By: MarkJ - 12 March, 2010 (1:17 PM) - Score: 1806 - Fixed Line Broadband, Statistics

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has called on the government to force UK ISPs into delivering a "minimum and guaranteed" speed of 8Mbps direct to business premises. The move follows a new FSB-ICM survey of 1,300 small firms, which found that 24% are dissatisfied with their broadband service.

Of those small firms that are dissatisfied, 63% said they are unhappy with the speed and reliability of their connection. Another 30% said the area they live in has an unreliable broadband connection and 13% said they would consider moving business premises to an area with faster broadband.


The FSB fears that small firms are being promised a service from their broadband provider which is not being delivered. They have today called on the Government to ensure that good broadband infrastructure is put in place and have requested the following changes.

The FSB is calling on the Government to:

• Stop the passing the buck on faults as stated by the Lord Corbett of Castle Vale and Lord Erroll between BT and ISPs when it comes to dealing with faults on customers' lines. A rigorous form of line testing must be put in place to ensure that faults known to affect broadband services are detected. Providers must maintain all line plant and exchange equipment up to an expected standard and good engineering practice must be applied to all repairs. All broadband faults must be fixed within 48 hours of first being reported.

• The telecommunications ombudsman must be able to rule directly against all service providers and there must be no exemptions. Customers should be able to cancel all contracts ie 12, 18, or 24 month contracts at any time without penalty if their service does not meet expectations.

• ISPs must be obliged to deliver a minimum and guaranteed connection speed of 8Mbits/sec download speed end to end, with guaranteed and consistent upload speed. There must be a minimum level of service stipulated in writing and notification of any traffic management that may be applied to the broadband connection. It is essential that IP throughput is not subject to 'traffic management' restrictions or 'throttling' for the service the customer requires.

• Small businesses must have confidence in the speed and reliability of their broadband provision. Ofcom must ensure providers give accurate information on connection speeds (IP throughput that is useable by the customer) and ensure there is one UK wide standardisation and technical specification of the method of transmission on that fibre for all network providers. Local authorities must also play a vital role in infrastructure provisioning and maintenance, especially under and beside the main roads.

We agree with a majority of the points, although it's hard to see how anybody could guarantee speeds of 8Mbps over most existing broadband technology. Certainly you could do that with a leased line or future fibre optic connection but the FSB does not define a specific technology.

There are plenty of good business broadband ISPs around that offer strong Service Level Agreements (SLA), quality and support. However some technologies, such as ADSL (up to 8Mbps) or SDSL (up to 2Mbps), are restrained by their own physical limitations and issues, such as line length, local interference and poor wiring, which is outside of the ISPs control.