A new survey has revealed that consumer dissatisfaction with the speed of their broadband ISP connections has rocketed upwards by 10% since 2009. It's perhaps no coincidence that in the same period we have seen a significant growth in adoption of up to 20-24Mbps ( ADSL2+ ) based broadband packages, which are slowly replacing the older 8Mbps ( ADSL ) products.

The Broadbandchoices.co.uk study noted that 77% of people cited broadband speeds as their biggest issue, which is followed by poor customer service (35%) and reliability (32%). However consumers trying to choose a new ISP still rate connection reliability (35%) as the most important factor, above speed (32%), value for money (22%) and customer service (6%).

This certainly makes a certain degree of sense, after all if your connection reliability and speed are good then you're not likely to notice the quality of customer service. On the other hand poor customer service can result in all sorts of administrative, billing and communication problems.

When asked if they felt their broadband ISP had lived up to its claims, 39% of consumers simply said "No". In fairness, problems with speed can just as easily be the fault of poorly configured hardware, internal home wiring, long telephone cables or any number of other problems that are completely outside of an ISPs control.