UK Home Broadband

Social Media Monitoring

Prepared by: Metro Research

Active Listening to social media channels

“The key value of social media lies in finding out the questions being asked, as opposed to the actual answers”

(B2B Marketing, September 2010)

What have we been listening to? Blogs Online news Customers discussions on forums Consumers’ comments posted as responses to broadband –related articlesTwitter Facebook groups

Why?

Social media channels we’ve monitored

Technology Blogswww.silicon.comwww.broadbandwatcher.co.ukwww.itpro.co.ukwww.telecoms.comwww.eapdlaw.comwww.ispreview.co.ukwww.cable.co.ukwww.tech.slashdot.orgwww.bit-tech.netwww.psfbuzz.org.ukwww.techwatch.co.ukwww.fixmybroadband.co.ukwww.talkatif.comwww.telconews.comwww.computerweekly.comwww.neowin.comwww.broadbandfinder.co.ukwww.thinkbroadband.comwww.thenextweb.comwww.wired.co.uk

Forumswww.ukbroadbandforum.co.ukwww.thinkbroadband.comwww.broadbandwatchdog.co.ukwww.broadbandbanter.co.ukwww.community.plus.net/forumwww.orangeproblems.co.ukwww.community.virginmedia.comwww.skyuser.co.ukwww.talktalkmembers.co.uk/forumswww.forum.o2.co.ukwww.community.bt.com

Online news The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk/technology) BBC news (www.bbcnews.co.uk/technology) The Telegraph The IndependentYahoo FinanceWhich? Consumer magazine

Twitter Facebook groups LinkedIn updates

Key Objectives

To understand consumers’ perceptions of connectivity and expectations of broadband service and communications

To provide us with a better understanding

of contextual factors that could impact on consumers’ broadband perceptions and decision making

To have an overall picture* of most frequent connectivity issues that consumers

complain about and identify the languagethey use to describe them

*This was not intended to be a quantitative analysis looking at number of mentions of a certain issue / broadband provider, but a qualitative

analysis of key issues expressed by consumersN.B The key limitation of social media is that these channels often only

reflect the web savvy and the opinionated (so most of consumers’ comments are negative) – therefore there is an inherent bias.

Context is everything

In the news, July 2011

The latest report published by Ofcom on 27 July 2011 was by far the key news in the industry (results were published in all major UK news sources and key technology & telecoms specialist blogs, or tweeted by a vast amount of consumers)

KEY TAKE-OUTS: Over 75% of UK home broadband connections are currently delivered by copper lines (speeds vary according to distance from exchange) The average advertised broadband speed in the Uk is 15Kbps, however the average achieved speed is about half, 8.2 Kbps The gap between advertised speeds and actual speeds widened from the last Ofcom study in 2010 Almost half of UK residential customers are on packages with advertised speeds above 10 Mbps However superfast broadband is available to about half of customers in the UK; moreover, the gaps between advertised and actual speeds for superfast connections are not as significant as for copper lines connections (e.g Virgin Media up to 50 Mbps; BT Infinity up to 40 Mbps) Download speed is the main performance measure by which broadband services are advertised; however there are other criteria, like upload speeds for example, which are important especially for users of Skype or other real time video communications Ofcom continue to be concerned by the fact that customers are being misled by advertised ‘up to’ speeds, and have recommended to the ASA that ISPs include ‘typical speeds range’ (TSR) data in their marketing. The revised Code of Practice for broadband speeds is also effective from today and includes an amendment which allows customers “to leave their provider without penalty if they receive a maximum line speed which is significantly lower than the bottom of the estimated range, and ISPs are not able to resolve the problem.”

Another Ofcom study looking at customer satisfaction of telecom providers was published in July 2011. This showed that:

About a quarter of TalkTalk’s customers were dissatisfied with the customer service Other reasons for overall consumers’ dissatisfaction were: speeds; difficulty of changing tariffs; unexpectedly high bills Top 2 providers in terms of customer service levels were Orange and BSkyB Limitations of this study: small providers (with less than 4% market share) were excluded

A similar study by Broadbandchoice conducted earlier this year suggested that BE Broadband, O2 and Plusnet provided the highest levels of customer care in 2011

In the news, July 2011 (2)

New Ofcom rules will lead to lower prices for UK rural broadbandThe independent regulator plans to significantly reduce the prices that BT Wholesale can charge ISPs in rural and less densely populated areas. By cutting prices by 12 percent below inflation per year, providers won't have to pay as much to borrow BT's networks and exchanges. However this price reduction only refers to up to 8Mbps connections, not the 24 Mbps and superfast, fibre optic services.

