UK Property Sales Website Zoopla Set to Include More Broadband Info.

One the United Kingdom’s largest property websites, Zoopla (PrimeLocation), has today snapped up the uSwitch price comparison site for £160 million in a move that could result in home buyers being given more information about local broadband performance.

uSwitch, which will retain its brand identity, primarily focuses upon providing comparison information for consumer mobile, broadband, energy, banking, insurance and even TV suppliers across the United Kingdom. On top of that they collect a large amount of broadband speedtest data and all of this could now be harnessed by Zoopla’s property search.

Alex Chesterman, Zoopla’s Founder and CEO, said:

“We have always been at the forefront of innovation in our industry and this deal brings together two of UK’s best known and fastest growing digital brands as a natural next step towards creating the ultimate platform where consumers can research, find and manage their home. With the plans we have to develop our combined services, consumers will have a single resource for all their property needs.”

It’s worth pointing out that Zoopla’s arch rival, RightMove, have also been providing home movers with information about local broadband performance and availability for the best part of roughly two years (here). In RightMove’s case this data comes from the telecoms analyst firm Point Topic.

But Zoopla will need to be careful to avoid some of RightMove’s mistakes. The property website has been criticised some for using out of date broadband data (i.e. at the time of writing their postcode database was last updated one year ago) and for failing to reflect all of the available services in a given area.

In today’s market the coverage of faster Internet connectivity is improving at such a rapid pace that such information needs to be kept very current in order to be truly useful.