down at number 25 in the proportional list of good service providers.”

He also claims that: “When we look proportionally at the people who are satisfied with the service they receive, the smaller suppliers like Madasafish are coming out on top. It just goes to show that broadband consumers should shop around and resist the temptations of the bigger companies’ marketing campaigns.”