Topic: Broadband [General]

2008 which has been based on research conducted by YouGov and covers the top 10 ISP brands.

The survey was conducted online through out of the UK, but excluded Northern Ireland during January and February of this year and queried around 4,000 broadband users with at least 3,000 responding to each questions.

PlusNet came out top overall having top marks for five of the six categories

1 - PlusNet - (www.plus.net)
2 - Sky Broadband - (www.sky.com)
3 - Pipex - (www.pipex.co.uk)
4 - Tiscali- (www.tiscali.co.uk)
5 - Virgin Media - (www.virginmedia.com)
6 - AOL Broadband - (www.aolbroadband.co.uk)
=7 - BT Broadband - (www.bt.com)
=7 - TalkTalk - (www.talktalk.co.uk)
=7 - Tesco Broadband - (www.tesco.net)
10 - Orange - (www.orange.co.uk)

The Quality & reliability of your home Internet Service

Winners - (very satisfied / fairly satisfied)
PlusNet - 88.3%
Pipex - 87.9%
Virgin Media - 83.0%
Sky Broadband - 81.0%

Losers - (fairly unsatisfied / not at all satisfied)
Tesco - 23.8%
Orange - 14.2%
TalkTalk - 13.9%
AOL Broadband - 12.8%

Download times of files and web pages

Winners - (very satisfied / fairly satisfied)
PlusNet - 82.9%
Pipex - 74.6%
Virgin Media - 71.1%
Sky Broadband - 69.4%

Losers - (fairly unsatisfied / not at all satisfied)
Tesco - 36.5%
Orange - 21.2%
TalkTalk - 19.5%
BT Broadband - 19.1%

The clarity of pricing & billing

Winners - (very satisfied / fairly satisfied)
Sky Broadband - 77.1%
Tiscali - 75.3%
PlusNet - 74.7%
Orange - 73.2%

Losers - (fairly unsatisfied / not at all satisfied)
Pipex - 16.7%
BT Broadband - 16.1%
Virgin Media - 11.3%
TalkTalk - 9.2%

After sales support

Winners - (very satisfied / fairly satisfied)
PlusNet - 73.9%
Pipex - 66.1%
AOL Broadband - 54.0%
Sky Broadband - 53.4%

Losers - (fairly unsatisfied / not at all satisfied)
Orange - 28.8%
TalkTalk - 27.9%
Virgin Media - 24.4%
BT Broadband - 23.8%

Good value for money

Winners - (very satisfied / fairly satisfied)
PlusNet - 81.1%
Sky Broadband - 75.7%
TalkTalk - 73.7%
Tiscali - 62.4%

Losers - (fairly unsatisfied / not at all satisfied)
BT Broadband - 28.7%
AOL Broadband - 18.4%
Virgin Media -16.5%
Orange - 16.0%

Speed of service activation (after sign-up)

Winners - (very satisfied / fairly satisfied)
PlusNet - 73.6%
Pipex - 67.7%
Sky Broadband - 66.8%
Virgin Media - 62.6%

Losers - (fairly unsatisfied / not at all satisfied)
TalkTalk - 25.4%
BT Broadband -18.6%
Sky Broadband - 17.0%
Tiscali - 16.2%

According to comparison site uSwitch.com a whopping 54 per cent of broadband customers failed to receive their MAC code on the first request.

Even though it has been a year since Migration Access Codes (MAC) were made mandatory by Ofcom so that broadband consumers could switch seamlessly between one broadband provider and another.

While the more than half of customers said they received their MAC code within a week of applying, nearly 21 per cent had to wait two weeks and nearly 15 per cent had to wait more than a month. This is worrying as a MAC only lasts 30 days so depending on the actual release date customers could find their time left to find a new provider seriously reduced.

While complains to Ofcom over MAC codes have fallen from 825 in March last year to 517 in January 2008, research by BroadbandChoices.co.uk show that fifteen per cent had to make two requests for their MAC codes while over sever percent had to ask more than six times.

The picture with local loop unbundling (LLU) doesn't look to rosy either, while 34.5 per cent said that they experienced no downtime a fifth said thay had to wait a more than a month to be reconnected.onnected again.

One third of consumers wishing to switch broadband provider don’t do so because they have no faith in the process according  latest research from BroadbandChoices.co.uk .

The poll, which mirrored previous studies, was carried out to mark the first anniversary of a mandatory Migration Authorisation Code (MAC) which was introduced by Ofcom to make switching providers easier.

