We have just published results from our broadband subscriber survey in the UK. The work was carried out in late 2008, and we have been going through the analysis country by country. Results from the US, Germany and France have already been released. As I noted after the US findings, consumers often claim to be satisfied with a product or service. You can understand why providers of that product or service focus on satisfaction surveys as evidence that they are doing a good job. It is only after further probing that we discover that people are really quite willing to move to a new provider if the conditions are right. A similar pattern has emerged in other countries, including the UK. As we highlight in our press release Sky comes out top in terms of customer satisfaction, with 87% of their customers reporting themselves “very” or “somewhat” satisfied with the overall broadband service. That sounds like an impressive result, especially compared to the 61% who say they are satisfied with Tiscali’s service. But even Sky’s broadband customers can be bought at a price. More than half say they would be somewhat or very likely to switch to another provider in return for a 20% reduction in monthly fees, and three quarters might drop Sky in return for a doubling in broadband speeds. The debate about upgrading national broadband networks is growing in intensity as governments consider investing in infrastructure to stave off the economic downturn. Opponents to this spending often claim that internet users aren’t interested in or don’t need faster speeds. Our survey evidence seems to refute this quite clearly: the majority of broadband users in all our studies indicate a strong willingness to move to services with higher access speeds. That’s good news as long as competition is allowed to flourish. Even though the broadband market is maturing, competitors can win new customers by offering superior service and attractive pricing. Twitter: www.twitter.com/dmercer15 Client Reading: Broadband Satisfaction and Customer Churn UK Survey Results 2H 08