Orange and TalkTalk have lost ground in a customer satisfaction survey released by uSwitch. They came joint bottom in the survey for overall customer satisfaction.

TalkTalk scored highly in the last uSwitch survey in May. Since then, it has revolutionised the industry by being the first to offer free broadband. However, customers are less than impressed with some customers not being connected and unable to get through to the customer support help lines.

Orange has suffered with outages to its broadband service.

Telewest scored very well and came top in quality of connection, customer services, billing, and tech support. Its sister company, NTL, did less well and finished 8th overall.

Virgin.net came top of the survey overall.

Vodafone has announced that it will offer a broadband and home phone bundle, called At Home. For £25 per month, you will receive an 8Mb broadband service, all your UK phone calls and a 25% discount on mobile calls. You must be a Vodafone mobile customer to get the deal for £25 per month. If not, it will cost £35 per month. The Vodafone At Home package will be available in January 2007.
Vodafone joins a number of big name brands, such as Orange, Sky, Carphone Warehouse and BT who are battling it out in the broadband sector by offering very competitive bundled packages.

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Read more on the Vodafone announcement from the BBC

Sky Broadband is exceeding expectations with more than 113,000 new orders and more than 1 million people expressing an interest in the service. The Sky Broadband service was launched in August of this year as Sky moved into offering the “triple play” products: broadband, digital TV and home phone.

The battle in the market now seems to be focused on the big companies like Sky, BT, NTL:Telewest and Orange. All of these companies offer multiple packages services.

The Sky story (The Times)

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Orange has launched a new set of broadband deals. The free broadband offer is continued for customers with an Orange mobile. The mobile monthly line rental must be over £30 per month to qualify. The free broadband is on Orange Broadband Starter and is 2Mb with a 2GB monthly download cap.

The new products are:

Broadband Starter

• 2Mb speed
• 2GB download cap
• Free connection and modem
• 30 day money back guarantee
• £14.99 per month. Free for Orange Mobile customers (must be on a £30 per month or above mobile tariff)

Broadband Unlimited

• 8Mb speed
• Unlimited downloading
• Free Livebox.
• Includes calls to UK landlines and 100 international destinations (through the Livebox).
• £19.99 per month. £5 per month for Orange Mobile customers (must be on a £30 per month or above mobile tariff).

The Livebox is a wireless router, allowing you to connect up to 6 computers to your broadband connection and make phone calls over the internet by connecting your normal phone to the Livebox.

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Visit the Orange Broadband site

NTL:Telewest are planning on selling their triple offering of broadband, home phone, digital television and mobile phones through Virgin stores next year. The merged company of NTL, Telewest and Virgin Mobile will be re-branded under the Virgin name. Part of the deal allows the products to be sold in Virgin’s 120 high street stores.

This will allow NTL:Telewest to really take on the likes of the Carphone Warehouse. It is also seen as a reversal of the trend for businesses to move their sales functions online.

Full article at This is Money

The government in Iran has banned broadband and limited the speed of internet access to 128k. Iran has recently clamped down on the use of satellite dishes, which Iranians use to watch western TV.

Iran has five million internet users. The ban seems to be an attempt to make it harder for Iranian internet users from downloading western music, movies and TV shows.

For more information, see the Guardian report on the issue.

According to Point Topic’s latest report, customers are still receiving poor customer service from broadband providers. A quarter of UK households are “irritated and frustrated” with their broadband provider’s customer support.

It is not all bad though, with 91% of users happy with the reliability and quality of the service. 82% are satisfied with download speeds.

Telewest received the lowest rating for value for money. Orange and Tiscali were the most dissatisfied with their bills and pricing. AOL and Orange (Wanadoo) were most dissatisfied with download speeds.

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There is an interesting article in the Times about the dilemma facing AOL customers. The Carphone Warehouse has recently purchased AOL UK. AOL customers are likely to be tempted by TalkTalk’s (part of the Carphone Warehouse) free broadband offer. However, TalkTalk has is suffering from the widely publicised problems with connecting people to the broadband service, and its own customer service call centres. The purchase of AOL may actually help TalkTalk, as AOL has more call centres around the UK and a better reputation for customer support.

AOL customers will not be automatically transferred to TalkTalk. Our advice to AOL customers nearing the end of their contract is to look around, because there are plenty of good deals out there besides the TalkTalk one.

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The Carphone Warehouse has bought the UK arm of AOL for £370 million. This makes Carphone Warehouse, with its TalkTalk brand, the third biggest internet provider in the UK behind NTL and BT. AOL UK has nearly 2 million customers, with 1.4 million of them on broadband. TalkTalk already has 412,000 active customers, most of which have come on board because of its massively popular free broadband offer.

This purchase will make Carphone Warehouse a serious threat to all other players in the market. Both Carphone Warehouse and AOL UK have invested heavily in local loop unbundling, the process where internet providers take ownership of part of the broadband network. The combined outfit will lead to serious cost savings.

It looks like TalkTalk and AOL UK will be run as separate brands for the foreseeable future.

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TalkTalk’s head, Charles Dunstone has admitted that they got it wrong when launching the UK’s first free broadband service. TalkTalk has been slammed by the BBC’s Watchdog programme. A staggering half a million people have signed up to TalkTalk’s free broadband service. However thousands have been left with long delays and have been unable to get any joy out of TalkTalk’s customer service lines.

Charles Dunstone said that they were overhelmed by the number of people signing up to the free broadband service and their call centers could not cope with the call volumes. “I got it wrong. I didn’t realise that free broadband was going to have the effect on people it has,” Charles Dunstone said.

“It’s been a bruising experience for everyone at Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk’s parent company); we are used to being ‘the good guys’ and it’s tough when things don’t go as well as we’d hoped. As things start to improve, I hope people will appreciate that what we did was for the best for all consumers, and whilst giving birth to free broadband was painful, it is now turning out to be a beautiful child.”

TalkTalk and its parent company, the Carphone Warehouse, has been hiring more staff to cope with the demand. It is also allowing customers to break their 18 month contract if TalkTalk has been unable to uphold its end of the bargin.

TalkTalk was the first UK broadband provider to offer free broadband in April of this year. Since then Sky and Orange have followed suit.

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