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Latest Blog Article: Poll Results: Broadband Universal Service Commitment
ISPA have today announced the finalists for its annual awards with a new category this time around voted for by ISP customers. The Customer Choice Award was voted for by customers of ISPs, with thousands of votes being received. A second new category is the Best New ISP, with some familiar names in this. A few winners from last year are back to defend their titles, with BE Broadband looking to hold their title as Best Consumer Broadband ISP, and Fluidata as Best Fixed Broadband ISP. The full finalists are listed below.
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Best Consumer Fixed Broadband |
Best Business Fixed Broadband (sponsored by O2
Wholesale) |
|
Best Consumer Customer Service ISP (sponsored by
CISAS) |
Best Business Customer Service ISP (sponsored by Geo
Networks) |
|
Best SME Business Hosting |
Best Large Business Hosting |
|
Best Internet Telephony (sponsored by Magrathea) |
Digital Inclusion (in association with RaceOnline
2012) |
|
Internet Safety and Security sponsored by Return Path |
Managed Service Innovation |
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Customer Choice |
Best New ISP |
An independent panel of judges, headed up by thinkbroadband's Andrew Ferguson, will decide the winners which are to be announced on the 3rd of July at the Park Lane Sheraton Hotel, tickets available.
"Congratulations to all the finalists of the 14th annual awards and the best of luck for the night. Nomination is the culmination of either rigorous technical testing, written entry forms analysed by experts judges or votes from customers.
This year's new categories once again demonstrate the innovation of our industry and with thousands of votes cast by members of public adds a new dimension to the event."
ISPA Secretary General, Nicholas Lansman.
KC has launched a new service called KC Connect, which provides an engineer visit to a customers home who will then connect an internet enabled device to your KC broadband connection using Ethernet cables. The engineer will also check the telephone wiring to ensure it is optimal for ADSL2+, which may also mean the customer receives a nice boost in broadband speeds.
The KC Connect product is available for KC ADSL2+ customers, those on the 30GB (£29.99) monthly usage allowance bundle will pay £7 per month, which covers the engineer visit and doubles the usage allowance to 60GB. Customers on the Xtra service (£39.99, 150GB usage allowance) will pay slightly less at £6 a month, and get their usage doubled to 300GB per month. The KC Connect options have an 18 month contract.
The engineer visit means they will install ethernet wiring to the device you choose in the home, which could be an internet enabled TV, games console, set-top box, or devices like the Roku and LG ST600. With the increasing congestion on the 2.4GHz spectrum, and the fact that WiFi does not always cover a house, this should help people who have been struggling to get a TV or other device to connect using WiFi and reduce the number of times that video streams end up buffering.
A self install option is available, and rather than posting a bundle of Ethernet cable KC supply a pair of Devolo dLAN 200 HomePlug units, they usually cost between £60 and £90 for a pair, and as with the other wiring or routers supplied there is a lifetime warranty as part of the KC Connect service. The dLAN 200 units will provide a connection of around 38 Mbps between power sockets, though the speed will reduce to 20 Mbps over longer distances (our review of the faster dLAN 500 units, shows that wireless was only providing 1 Mbps at this distance), which for ADSL2+ is more than sufficient.
For business use where you require 1:1 contention, and a good SLA the traditional path has been an expensive leased line, or more recently an Ethernet service. Fluidata is launching its PureFluid PULSE service, that can bond three VDSL2 lines and offers 1:1 contention, 99.99% SLA and a separate DSL line or 3G connection for backup purposes.
Bonding three VDSL2 lines means that for those close to the cabinet download speeds of 200 Mbps are possible, and uploads of 60 Mbps are possible. Obviously not every business is within 100m of its street cabinet, but even out at 1km the 3x24 Mbps (72Mbps) downloads will be impressive, and as the upload does not degrade due to distance so quickly the majority will see uploads within the 40 Mbps to 60 Mbps range using bonding.
The preliminary results for the quarter and year ending 31st March 2012 have been released by TalkTalk. The group saw a net drop in customer numbers of 13,000, giving a total broadband customer base of 4.07 million with an ARPU of £25.60 among its broadband customer. Interestingly the proportion opting for the Plus (unlimited) option increased by 117,000 in the last quarter to 1 million.
