Survey Claims 834k UK Homes Switched ISP for the First Time in 2021
A new Censuswide survey of 2,163 UK adults, which was commissioned by broadband ISP Zen Internet, has found that the proportion of households that have never switched ISP is down to just 18% from 21% year-on-year. This, they claim, reveals that 834k households (3%) switched for the first time in the last 12-months.
However, despite a significant proportion of households having never switched provider, many do recognise the benefits of doing so. Some 22% understood they would save money by switching, while 19% expected to get better value for money and 11% believe they could get a better and more reliable service by switching.
But the fear of switching continues to hold some people back. The top concerns when switching ISP include the service being worse than with their current supplier (19%), hidden costs (12%) and not having access to the internet during a switch (11%).
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At the same time, it was noted that 33% of respondents have experienced more connection issues, such as outages, in recent months than they have done previously, but sadly the survey doesn’t examine this aspect in more depth. In keeping with that, 38% said they also used time during the COVID-19 lockdowns to explore other ISPs as options.
Summary of Additional Survey Results
➤ 33% would stay with their current provider if they were guaranteed no price hikes.
➤ 30% would be more likely to stay with their current provider if they were offered the same deals as new customers.
➤ 28% view having great customer service as a priority, while 27% say the same for a policy of no mid-contract price hikes.
➤ 63% found that switching was easier than they thought.
➤ 33% intend to switch within the next 18 months.
➤ 40% considered “sustainability” to be a clear factor when selecting a broadband provider (we assume this is a reference to climate friendly policies).
Admittedly, it should go without saying that extrapolating a figure of 834,000 households from such a small survey is a bit of a stretch, but a lot of surveys use the same approach to estimating the wider market impact of a particular viewpoint. Zen Internet clearly has a vested interest here, so take with the usual pinch of salt.
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.
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That sample size should be enough to be 99% certain you’re within 1% of the actual figure. Not too much of a stretch, though of course what the actual questions asked were who knows? Quite possible they were leading.
I must of switched so many times I went from BT to TalkTalk then back to BT then to IDNet which was worse since they used Zen’s backhaul then back to TalkTalk which was better than the rest surprising enough. Took a lot of trying different ISP’s to find which works best for me.
Talk talk customer service is awful though, you wait till you have a problem and you will be getting really stressed out.
I’d rather be on a top performing network and put up with poor support instead of vice-versa.
How is Zen network worst than TalkTalk? TT is way over subscribed. What’s your metric on this?
“How is Zen network worst than TalkTalk?”
https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/idnet/4700905-latency-and-pl-over-the-last-24-hours.html#Post4700905
The above is a regular occurence in recent weeks/months, which happens to be happening exclusively on Zen backhaul connections. Perhaps you’d like to point out where TalkTalk users are also experiencing something similar?
Didn’t know that many customers had left Zen.