Only 36% of UK Parents Describe their Broadband as Highly Reliable
A new OnePoll survey of 2,000 UK adults, which was commissioned by rural full fibre ISP Truespeed, has found that 67% of parents say they need “fast broadband” because they work from home, but only 36% claim to have a “highly reliable” home connection and 46% say they suffer “broadband problems” at least once a week.
Apparently, video calls shuddering, freezing or even dropping out entirely have been experienced by 24% of respondents, while 16% have also “struggled to get their broadband to cooperate” when sending an email.
Against this backdrop, it’s noted that a fifth of parents have faced arguments after asking their children to stop using the broadband to help free up enough bandwidth for them to attend a work video call. Similarly, some 4 in 10 families now have more rows about internet use than about what to watch on TV. Others have rowed because someone tried to download a big file, making the internet slow for everyone else (13%).
However, surveys like this often can’t or won’t delve deeper into the context of such issues, which usually ends up with “broadband” taking the blame for everything that could go wrong. The problem with this is that it may overlook other factors, such as slow WiFi, a poor or faulty router/network setup or devices, problems with the remote internet server(s) and the consumer’s own choice of package (e.g. they chose a slower or cheaper plan, when faster options were available) etc.
Evan Wienburg, CEO of Truespeed, said:
“Struggling with sub-standard broadband is a big challenge for parents up and down the country juggling working from home with their kids’ online schooling. Everyone wants a piece of the broadband action so it’s hardly surprising that unreliable connectivity and bandwidth issues are causing family rows. Our survey underlines the urgent need for WFH parents to be able to choose an ultra-fast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband service that can handle whatever their family throws at it.”
At this point it should go without saying that Truespeed has a clear vested interest in trying to sell its own gigabit-capable broadband packages, so take this survey with a pint of salt. However, most would probably agree with the survey finding that 92% of respondents would be “lost” without their home broadband connection, although these days mobile broadband is another alternative that can work for a growing number of people.
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 and Linkedin.
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That’s because most just use the equipment supplied by their ISP and then shove it in a cupboard.
Most ISP supplied equipment is junk, stop using it and if you are forced to then put it in bridge mode and use a decent 3rd party router, also, stop putting them in a cupboard.
Most ISP issues people have are self-inflicted.
This is not the only problem. Some ISP’s are just bad and unreliable. When we were with plusnet, I ran the supplied router but handled all WiFi from a bridge. Worked wonderfully, we moved to TalkTalk, who allow changes to the router but delete and reset them to default randomly and often. This would often break my bridge connection and cause hang ups on my WRT3200ACM in various configurations. I ended up giving up and just using the supplied router. When I stopped trying to fix the issue and just ran everything off of the supplied router on factory default settings, things worked better. However, my internet will (and still) reliably go down at least once a week (normally during an important meeting).
To make things worse TalkTalk’s customer service is non existent. Before you get a phone number you have to post in a public forum (how the heck is Dave from down the street going to fix my internet?) before you can get to a phone number to call someone. Their website then states their phone lines are only open 3 days a week, for limited hours. With the live chat open for similar hours. (We posted a live chat question on a Monday and was informed their next opening hours were Wednesday).
I think to say most issues are self inflicted is wrong. Supplied equipment should work as advertised (in a cupboard or not) and the infrastructure should be in place to provide a reliable connection, with good support available and accessible. That isn’t the case for most internet users. The vast majority of people using these services don’t care about having to go through the steps to create a bridge through a separate device. They want to just plug in the supplied equipment and it should just work. That’s the service they’re paying for and that’s the service their entitled to.
@Thomas
Sounds like the obvious solution is to give Talktalk as wide a berth as possible (which comes as no surprise, they’re the pits)
The ISPs jobs is to provide internet to your home, it’s up to the customer to make sure they can receive it on their devices
To say that issues are “self-inflicted” because they are provided with poor equipment is a bit unfair.
I totally agree with your points however, just this shouldn’t be on the consumer (who may not even know better).
@Msh
Your set-up fee is not enough to cover a decent set-up. You would need mutiple 802.11AC Hotspots (At least one per floor and dedicated ones for offices), each connected to each other by ethernet.
Most households won’t be spend the £500 to above £1000 needed for this and would rather moan that the cheap stuff the ISP has to use because of tight margins is crap (When you margin is less than a few pounds better stuff is not affordable.
None of this is the ISP fault.
Totally agree I work for one of the biggest ISP the calls are crazy . Yes every one should be using a 3rd party router. You don’t pay your ISP for WiFi you pay for broadband meaning a cabled connection. Its not the isp job to educate the public on how wifi works. Ignorance isn’t an excuse.even when I advice customers 3rd party routers are an option I just get thats the ISP job…. its NOT
I am not disagreeing that money should be spent to improve the user’s internal networks in pretty much all cases. Not at all, in fact, I agree. Find a mainstream ISP that *recommends* this is done. I feel for 1st Line support who have to deal with this, but I’d argue this is largely caused by the ISPs themselves.
Because someone doesn’t know better doesn’t go and buy more equipment after being sold “the Worlds best WiFi” (all ISPs boast about the trash they give out), you’re saying the issue is “self-inflicted”. That’s unfair and the point I am disputing.
To the point of this article though, saying quality would improve if consumers had their own equipment is a totally fair (and almost certainly correct) position.
