Broadband: increase in problems with speeds and connections

New study shows more of us are having problems with our internet providers.

Never before have we all relied so much on our internet providers.

Over the last year, as millions of us have been forced to work from home on a regular basis, our home connections have been put to the test, from Zoom calls to handling homeschooling.

And then, given we can’t really go out, we’ve had to turn to those connections to keep us sane in our downtime too.

Clearly, broadband providers have been under a lot of pressure. And it seems that pressure has taken its toll on the service we enjoy.

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It’s dropped out again!

The latest annual survey from consumer champions Which? found that the volume of issues people have with their internet provider has increased over the last 12 months.

Around seven out of 10 (69%) people said they had experienced an issue with their connection over the last year, a substantial increase from the previous year.

The biggest offenders here were very low speeds (59%) and frequent dropouts (53%) when comparing the service received post-pandemic with what they had come to expect before Covid-19 reached our shores.

The length of those dropouts is worth noting too. While around four in 10 (44%) said they had been left without internet for more than an hour, almost half (48%) had to go without a serviceable connection for more than a day.

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The worst offenders

The Which? study dug into the performance of individual suppliers, and it makes for some pretty grim reading. 

With Virgin, for example, one in three customers said they had suffered an outage lasting at least an hour, while one in four said their connection was slow for uploads or downloads.

Coupled with the fact that Virgin customers were found to be less likely to be satisfied with the customer service on offer and the value for money, Virgin ended up racking up a score of just 53% overall.

That still wasn’t quite bad enough to take bottom place though.

That dubious honour went to John Lewis, with a frankly diabolical score of 47%. It scored particularly poorly on connection speeds, reliability and how easy it was to set up.

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Other members of the ‘big four’ suppliers didn’t fare much better than Virgin. 

TalkTalk and Sky both scored 54%, with TalkTalk racking up the highest proportion of customers who would not recommend the firm to their loved ones. That’s quite the damning indictment.

Sky rated poorly for value for money, notable when their customers pay more than the average broadband user, which sticks in the craw even more given that one in three suffered from frequent dropouts.

Sky also did poorly on connection speed, reliability and ease of setup. In fact, it was the joint-worst, along with Utility Warehouse, on very slow speeds.

By contrast, Zen Internet topped the satisfaction tables, with a score of 70%.

While this is sharply down from its score of 84% last year, it has nonetheless finished in first place for two years in a row.

A whopping 85% said they would recommend the firm to a friend.

If your provider is one of those that fared poorly, or you simply want a cheaper deal, make sure you compare broadband deals in your area today.

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My own experience

With impeccable timing, I’m writing this article on the day that my own internet at home has packed in.

For someone who makes their living writing online, having no connection is something of an issue, so I’ve spent the day having to use my mobile phone as a ‘hotspot’ for my laptop, wiping out a big chunk of my monthly data allowance.

In other words, it’s been a stressful and potentially costly faff.

However, in all honesty, it doesn’t feel like ‒ for me at least ‒ these outages have been more frequent over the last year. I guess that makes me one of the lucky ones, though it’s difficult to accept that given the current testing setup I’m working through.

Nonetheless, households across the UK are going to remain hugely reliant on quality ‒ and dependable ‒ internet connections.

Evidently, providers have a lot of work to do in actually delivering on that front.

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Automatic refunds

It’s worth remembering that Ofcom introduced a new code of practice a couple of years ago that require broadband and landline providers to pay compensation automatically to customers when certain issues arise. 

These include delayed repair following the loss of service.

If your service has stopped working and is not fully fixed after two full working days, then you should receive £8 for each calendar day in which the service has not been repaired.

Unfortunately, because this is a code of practice, it means that only providers that sign up to it are actually required to pay this compensation.

So while the likes of BT, Sky, Virgin and Zen have all signed up, there are some names ‒ I’m looking at you Plusnet ‒ who are conspicuous by their absence.