O2 top for broadband

O2 has ranked highest in overall customer satisfaction among fixed and mobile broadband internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK, according to two leading studies.

The J.D. Power and Associates 2008 UK Fixed Broadband ISP Customer Satisfaction Study and the J.D. Power and Associates 2008 UK Mobile Broadband ISP Customer Satisfaction Study examined performance and reliability, billing, cost of the service, customer service/technical support and offerings and promotions.

In the first study, the operator ranked highest among fixed broadband ISPs with a score of 767 out of 1,000, beating Sky (706) and Virgin (672).

This study found the number of service disruptions reported by customers in the past year had decreased to an average of 2.8 in 2008 from 5.9 in 2007. Sixty-two per cent of customers reported experiencing a service disruption in that time, with 26 per cent attributing the outage to a local exchange problem or heavy traffic.

The second study showed that among mobile broadband ISPs, O2 ranked highest with a score of 712. T-Mobile followed with a score of 683, with Vodafone ranking third with 655.

Customers in this sector reported an average of 3.6 service disruptions in the previous year, found to be mainly due to poor reception and a busy network.

O2 marketing director Peter Rampling said: "This is a fantastic recognition of the focus we’ve had on the customer experience. For both our mobile and home broadband services, we took our time coming to market to place the necessary emphasis on getting the customer experience right. This report demonstrates that we were right to take this approach."

The first study was fielded in December and is based on responses from 1,715 residential customers with fixed line broadband services. The second study was fielded November though December abd is based on responses from 1,080 mobile broadband customers.