Survey Claims 71% of UK Broadband Users Find Changing ISP Tedious UPDATE
A new survey of over 1,000 adults across the UK, which was conducted by research and consulting firm Cavell, claims to have found that the majority of UK consumers (71%) still find the process of changing broadband ISP to be frustrating, complicated or intimidating. Just 28% said they found it “easy“.
According to Cavell’s 2024 UK Consumer Broadband Report, younger adults aged 18-24 were the ones who, perhaps conversely, found the switching process most complicated, with 33% highlighting frustrations. But on the flip side, the majority of consumers are now engaged with their broadband contract and know when it is up for renewal (87%), with just 13% unaware when their existing contract ends.
When it comes to broadband speed and understanding of what you pay for vs what you receive from your ISP, there are generational differences too. For example, awareness is very high (80%) amongst adults under 34 years old but drops quite steeply in the 55+ age bracket, with just 57% of respondents saying they knew if they are getting what they are paying for.
Advertisement
Additional Findings
➤ BT has the second-largest percentage of “positive sentiment” (42%) amongst national ISPs; only behind Sky (48%) and marginally ahead of Virgin Media (39%). TalkTalk meanwhile, which is reported to be facing an uncertain future due to debt pressures, fares less favourably in perceptions, with more UK consumers feeling negative (29%) towards the provider than positive (23%).
➤ Just 52% of respondents predict an increase in their internet usage over the next three years.
➤ Demand for streaming TV services (65%) comes out as the primary use of the internet, significantly above those who rely on it for working from home (37%).
➤ 64% said they have not been impacted by disruption in terms of roadworks to improve internet facilities in the last three years.
Furthermore, the research reveals that one in four consumers (25%) will seek a new contract immediately when their previous one ends.
Finbarr Begley, Senior Analyst at Cavell, said:
“I think it’s important to acknowledge that while there is friction with some elements like switching providers, and perceptions of individual providers might not be positive, many consumers are happy with their internet. It is fast enough, it is letting them do everything they want with it, and they think that will continue.
Of course, this poses a challenge to the broadband industry in the UK who want to keep selling faster, better, and more competitive services. There is yet to be a clear use case for mass adoption of hyperfast next-generation broadband across the country. You don’t need it if you just stream video every night.”
In fairness, switching ISP is something that Ofcom and the industry have been trying to improve for some considerable time, particularly now that the market is no longer as dominated by two major physical networks (Openreach and Virgin Media). The new One Touch Switch (OTS) migration system for easier and faster consumer broadband ISP switching is finally due to launch next month (after a lot of delays), but it may initially be a bit buggy.
The issue of encouraging people on to “hyperfast” connections is of course very well known (we’ll assume they mean gigabit-capable), although often the focus on top speeds does tend to overlook the fact that you can still benefit from the advantages of newer full fibre / gigabit networks (e.g. greater reliability and often lower pricing) via slower speed packages too. In any case, the eventual retirement of older copper and hybrid-fibre lines will perhaps make this somewhat of a moot point.
UPDATE 2:43pm
Advertisement
The original press released didn’t include the full report, but it can now be found here. Just remember that a sample size of 1,000 is perhaps a bit too small to be drawing too many conclusions from.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« Virgin Media UK Gift TV Customers “Free” Access to Premier Sports
People don’t bother protect their own money, then some rage at others for having more money
The solution to this problem isn’t a new switching system. We need to think of broadband more like electricity:
– Electricity providers don’t offer free sockets for your home: in the same way homeowners should think of their WiFi as a part of their home, not something which their provider gives them for “free”.
– When you switch, you don’t need to “reconfigure your meter”: in the same way providers should be encouraged to drop PPPoE for “plain” DHCP to make switching as easy as possible.
(obviously it’s not a perfect analogy – e.g. broadband isn’t a commodity like electricity is, but…)
Not going to work with a different network, change from say OR to Virgin. They all use their own equipment and network.
poor strategy. Given that FTTP means that every ISP now offers roughly equivalent service (though some still manage to screw that up), the quality of the supplied router and equipment is now the primary means of differentiating themselves from others.
Some will claim that every ISP supplied device is crap. I don’t agree and I’d say that the stuff people like to replace it with can also have its problems.
There are reasons to keep PPPoE in place and this is not one of the reasons to scrap it. If someone wants to use their own equipment, they should already know how to configure it for their chosen service. The e-waste argument has disappeared now that virtually every ISP “rents” it (even at no cost) and will recover/refurbish/reissue to a new customer.
Changing from an ISP to another ISP on Openreach network is pretty easy, not that I have done it for a few years, everything is done by the ISP you are changing to. The only thing is setting up the router. Changing to another network, including changing from FTTC to FTTP, can be a bit of a pain.
One of the reasons why I did not want to change, it was only Plusnet not giving me what I want, that got me to change, after all, if I had to change to FTTP, I may as well change to a better network and get off OR.
So yes changing networks can be a pain, it was not too bad here, but did cost me a extra month for plusnet. But i would have done that anyway, even with the new system that we are supposed to be getting.
Not so easy for Sky or Now broadband connections using Openreach FTTC network.
Sky/Now have made it difficult for most customers by hiding the username credentials and by using DHCP options like Option 61. A router has to support their method if you want to use your own and you have to know about it. Sky/Now support do not like having to tell you what configuration as they want to lock you into their own router for obvious reasons. Thankfully, on Sky FTTP, they have finally dropped this operator specific requirement.
@anonymous
Sky/Now from my experience have been using generic requirements for both FTTC and FTTP for a few years now, the only requirement is DHCP Option 61.
For anyone interested, this is what I use (pfsense, so may vary between routers):
dhcp-client-identifier “12345678@skydsl|12345678”
Try being a CityFibre customer. Tedious isn’t the word for it. Nightmarish is a better word. Cityfibre seemingly goes out of their way to make it as ghastly as possible so nobody will ever switch ISP on their network.
Don’t worry, I’m sure TOTSCo will fix this..
.
.
We have not done this voluntarily for a long time.We were with Virgin a long time ago, but they became expensive. We moved (with great difficulty) to TalkTalk. They then inflicted about three price rises in a row on us, so we moved to Fuel Broadband.Unfortunately, they folded, and we were passed on to the Post Office. We were quite happy with them, but they passed us to Shell, who passed us to Octopus who, lo and behold, passed us to TalkTalk! The full circle. Today, another man at the door from Toob.Oh deep joy.
The thing is many customers don’t just buy broadband in isolation. The 3 biggest players (BT / Sky / VMO2) are also TV & mobile providers and many customers tend to buy packaged deals involving a combination of all 3 so changing broadband may well involve unpicking these as well. If you’ve had FTTP installed in the last few years you may find you have to have a complete new installation (if you’re with a vertically integrated altnet it certainly will) which will put some people off.
TBH, years of retail has lead me to think that there’s only so much you can do without hand holding/literally doing it for them.
Even just the change of ISP router and changing the WiFi SSID/password is likely to cause people to see it as “frustrating, complicated or intimidating”.