Ofcom – Rise in Broadband ISP Speed Dissatisfaction and Switching Hassle

Ofcom has today published its annual 2012 Consumer Experience report. The study found that general dissatisfaction with fixed line broadband ISP speeds had increased to 17% (up from 15% in 2011) and that consumers were continuing to complain about experiencing too much “hassle” when switching provider.

But general satisfaction with fixed line broadband ISP speeds, despite the slight +2% rise in those whom claimed to be fairly or very dissatisfied, held unchanged with a total of 76% describing themselves as either very or fairly satisfied (7% said they were indifferent and that’s down from 9% in 2011). Satisfaction with Mobile Broadband speeds also stayed almost unchanged on 79% but fewer registered themselves as firmly dissatisfied.

Service reliability is another area of mild concern in the fixed line broadband market, which reported the second-highest level of dissatisfaction (9%), although this was unchanged from 2011. By comparison Mobile Broadband saw consumer dissatisfaction with reliability climb from 7% in 2011 to 13% in 2012.

Sadly the highest level of stated difficulty in switching (migration) was also found in the fixed line broadband market, with 15% of consumers running into such problems (equal to that of bank account switching). Apparently “Hassle” continues to be stated as one of the main reasons for not switching ISP; Ofcom are currently working to develop an easier migration solution.

Never the less some 9% of fixed line broadband consumers switched ISP in 2012, which is up from 7% last year. Similarly 14% of bundlers have switched provider for at least one of their services in the past 12 months (up from 10% last year).

It should be said that the most of Ofcom’s report merely re-hashes data that has already been made available through prior updates (e.g. service speed studies, infrastructure reports etc.) and thus there’s little point in repeating it here. The full 160 page document can be found below.

Ofcom’s 2012 Consumer Experience Report (PDF)
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/../Consumer_Experience_Researc1.pdf