Daisy Group Says UK Economy Bleeds £11bn Due to Poor Broadband

Business ISP Daisy Group has claimed that poor Internet connections are costing the UK economy some £11bn per year due to lost productivity, with 39% of employees saying they get faster broadband at home than at work and workers allegedly losing 38 hours every year due to slow services.

According to the study, the average worker was deemed “unable to complete their normal job responsibilities for up to 44 minutes every week due to poor broadband speeds“, while 7% also admitted that their Internet connection grinds to a halt more than 10 times in any given 7 day period.

During periods of slow Internet access some 60% of respondents admitted that they turn to their smartphones for non-related work activities, such as online shopping and checking social media. On top of that 9% of respondents said they used their smartphones to look for other jobs when they have no Internet access.

Jan Wielenga, Product Manager for Data Networks at Daisy, said:

“Too many businesses are still relying on basic ADSL connections that are aimed at the residential users. These are the businesses that struggle to cope with the high-bandwidth demands of software and apps that workers use.

It is simply unacceptable for businesses that rely heavily on the internet to experience periods of downtime, particularly at a time when fibre and dedicated Ethernet connections have never been more affordable and available.

The internet going down or running slowly for 44 minutes per week doesn’t sound much, but the result of any loss of productivity is that businesses can suffer.”

The workings given above assume the “UK’s average wage of £13 per hour” and that the average worker then loses 38 hours of productivity a year through slow Internet access. Apparently this is then factored against the 72% of the UK’s workforce (30 million) that use the Internet in their job roles (i.e. £494 worth of productivity is lost per employee per year).

The statistics are certainly interesting, but they’re perhaps a bit too thin and should be taken with a big pinch of salt. In particular it’s unclear how many people were surveyed, where and in what capacity. The assumption that those who use Internet would not also be able to do other work when offline is also a bit flaky, but it does depend upon the job.

On the other hand there’s no denying that a lot of SME firms do suffer due to a lack of good broadband, with expensive leased lines often not being economically viable for smaller businesses.