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UK and USA Consumers Would Pay Extra for Better Home WiFi Kit from an ISP

Wednesday, Feb 22nd, 2017 (8:38 am) - Score 643

A new Qualtrics survey of 1,050 respondents in the USA and United Kingdom has found that 78% of respondents prefer to get their in-home WiFi kit (wireless broadband router) from an ISP and 68% would pay between £4-£8 per month extra for better wireless coverage.

The survey, which was commissioned by AirTies (i.e. they have a vested commercial interest) and conducted during December 2016, also found that 43% of consumers reported having areas in their home or apartment where the Internet service doesn’t work (i.e. a weak wireless signal) and 54% had at some point called their ISP to complain about the WiFi or Internet connectivity.

However the good news, at least for home broadband ISPs, is that 77% would be willing to pay an extra monthly fee to get better home WiFi (this falls to 68% if the fee added an extra £4-£8 per month to their bill) and similarly 74% would upgrade their package if a similar improvement was offered.

Additional Survey Highlights

* Consumers ranked home Internet/broadband service to be more important than pay TV or home telephone service; 63% ranked it #1, while less than 20% ranked either TV or home phone as being most important;

* 67% of respondents would consider purchasing small, extra Wi-Fi Access Points (APs) – in addition to the router they currently have – to place around their home to provide better speeds and coverage, but 78% of all respondents said they would prefer that their in-home Wi-Fi routers/hardware be provided by their ISPs instead;

* 70% of consumers reported having at least five Wi-Fi devices (such as smartphones, connected TVs, and tablets) in their home; 58% have between 5-10 devices; and 11% have between 10-15 devices; and

* 92% of respondents said they are streaming video on Wi-Fi connected devices in their homes.

The survey appears to support the approach being taken by some ISPs, which over the past few years have put more investment towards bundling a good quality wireless router or additional WiFi coverage extenders alongside their broadband packages.

Philippe Alcaras, CEO of AirTies, said:

“When most consumers think about their own home Internet experience, they don’t view Wi-Fi as something separate. This is why they are quick to call or blame their ISPs for performance issues. Improving this experience shouldn’t be the responsibility of consumers or third-party retailers, but rather their ISPs.

In fact, the vast majority of consumers would prefer that, and would consider paying extra for a premium Wi-Fi experience that works in every corner of their home.”

On the other hand anybody willing to pay up to £8 per month extra for such hardware (£96 per year) from their ISP might be able save money by purchasing superior kit from a third-party vendor. However different connection types can also have different requirements, which might require you to spend a lot more in order to get a good wireless router.

Similarly not everybody is comfortable with the idea of setting up their own home WiFi network and will prefer to use a pre-configured router from their ISP, although modern third-party routers are usually quite easy to install (often you’ll only be required to input a username and password for your broadband connection; unless the ISP forces you to use only their router).

However there is perhaps scope for ISPs to offer a choice of different routers to customers, which could be offered via either a one-off upgrade charge or reflected through a small increase in the customer’s service rental. This is likely to be of particular interest to more advanced users, many of which might otherwise be discouraged by the feature-locked and budget level quality of standard bundled routers.

Mind you one reason why ISPs like to limit the choice of router is to help keep the customer support side manageable. Each new device offered could potentially create a different / new set of possible issues.

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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