The loss of 13,000 customers is tempered once you look into which customers actually left, the provider lost 23,000 SMPF (shared LLU) customers and a further 90,000 who connected via the BT Wholesale IPStream network. These loses were almost balanced by the 100,000 new MPF (full LLU) additions. With the fully unbundled customers representing a better revenue stream compared to the shared LLU and IPStream customers, while those customers also get a cheaper service. The LLU network now reaches some 91% of UK households, with TalkTalk looking to grow it to 93% in the next year.
TalkTalk grew the numbers taking its 40 Mbps fibre service to 9,000 customers, and is taking pre-registration for the 80 Mbps service. The £15 extra on top of the standard Essentials and Plus fee is described as a competitive proposition and is apparently incrementally profitable for TalkTalk. The reason given for the low take-up is that with an average download speed of 7 to 8 Mbps on their ADSL2+ network, TalkTalk suspect this is satisfying most customers' present requirements.
TalkTalk has a five year plan in place that will apparently see network capacity increase 100 fold, ensuring the network continues to scale for video and cloud based services.
TalkTalk has launched its HomeSafe parental controls in the last year, which give consumers an Active Choice as to what types of sites can be blocked at the network level. 92,000 customers turned on one or more of the filtering options in the last quarter, meaning 320,000 have opted to use the system. We would expect those numbers to continue to increase as the press coverage of parental controls and the availability of the system to existing customers is promoted. The categories of websites most often selected for blocking in descending order were:
Rutland County Council, which covers a mere 17,000 homes and businesses, has signed a £3 million contract with BT, to deliver fast, affordable fibre broadband to 90% of Rutland by the end of 2013.
It was known that Rutland was going to sign with BT back in March, but now the final public contract signing has taken place at Oakham Castle more detail on the roll-out plans have been published.
Openreach is to deploy its FTTC solution which is available as a wholesale service, this currently offers a maximum of 80 Mbps downstream and 20 Mbps upstream. The actual speed received is governed by the distance between a property and the cabinet. The roll-out will not stop at the 90% figure, as it appears Rutland County Council has access to additional funding that should let them push coverage to a level of 97%. The remaining 500 or so properties will see their connection speeds uplifted to 2 Mbps or faster, by the end of 2013.
The funding gap that the newspapers and tech press got worried about is being addressed with BT adding £800,000 to the project. Rutland County Council are contributing £2.2 million of which £710,000 was from the BDUK fund.
While FTTC is seen by some as old-fashioned and out of date, given the funding everyone wants to spend full fibre is not feasible. Where people are willing to pay the additional costs (you will need to live in an area with FTTC) once FTTP on Demand from Openreach is released, they will be able to get a full fibre connection installed to a property in 2013. While the cost is not fixed estimates of £500 to £1500 abound, and there may be options to spread the payments over the term of a contract. Rutland Telecom connected Hambleton in Rutland with a full fibre service in 2011, with a £50 monthly fee (25GB usage allowance) and £1000+ setup costs.
Openreach is keen to drive take-up in areas where it has full fibre (Fibre to the Premises) available, and while many will focus on the fastest services, these are also the most expensive. The Generic Ethernet Access 80/20 product which was recently launched in FTTC areas, is also available on FTTP, the advantage being that the connection speed is guaranteed.
The standard price from Openreach for the 80 Mbps download, 20 Mbps upload service is £18.34+VAT per month, an offer starts on 11th June that will see this reduce to £8.95+VAT per month, and the £80 activation fee is also reduced to £60. There are many other price elements to be added, but it means the FTTP service will be the same price as the FTTC service for the duration of the offer.
So far the full fibre service with its limited footprint has seen limited adoption from retail providers, hopefully the rash of lower priced deals will see more providers offering it as an option.
Full fibre connections are the future, and even Openreach appears to recognise this with its fibre only exchange trial. It took some years for majority of the BT board and management to accept first generation broadband, and the cycle of caution is repeating itself. Even the alt-net arena is following the same cycle, just rather than copper fed wi-fi hotspots, the alt-nets are embarking on more fibre rich deployments.