In 2007 the figures for consumers switching broadband provider rose, to 13 percent (up from nine percent in 2006). Current statistics show that one in four consumers is looking to switch broadband provider in 2008. But whereas 300,000 consumers switch energy supplier every month with ease, broadband switching has only 154,917 switching per month.

We are still paying too much for our broadband according to uSwitch.com, even though prices are lower than ever.

It found that the price we pay is 36 percent lower than four year ago, even though speeds have increased. In 2004 the average price for a 512Kbps connection was £27 per month, not an (up to) 8Mbps line costs on average only £17 per month.
The company say that even so nearly 5 million households are paying over £20 per month, now while they point out that this is effectively 'wasting' £162m a year, there is more to deciding on an ISP than just the price. This is why many of the satisfaction survey on ISPs usually see the lower priced providers come a lot lower than the average.

The UK broadband minister, Stephen Timms has been moved on to the Department of Work and Pensions.

He will be replaced by Baroness Shriti Vadera who will take over his role immediately. Mr Timms has been quite active in meeting those within the industry as the UK tries not to fall behind in race to provide the next gereration of high speed networks.

Neil Berkett, acting CEO of  Virgin Media said the government's current "hands-off" approach to regulating investment in broadband was the right one and warned that interfering would only hamper the industry, "Regulation is neither necessary nor recommended. It would disincentivise companies from investing in networks,"

It's not just Sky who have problems with their routers, it seems that there could be a whole load more trouble for the rest of us.

The problem occurs with the ever favourite security concern, the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) feature built into most if not all newer routers, this allows the router to be modified by a service so that running games, instant messaging programs and other applications will work seamlessly without any user configuration.

If a user visits a website which has a malicious Flash file and the host PC has a version of Flash later than v8 then due to a flaw in UPnP they can be remotely controlled and allow a redirect to any website. While this could be a nuisance for some, if for instance attackers redirect trusted sites such as banks or ebay, customers could be exposing their login credentials to the attackers.

If fact there are numerous uses an attacker could find a use for a hacked router, and whereas antivirus software can detect a PC which has been compromised, a router is a lot more complex to discover. Routers made by Linksys, Dlink and SpeedTouch have been confirmed to be at risk, but this could also include many others.

Most routers come with UPnP on as default, but researchers say that the only defence at the present is to turn it off again, something which may be quite daunting to the majority of non-technical broadband users.

The Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) has said that it is forecasting healthy growth rates for Broadband next year.

The areas in which it thinks the major grow will occur are those of  IPTV, VoIP and video conferencing services, this in turn will force providers to upgrade their networks to provide faster, more reliable connections. The say this will in turn lead to further technological innovations on the content and applications side.

The ISPA quite rightly says that "Broadband has made possible web technologies such as streaming media, telephone over the internet, and the downloading and consuming of movies and music," but we wouldn't hold your breath for any major speed improvements in the next year.

BroadbandChoices.co.uk have commissioned a survey by ICM which revealed than which a lot of broadband users want to change, many are afraid to.

It showed that although 69 per cent of consumers said that they would change supplier if they were offered a cheaper package, and 51 per cent said they would do so if their new provider could offer faster connection speeds,  that many were loath to switch.

The main reason is that consumers were worried about getting into lengthy contracts and tied to a minimum term with their new provider, 43 per cent of those questioned cited this. 35 per cent thought that that they would get the same level of package or service with a new provider, and in true British spirit 29 per cent said that they just couldn't be bothered to switch!

It must have been too much pre-Xmas sherry, or a plan to get into the 'school of bleedin' obvious', but we have been told the reason for slow ADSL, according to Virgin Media.

At his eForum discussion the Minister of State for Competitiveness, Stephen Timms, was told by Virgin Media chief technical officer Howard Watson the problem was...copper!!

He also blamed it on the use in promotion of the words "up to" when relating to broadband speeds.

Scientists are also looking into whether it is the cause AIDS and smallpox as well......

Telecoms regulator Ofcom has released results from its latest International Communications Market report.

The publication analyses trends in the  global television, radio and telecommunications sectors last year worth £873bn , it found that more than half of all British households possessed a broadband connection at the end of last year.
It also showed that around 40% of households have already taken advantage of a bundled service, where broadband is included with another service such a as phone or internet.

A typical family household in the UK with two parents and two children, who use a basket of communications services that includes a landline, basic pay-TV and the internet, will pay £25 a month on a triple-pay deal; "This compares with £27.22 in France and £39.77 in Germany. The same family in the US will pay £69.54," stated Ofcom. It also highlighted that 68 per cent of UK broadband were satisfied with their broadband speed, even though the UK has one of the biggest gaps in perceived headline and actual speeds.