At the same time, the UK Government is planning to fund broadband upgrades in cities (high speed connectivity – over 24Mbps speeds - to be brought in most communities in the UK by 2015)

BT copper broadband upgrade now hitting 2.5 mil extra homes and businesses; up to 20 Mbps service will reach 90 % of UK premises by 2013

rollout will reach 800 extra exchanges, half of each will be located in rural areas BT is also investing £2.5 mil in next generation superfast broadband

Virgin Media announced that it has completed a successful trial delivering speeds of 1.5Gpbs over its existing cable infrastructure. The trial was conducted on a single road in London (Old Street), part of an area that has been dubbed the ‘Silicon Roundabout’ by members of the local tech community known as the ‘TechHub’. The demonstration was just a showcase and will not be a consumer reality anytime soon, but the speeds were achieved by bonding together multiple downstream and upstream channels of Virgin’s DOCSIS 3.0 cable network

Virgin Media plans to rollout a free WiFi service in London, competing against BTs OpenZone; the achievable speeds are supposed to reach 10 Mbps

In the news, July 2011 (3)

A map showing connectivity strength was published by Ofcom in July 2011, identifying Hull as the area with the slowest broadband speed in the UK.

According to The Guardian, the current broadband market shares are as follows:

BT 29% Virgin Media 21.5% TalkTalk 21% Sky 16% Orange 3.6% O2 3.5%

Based on the figures after the second quarter, BT and BSkyB lead the battle – having the highest numbers of new subscribers amongst all major UK ISP providers

BT acquired 141,000 subscribers in the last 3 months (which accounted for 60% of all new customers in the quarter) Virgin Media lost 18,600 customers TalkTalk lost 27,000 customers. However a slight improvement in TalkTalk’scustomer service was reported this quarter: calls to helplines have halved, and 75% of new customers were connected within 20 days

TalkTalk has been unable to attract many of its customers onto their new up to 40Mbps Fibre Boost service

1,000 take-ups at the end of the second quarter, compared to 4,000+ new subscriptions per week reported by main competitor BT Infinity

In the news, July 2011 (4)RELATED TRENDS: Over 3 mil UK households rely on mobile broadband for Internet, according to research conducted by Ofcom between September and December 2010

7% of UK households use mobile devices exclusively to connect to the Internet 17% of UK households use mobile broadband at home, instead of fixed broadband connections The average speeds achieved via mobile broadband connections are 1.5 Mbps, as opposed to an average of just under 7 Mbps for fixed connections

New ways to watch film and TV: increased popularity of online streaming and video on demand services (BBC iPlayer, movies downloaded from Playstation3, iTunes, lovefilm.com)

BT was ordered to block customers’ access to the so-called piracy website Newzbin Similar pressures from copyright associations and regulators are likely to affect other internet providers

BROADBAND ADVERTISING Virgin Media was recently told by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority not to run 10 adverts again after upholding complaints from rivals over the accuracy of claims in the ads. In one ad Virgin claimed that its service was twice as fast as that of rival BT’s but the ASA agreed that this did not take into accounts BT’s faster Infinity service. BT Infinity and Virgin Media’s service are hybrid optical networks –fibre optic to a local cabinet with coaxial and copper from there to the premises.

Similarly, TalkTalk’s saving claims in one of its adverts were considered ‘exaggerated, misleading and unsubstantiated’, according to the advertising regulator. The advert was likely to lead customers of TalkTalk's competitors to think that they would definitely save more than £140 by switching their phone and broadband services to TalkTalk, the ASA said. This overstated the benefits of switching provider and broke broadcast advertising rules, the advertising regulator said;

More in depthBeyond background research and news published on news sites or

specialist blogs, we looked at the ‘voice of the customer’ online, expressed on forums and discussions posted as a result of some

broadband – related articles.

The overall picture

No major differences between various providers; for most customers the issues were similar, no matter of what provider they were with

It is difficult to separate connectivity issues from customer service, as most of the times issues are reported to Customer Service operators. Therefore the perception they have of the technical fault is either made worse by a poor customer service experience, or attenuated because of a good performance of the call centre or technical helpline

Most of the comments are negative – but we need to bear in mind that frustrations rather than positive experiences are generally expressed through online conversations

What are consumers talking about on forums?

Three key areas: Connection Customer

support Billing issues

Connectivity Frustrations

Slow speeds: it gets really frustrating for consumers paying for ‘up to 10 Mbps’ packages and getting less then 2 Mbps

confusion around providers’ promises, given that consumers are aware of the fact that actual speeds depend on the quality of the line and distance from the exchange (Why are competitors offering better speeds, if the line’s capacity is limited?)