Every three months we publish the quarterly results for the main providers, as well as providing an indicator of where the growth in broadband numbers if coming from, the reports can also provide an indicator of a companies plans for growth.
We are a little late with the Orange (Everything Everywhere) results for the quarter ending 31st March 2012, and finding the actual release took a few clicks, and downloading a zip file which had the PDF buried in it. The only reason we spotted that they had been released was Mark at ISPreview.
In terms of fixed broadband, there is no change, with customers remaining static at 713,000. This is the third quarter where numbers have remained static, which after the steady decline since 2007 is likely to be seen as reasonable performance. Interestingly the summary states "We have achieved double digit fixed broadband revenue growth year on year with 90% of new customers in Q1 taking fixed broadband, line rental and mobile.". Which means that where Orange is getting new sign-ups, they are buying more services than those customers who are leaving.
The weekly ASA adjudications have been published, and while the adjudication is upheld against TalkTalk in this case, the fact that it revolves around the operators website based line speed checker that all providers signed up to the Ofcom Voluntary Speeds Code of Practice need to use on their website has implications across the industry.
"Ad
A speed checking facility, for a broadband service, was viewed on 10 December 2011 on the talktalk.co.uk website. When the complainant entered his postcode, it stated 'Your estimated speed 3.8 Meg Your estimated speed range is between 2.1 and 5.3meg ...'
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the ad was misleading, because he was a Talk Talk customer and had been informed that the maximum speed available to him was less than 2.1 Mbit/s.
Assessment
Upheld
We noted that some speed issues experienced by consumers could relate to their own particular circumstances and, to that end, the complainant's issue might be a customer service one, rather than an indication of the general reliability of the line checker. However, because we had not seen directly relevant evidence to support the impression that was likely to be taken from the ad – that the speed checker was indicative of the likely actual throughput speeds consumers would achieve in the majority of cases – we concluded that the ad breached the Code. "Extract from ASA adjudication
The premise of the line checkers is to provide a pre-activation estimate of what a line can achieve, i.e. something that is within the ball-park for a particular phone line. In this case the complainant received an estimate previously that appears to have changed, though looking at the figures it is possible that old estimate received may have been from a time when checkers only ever showed one figure rather than a range. A key point missing from the ASA adjudication, is that the checkers have no influence on what actual speeds you will receive, the checker is simply a database that is mainly fed from Openreach line length data.
Where there is a potential problem for almost all providers now is that the ASA has ruled the checker needs to be very clear whether it is talking about access line speeds, or throughput. The ASA appears to be leaning towards providers having to quote actual throughput speeds. In theory this is easy enough, just reduce any estimate by around 15%, but with the recent advertising changes that say advertised speeds drop, one wonders if this enforced shuffling is more confusing to the general public.
The DSL based services (ADSL, ADSL2+ and VDSL2) are all heavily influenced by the wiring in the home, and even if magically the UK got full fibre overnight, there would be still be broadband speed complaints, as throughput rather than line length would become the biggest factor.
Ofcom has a duty to monitor and regulate broadband providers, and to that end it has carried out a mystery shopper exercise taking place during December 2011 and January 2012. Providers websites and telephone sales were tested as part of the process, but with the BCAP/ASA changes to broadband advertising happening only a few weeks ago it is possible that the landscape has changed significantly.
In the past Ofcom has focused on the big half dozen providers, but for this exercise it has looked at some of the smaller providers, though it has grouped the smaller and medium sized providers together, making it difficult to draw conclusions about an individual provider.
| Percentage of assessments where a speed estimate was/was not provided on the telephone | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Provider | % calls providing a speed estimate | % calls where prompting was needed | % calls ending without a speed estimate | % calls ending without estimate - identified reason | % calls ending without estimate - no reason identified |
| ALL | 93 | 34 | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| Large | 96 | 38 | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| Medium | 93 | 34 | 7 | 3 | 4 |
| Small | 83 | 22 | 17 | 3 | 14 |
| BT Infinity | 90 | 33 | 10 | 3 | 7 |
| BT Total Broadband | 96 | 48 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Karoo | 98 | 22 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| O2 | 96 | 41 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Orange | 91 | 39 | 9 | 7 | 2 |
| Plusnet | 99 | 32 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Sky | 93 | 21 | 7 | 3 | 4 |
| TalkTalk | 95 | 48 | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| Virgin Media (ADSL) | 91 | 34 | 9 | 3 | 6 |
For the observant, the reason Virgin Media (cable) is not in the table because cable providers are not required by the Speeds Code of Practice to provide a speed estimate.
