Insufficient speed results causing broadband rage
Thursday 13 March 2008
As more and more broadband customers are openly expressing their anger at poor service from their Internet Service Providers, latest finding from Point Topic's most recent consumer broadband survey shows that mis-advertised speed claims are behind a lot of the angst.
In a study taking into account 6,000 respondents it was found that the majority of broadband customers are finding that their ISP's 'up to' download speed prefix is consistently falling short.
72% of users subscribed to a package promising 512 kbps managed to achieve their advertised 'up to' speeds or higher. However, as the promised speed increases, figures show that the percentage of customers achieving the speed dramatically decreases.
"Of the users who reported subscribing to an "up to 16 Mbps package, only 4% said that their connection actually provided it," said Pamela Varley, research analyst at Point Topic.
Factors such as distance from the exchange, contention and line quality are blamed for the poor results in speed achievement. However, for the 96% percent of 16 Mbps subscribers, flagging speeds are resulting in severe broadband rage.
Recently, in a survey commissioned by
O2 broadband it was found that more than half of Brits admitted to having lashed out at their hardware as a response to poor broadband.
Statistics show that broadband consumers in Cardiff are the most likely to get techno-rage whilst users in Bristol claim to be the most dissatisfied with their service.
As a ratio of advertised reported speeds over 2 Mbps
Sky broadband came out on top of the polls with 72.50% of customers subscribing to packages with an advertised speed above 2 Mbps and 57.50% of users reporting that they had received this - a ratio of 0.79.
Orange were revealed as showing the poorest results with a ratio of 0.63.
Source:
Point-Topic