Totally disagree, installed high performance router and WiFi extender, the Broadband isn’t great anyway, some areas will suffer regardless, its not all equipment related.
Part of it will be the limitations inherent to a copper-based xDSL technology.
It’s open to interference and damage from water ingress. As more and more connections move to fibre, I suspect reliability will improve.
Also, wifi is a notoriously poor connectivity option especially in urban environments. My desktops are all on Ethernet, wifi is only for mobile devices.
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That the “full fibre” they’re allowed to sell, where the last 200 yards is overhead through twisted pair?
Full fibre is only FTTP.
“here the last 200 yards is overhead through twisted pair”
Get you and your fancy *twisted* wires. 😉
Steve
This is what happens when the government refuses to accept broadband is a key part of the nations infrastructure and invests in it rather than vanity projects like HS2 designed to primarily do nothing but line the pockets of their mates. This is complicated further by the toothless OFCOM who generally Pander to the telco’s with very low expectations (super-fast/ultra-fast when in 2020 it isn’t, low fines for breaches, have zero interest in providing protection for customers receiving bad service) and do nothing to drive any competition in the market.
For once I have to agree.
The cost of getting FTTP everywhere is trivial compared to HS2 and and the RoI is obvious. As well as getting a very high uptake rate.
So I am a bit lost as to why Rishi can throw money at Eat Out to Help Out and be tight on things like FTTP and Energy Efficient homes all of which save money and have an obvious RoI the long run. As ever, in the UK, we fail to invest-to-save in favour of balancing book short term.
What occurs to me is that these ISP runs these surveys to such a small number of people, and where are they running them exactly, I’ve not come across any.
Other issue, I feel like these are being targeted at people looking for problems.
Needs to be properly surveyed not just some half wit company that provides broadband to a couple people.
This is survey is run to generate interest.
It is much cheaper than paying for ad space.
Yes I would take the survey “with a pint of salt” !
But I don’t think you really can blame the router where there is a long ADSL connection or even VDSL that is struggling with a long or poor twisted pair.
For four people at home on teams, this may include the kids on Google classroom, a low grade VDSL won’t be enough and there is no way that the upstream, even on the very best ADSL, will be good enough. So there is a subset of people who are absolutely bound to have inadequate incoming connectivity.
Sure you will he the turnips who still have not got round to connecting key devices properly to the router or who have not got a WiFi extender. I don’t know how we would have coped at home without our 300/50 connection. It is just enough for everything to work without compromise.
I’d argue that in most cases WiFi is probably to blame.
Only recently I was on a forum and someone was wondering why their WiFi sucked on one PC and it turned out they were using a really old WiFi adapter that only supported 2.4Ghz. A cheap USB adapted instantly fixed the problem. Yet they might be misled to think an extender is what they need if they went to their ISP, which would likely make matters worse.
I used to supply free WiFi to someone and they would moan about its reliability, but refuse to make any compromises to increase the signal quality. This is sadly not uncommon, people expect it to “just work” without any consideration for placement in a suitable location for optimum reception.
I wonder what percentile of these people use Virgin Media.
99% of the time, it’s not the connection that’s unreliable, it’s WiFi. People rely solely on WiFi to run their company VPN’s, VoIP systems and all sorts. Wire in people, if you rlmely heavily on your internet connection working well, wire in.
It’s amazing that whatever post code you put in Truespeed are “looking at your area”.
Almost like it’s a load of rubbish and an email grab.
https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/index.php?tab=2&election=1#10/51.3889/-2.4973/truespeed/
Thanks for confirming my suspicions Facters!
Well at least it wasn’t a survey by Zen Internet 🙂
How many people could identify their ‘broadband’ being the problem and not anything else between their fingers and a server somewhere in the world?
This survey is for rural areas which have always been problematic. There’s no commercial incentive for any service provider to cover a rural area unless backed up by government grants.
In that case there is a case for OpenReach to be nationalised, this would be a ‘levelling up’ project, to ensure all subscribers were treated equally.
(yes I am agreeing with you)
Agreed Dave. Nationalizing openreach would do more for the UK’s broadband than anything else I can think of.
I’ve been working from home since before the first lockdown last March and Virgin Media have been solid as a rock. I have a Unifi network instead of using their crappy SuperHub. The only blip in my monitoring was at 1am on one occasion which may have been a firmware update for the SuperHub. Other than that it’s been completely stable.
I’m interested that you find the UniFi any good.
I’d give their marketing and PR efforts 10/10. Hardware: not so much.
We used to have it in our offices and it wasn’t the best. I’ve still got it at home, for which it is adequate and stable.
Fast is not an adjective I would use: it seems to halve the throughput unlike cheaper makes. Even the better TPLink boxes give better throughout.
Don’t know why you have issues, maybe it’s a misconfiguration. We have it at the office too and it’s fast and stable there also.
I can achieve real throughput of 650Mbps over WiFi, which means it can easily handle my 350Mbps connection. Unifi’s gear has never “halved” any of my throughput.
I would never put TP Link gear in an office environment. Too many bad experiences with it. TP = Toilet Paper in my mind.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t love TPLink either. Build quality is awful.
I don’t think our UniFi is misconfigured TBH – it is perfectly stable but the throughput is no scintillating.
For the kids at home and iPad usage a stable 150mb/s is perfectly good enough.