Mixed Results for UK in ZyXEL European Home Broadband Survey

Networking IT kit manufacturer ZyXEL has published a new European Home Broadband Satisfaction study of five somewhat random EU countries including the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic and Sweden. Sadly the UK only came third due to 20% of consumers being unhappy with their service speeds and other gripes with support.

The ZyXEL research, which questioned respondents about their home broadband service performance, WiFi quality and the customer service provided by their ISP, is based on a survey of 2,500 people from across the “five key regions” (oddly France, Italy and Spain don’t even get a mention).

Overall the survey found that 17% of Europeans felt as if their home broadband speed is poor, while 19% moan of regular WiFi problems and 10% found that their Mobile Broadband provider offered better service than home broadband. On top of that just 23% felt as if their broadband ISP was giving them all the help they needed to fix connection problems.

The Czech Republic topped ZyXEL’s home broadband satisfaction league, highlighting higher than average satisfaction levels with broadband speed and the general service provided by their ISP. The Netherlands came 2nd, followed by the UK and Germany (tied for 3rd) and curiously Sweden came bottom despite having a strong national fibre optic (FTTH/P) infrastructure.

Apparently Sweden suffered because around 1 in 5 consumers felt as if their home broadband speed was often poor, while 16% highlighted regular problems with WiFi and only 5% felt as if their ISP could provide advice on how to implement more advanced features in their home network.

In fairness ZyXEL’s survey isn’t exactly the most extensive one we’ve seen and they appear to give too much weighting to areas that some may consider less significant. Furthermore not all providers supply a bundled wireless router and so it’s debatable whether WiFi performance, which is also highly subjective between each individual and environment, should even be a factor.

ZyXEL’s European Home Broadband Satisfaction League
http://zyxel.actonservice.com/../Broadband Satisfaction Leauge Report.pdf