Customers warned about cutting broadband costs
Friday 05 September 2008
Editor-in-Chief of www.ISPreview, Mark Jackson has warned customers on the dangers of "treating broadband like a cheap utility service". He stated that many advisors encourage customers to scrimp and save on their broadband service, assuming that it's no different to any other major utility service, like Gas and Electricity: "To view broadband purely based on price is to adopt an extremely narrow perspective that could do consumers more harm than good. Take electricity as an example, if you change supplier and spend less the product itself does not change, electricity is still electricity; it's only ever either on or off, there's no in-between."
"By comparison broadband is a much more dynamic service where paying less can mean a significantly lower quality of service (slow speeds), support and features. It should come as no real surprise that many consumers are often forced to face such problems when the product they buy might not be giving the ISP enough revenue to adequately reinvest in their network."
As an example, ISPreview spoke of the impact that bandwidth hungry services like BBC iPlayer and YouTube are having on some of the small, cheaper providers.
However, two providers came out on top with a special mention for their mixture of affordability and reliable service: "There are of course exceptions to every rule," said Mark Jackson, "with both O2 (
Be Broadband) and
Sky Broadband having achieved more success balancing service reliability with lower prices than most."
Source: ISPreview
