A new survey of 10,000 broadband customers conducted by ConsumerChoices.co.uk has revealed that 50% have not changed their ISP even once in the past four years, yet over the same period prices are estimated to have fallen by 37%, while speeds have increased by 700% (we assume that refers to the 'advertised' rate; in 2005 headline speeds of 2Mbps were common).

The comparison site suggests that many customers could therefore still be stuck on a legacy tariff and paying over the odds for an outdated service. Sadly the survey did not include a question to ask users about what package they have now and thus it is difficult to know whether such a problem even exists.

We do know that many UK broadband ISPs have in the past offered customers the ability to upgrade their service to the latest packages, while others simply chose to mass migrate users without offering an option to stay with their existing setup. Sadly some have merely allowed users to go on paying a higher rate for slower speeds, without offering any sort of upgrade path.

In a survey conducted by ISPreview last month (here) we asked readers what speed of package they currently subscribe to. The vast majority were on 8Mbps or higher, while just 13.1% still had a 1Mbps to 2Mbps service and an even smaller 1.9% were still with the oldest 0.5Mbps (512Kbps) package.

The new survey could of course also mean that many customers are perfectly content to stay with their existing ISP and might not want to upgrade, that or perhaps they are concerned about the complexities involved. That would be understandable, especially with the new generation of fully unbundled broadband ISPs still being unable to offer a seamless outbound migration process to different providers.