Speed inconsistency; drop-outs Traffic management (especially during peak times)

Some more tech savvy consumers are aware that this might not happen with business providers (Zen, Eclipse have been mentioned) –but are not ready to pay a higher price

Video streaming problems (frustrating for online TV users, gamers and heavy Skype users) Consistency of connection (no drop-outs) as well as unlimited downloads are even more important for home workers Fibre optic developments have certainly raised consumers’ expectations

More tolerance from people living in rural areas, as there is less choice However London based users (and major UK cities) get extremely frustrated when they check the speeds regularly (using various online speed checking applications) and these don’t go much higher than dial-ups connections used years ago

“Broadband speeds are a postcode lottery” (consumer complaining on ukbroadbandforum.co.uk)

Connectivity Frustrations – in their own words...

It seems to take forever to actually connect when switched on - I've taken to switching on and going away to read the paper and have a cup of coffee whilst it decides to connect - or not.

It disconnects every morning approx 5 times when I attempt to use internet for the first time. Then again approx 4 times when my boy connects Xbox 360 in the early evening, and finally disconnects in the evening when I try and read emails. When I start to use the internet it crashes.

I'm currently with Be. I pay for their ‘up to 20Mb/s’ service and actually get a sync speed of 5Mb/s.

Broadband connection drops sporadically. Some days it'll be fine and stable, but others it's flakey - for instance it's dropped 3 times today already.

Over a 3 month period the fastest we ever got was 0.28mb up and 0.45mb down - about the same speed as I had 10 years ago in Cambridgeshire with an ASDL line.

We now only get link speeds of ~800kbps down / ~800kbps up however we no longer suffer from drop outs. So it would seem that while up to 2mbps is possible down the line, the max stable speed is less than half of that!

When I use Skype the video is very blocky and freezes sometimes. Skype reports that my connection is bad and suggests I turn off video but my son and grandson live in Australia so Skype is an essential application for me and my wife.

Connectivity: key words

Service went down

Connection keeps cutting off

Speed drops

Speed dips

Constant loss of connection

Line drop-out

Connection crashing

Fluctuating speed Intermittent

speed

Internet is non responsive

Customer ServicesWhenever consumers complain about customer services, the first thing they mention is related to the fact that they’re not based in the UK.

Besides the language barriers, there are other issues regarding foreign call centres: operators’ attitude (perceived as rather ‘aggressive’; it seems they don’t care enough about UK based consumers); it feels they have no real understanding of the UK consumer base and broadband; they do not enough authority to solve issues quickly)

Other issues with customer service, regardless of where they are based are:

difficult to go through, long waiting times operators focus more on going through scripts, as opposed to dealing with the actual problem and offering a bespoke solution being passed on to various operators (and having to explain the issue every time consumers get connected to another operator); more frustrating when customers get contradicting information from various operators nobody being able to take responsibility for issues; constantly blaming issues on either the quality of PCs, routers which have been purchased from other sources than the provider, BT lines or engineers etc. sales and marketing calls at ‘odd’ times of the day (either late in the evening or during weekends); also sales operators are not aware of usage patterns of the account holder and try to sell services which are not relevant; moreover, there have been situations in which some customers have had new services added on their account without acknowledging they have signed up for anything

Other important areas where issues seem to arise are: set-up: takes too long; engineers fail to show up within the agreed time slots; providers are not always able to manage the switchover smoothly, so customers get ‘caught’ without an Internet connection and between two providers blaming each otherwhenever fixing a technical fault involves having

an engineer being sent to the house, the time it takes to do that is not acceptable (24 hours is expected) also, consumers get frustrated whenever they’re

supposed to be called back for follow-up on issues, and this doesn’t happen

Customer Service Frustrations – in their own words...

Avoid BT for BB. Their support is a total disaster

I'm just pretty annoyed with the shambolic service (so called) each time I phone them they seem to milk you for every penny they can get. Never get a straight answer and you are always put on hold.....and that’s after going through endless daft menus.

I ditched BT as their customer service was terrible and it is helpful if you can at least understand what they are saying to you

I just wanted to sound a word of caution to anyone who might be thinking of ordering BT's 'Infinity' high speed broadband product. You may find that you're waiting a long, long time for them to get round to installing it, or that you'll take time off work to meet an engineer who doesn't turn up, perhaps more than once.

Just had to contact my ISP for a MAC code and it's taken a total of 1hour and 12 mins to get anywhere (they cut me off twice after 20 odd minutes of waiting). Even now they can't give me this damn code over the phone...I have to wait for them to email it!