On an initial viewing of the data, things don't look too bad, but when you look at what proportion needed prompting for the sales staff to give some form of speed estimate, it is clear that there is still a lot of working to done in terms of training sales staff, and providing tools that ensure they have the information to hand.
Providers gave various reasons for the lack of estimates, and it seems some sales calls were dealt with as a pre-sales, rather than being an order that was going to procede. This goes against the spirit of the code that providers have signed up that tries to make the provider give an estimate as early in the process as possible. Another problem was that of fully unbundled lines, these become invisible in terms of speed checker information for many providers, which perhaps means there is a case for more work and co-operation between the wholesalers, unbundled operators and the retail providers.
For now BT and TalkTalk have following discussions with Ofcom agreed to address staff training and their sales processes to increase their level of performance in this area.
One of the joys of having broadband is of course that you do not have to deal with sales staff, and can peruse retailers at will using your broadband connection. Ofcom did research this and the summary figures are shown below:
| Analysis of data provided by Ofcom of GFK looking at providers websites | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Provider | % website visits resulting in a speed estimate | % website visits ending without an estimate | % website visits ending without an estimate - identified reason | % website visits ending without an estimate - no reason identified |
| ALL | 87 | 13 | 8 | 5 |
| Large | 95 | 5 | 2 | 3 |
| Medium | 82 | 18 | 11 | 7 |
| Small | 64 | 36 | 17 | 19 |
It seems the results on websites are still less than ideal, though many providers in March/April 2012 revamped their websites, with some removing all speed references, forcing potential customers through their telephone checker system to get a speed estimate.
"Discussions with the Advertising Standards Authority and their Advertising Code-making bodies CAP and BCAP on the clarity of broadband advertising following our response to the CAP and BCAP consultation on reviews of "Up to" and "Unlimited" claims and the publication by CAP and BCAP of guidance in September 2011. The reviews have in our view led to significant improvements in how broadband is advertised, and we continue to have an interest in how ISPs advertise their broadband services to ensure that consumers are given clear, consistent and accurate information."
Ofcom Voluntary Code of Practice on Broadband Speeds: Mystery shopping research
Hopefully the web based shopping will be revisited in the near future, as we feel that some providers are committing the sin of omission by not giving any indication of the technology used or the speed ranges, until the potential customer has given some form of identification, which generally is in the form of a telephone number.
The broadband market is getting more complex with the increasing availability of VDSL2 based services, and it is not clear whether advertising rule changes have improved matters, or the confusion arising means people are spending more time to try and understand the speed issue. Ofcom needs to look closely at the rule changes, given the results from our poll back in April, which ran shortly after the new rules came into effect.
Ofcom in theory has access to lots of data from providers, and should thus be able to produce statistics easily on what services are available to parts of the UK, and an interesting UK wide figure has emerged. To quote exactly "Customers who are unhappy with their current speed could also consider switching to a faster package or provider, particularly if superfast broadband services are available to them (63% of UK households now have access to superfast broadband )."
Inexplicably the figure was buried in amongst the latest round of mystery shopper research published by the telecoms regulator. On immediate viewing the figure looks far too high, as Openreach superfast coverage has only just reached 38% of the UK, and Virgin Media cable services only cover 48% of UK households. The solution seems to be that there is not a total 1:1 mapping between Openreach and the Virgin Media cable network, which some have accused Openreach of having. The 63% figure is feasible if 15 percentage points of the Openreach FTTC and FTTP coverage are outside Virgin Media areas. The actual figure for Openreach outside Virgin Media areas may be a few percentage points lower due to the presence of alt-nets, e.g. Digital Region has a footprint of around 3% of UK households.
Update 20:30 Added a figure for Digital Region, who provide VDSL2 in South Yorkshire via sub-LLU, though their coverage does overlap some Virgin Media and Openreach FTTC areas too.
