Broadband News

Broadband speed tops list of complaints

Tuesday, 29 June 2010

By Garnet Roach garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk

Although download speeds have improved, slow internet connections still top the list of broadband complaints, a new study has revealed.

Speed dissatisfaction has increased by a massive 10% since 2009, despite ever faster broadband speeds of up to 20Mb and 24Mb broadband being advertised.

Despite this, broadband reliability - rather than speed - is the top priority for consumers, the latest Broadbandchoices.co.uk survey has revealed.

More than a third rated a reliable internet connection as their most important factor when choosing a new package, closely followed by download speed at 32% and value for money in third place at 22%.

Surprisingly, customer service was almost entirely overlooked, with only 6% of people naming it as a top priority.

Additionally, a disappointing 39% of people said that their broadband provider hadn’t lived up to expectations. While this is an improvement on last years’ 47%, more still needs to be done.

A massive 77% of people cited broadband speeds as their biggest issue - up from 70% last year - followed by poor customer service on 35% and reliability in third place with 32%.

Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: “The main reason for dissatisfaction among broadband customers is still overwhelmingly due to broadband speeds not living up to the hype, demonstrating that there continues to be a huge disparity between speeds advertised and the speeds delivered.

“These results are even more troubling given Ofcom’s - and the ISPs - supposed attempts to make this more transparent to consumers. Dissatisfaction with connection speed has actually risen since last year’s survey.

“It was particularly interesting to see that well over a third found their broadband provider lacking in customer service skills - the second most common complaint,” continued Phillips. “While few people seem to make purchasing decisions based on customer service, it clearly matters when consumers are forced to contact their ISP to get other problems resolved.”