O2 customer services can't agree on this one. I've been told by one lady that I can cancel using the happiness guarantee and by two gentlemen that I am outside of my 14 day cooling off period as my change of broadband was classed as an upgrade. If O2 customer services don't know which applies what chance have I got?

I received no help from their so called tec's, all based in India by the way, and very few speaking English and as far as I am concerned none of them had any IT knowledge. I had five months of hell with them having my broadband and phone cut off on a regular period for no reason and then having to go through procedure after procedure just to hang on the line for 45 Min's to either again being cut off or ending up speaking to a lady in Katmando who's no WAS PRIVATE.

Billing issues

Billing inaccuracies are another ‘hot topic’ debated on online forums Consumers generally mention the following as the most frequent frustrating situations:

unexpectedly high bills due to a lack of transparency in explaining the pricing before signing up (e.g no unlimited downloads) one – off fees when signing up for an additional service with the same provider difficulty in cancelling direct debits and still receiving bills after switching providers

Most often billing issues seem to appear when: switching providersmoving home adding new services or changing existing services on the account

Beyond the frustration of receiving an unexpected bill, there are other things aggravating the overall experience:

providers not being able to acknowledge their mistakes and sort things out quickly (so customers need to chase) a feeling of being ‘tricked’ into signing up for a service without having a full awareness of all the extra charges incurred

Billing Issues– in their own words...

To my horror and bemusement there was a Direct Debit withdrawal of £30.63 recurring on or around the 27th of each month, even though I had cancelled my contract for two months. I had spoken to someone in billing and that they had conceded their had been a problem with their cancellation system - something to do with it being on an older system.

I phoned Sky, informed them of the problem and was assured that my bill would be amended after 3 days. It wasn‘t, phoned twice more and was given the same assurances. Three times I told them my bill was wrong, three times they agreed, three times they assured me it would be amended, yet they willingly took money from my account and nothing was done

I cancelled my contract with Virgin in Nov 2010. I am still getting bills from them despite numerous phone calls & lettersThey never pass on information keep you on hold for ever then you get put through to a different person & have to relay all your information again costing you money

Even though my daughter cancelled her direct debit with TalkTalkand with her bank, TalkTalk still took a penalisation fee and refuse to repay it even though the contract had run longer than the minimum time the contract stipulated. They refuse to co-operate, and it takes months and months of hassle to get Ofcom (or whoever) to do anything to help.

£13 a month and that was it. What I didn't understand and what they didn't have to explain were the streaming charges. In the end, for skyping around 2 min. with my husband cost us £60.00.

CommunicationsAdvertising based on “up to” speeds is confusing for many consumers, especially the ones who had speed issues with previous providers. As they have no indications of minimum guaranteed speeds, they can get quite cynical about this type of advertising.

Frankly, the way advertising for broadband or ISP providers in this country works is a national scandal. They're advertising "up to" rates that they damn well know the majority of their customers are not going to get even half way near. It's a disgrace.

I live in a major conurbation a mile away from the hub exchange and I get one-third the advertised "up to rate". And that's only after filing more than one complaint. Before that I didn't even get a quarter

Unfortunately the mass public know very little about broadband technology. BT knows this. As a result they sell their broadband based on very slick advertising selling everything but the broadband itself:€“ a

fancy looking router, standard WiFi, cloud storage etc. They then supplement with it lots of bold statements followed by ** and then two pages of terms basically explaining that the statement with the

** next to it is not actually true.

Going forward

Directions for further research

After identifying the key frustrations that consumers have with their home broadband, as well as the context in which future decision making will take place, further exploration could include: a more in depth understanding of consumers’ home set-up and online behaviour (ideally through qualitative methods: ethnography, in-depth interviewing, online qualitative) understanding expectations of service, decision making and customer journeys for specific target audiences (we recommend a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods e.g start with a quantitative survey, followed by focus groups and online qualitative methods) in-depth exploration of connectivity issues and customers’ reactions to these (through various qualitative methods, both online and offline) identifying the most effective ways of communicating key brand benefits (broadband providers could use this learning in future communication campaigns) communications / concept testing engaging consumers in offering their suggestions about new services which can be developed, or suggest improvements to existing services (co-creation and collaboration: online qualitative methods followed by idea generation workshops)

For further questions or recommendations for your future research projects, please contact us!

Metro Research LtdUnit 118, The Chandlery50 Westminster Bridge RoadLondon SE1 7QY0870 241 2401www.metroresearch.com

Steve Morantz, Managing Directorsmorantz@metroresearch.com