Point Topic reports that businesses appear to be growing increasingly dissatisfied with their ISP's, with just over one in every ten firms (11%) swapping broadband providers over the last 6 months.

On the surface such a figure may appear to be unremarkable, yet businesses have typically remained loyal to their ISP's and thus the new trend is likely to cause concern. Likewise the problem is expected to get worse during 2008.

The causes for all this will not be unfamiliar to residential consumers, with 40% of businesses sighting high service prices as the biggest problem:

• 40% - High prices


• 19% - Quality of service


• 13% - Customer service

However pricing for business broadband services has come down considerably over the past few years. Instead it's believed that much of the most recent movement is from businesses seeking to upgrade their older infrastructure onto more modern and cheaper alternatives, such as SDSL.

Customers of Be and The Carphone Warehouse (OneTel, TalkTalk, AOL UK) were found to have the most restless customer base, which is surprising given Be’s strong popularity among consumers. Meanwhile Orange is credited with making significant reductions to customer churn.