Broadband users unhappy with government: shock survey

The federal government has come in for a caning in the Australian Broadband Survey 2003, which collated valid responses from 10,335 Internet users.

The survey found that only 31.6 percent of respondents believed competition was working well in broadband, while 67.9 percent agreed with the statement "the government doesn't do enough to promote broadband". Only 5.3 percent of respondents agreed that the Government's broadband policies "are a lot better than they used to be".

The survey, conducted by broadband community site Whirlpool, was promoted on Whirlpool and many broadband ISP sites.

Whirlpool said the survey results were biased towards responses from "proficient computer users and highly informed community participants" and that this improved the validity of the survey.

"These results represent the views of informed opinion leaders, and the informed consumer. These people are continually advising friends, family and co-workers on which ISP to join. Providers should pay close attention to this demographic, because the days of the uninformed consumer are numbered," said Whirlpool.

The survey also found that 82.5 percent of respondents agreed that Telstra should not own the ADSL network as well as competing with resellers.

The most common complaint users had about their broadband contract with their ISPs was the fact that ISPs could change the contract conditions at any time. Of the respondents, 74.2 percent of BigPond Cable and 69.5 percent of BigPond ADSL customers cited this as something they disliked about the contract, along with 63.3 percent of OptusNet Cable customers and 57.0 percent of TPG customers.

The survey results can be found here.

Talkback 3 comments

    Whirlpool is hardly indicative ...Anonymous -- 19/01/04

    Whirlpool is hardly indicative of the entire population.

    A proper survey lends itself to mathematical techniques and formulas in order to obtain a fair survey.

    This survey is a joke filled in by people who have nothing better to do with their time than to download gigabytes of data per day, mostly illegal.

    "This survey is a joke fi ...Anonymous -- 19/01/04

    "This survey is a joke filled in by people who have nothing better to do with their time than to download gigabytes of data per day, mostly illegal".

    Your lack of knowledge and understanding isn't well concealed by your presumptions , which would ultimately die a deserving death in the context of those with factual knowledge in the subject of broadband internet - of which you plainly have little to none.

    More than 10 thousand broadband users took the initiative to fill out the Australian broadband survey - who would you have filling these surveys out? People such as yourself who invent worthless assumptions based on bias , or the actions of a few from a wide ranging & diverse population of internet users with a broadband connection?

    To Anonymous: The survey was l ...Anonymous -- 20/01/04

    To Anonymous:
    The survey was linked from several major ISPs web pages (iiNet and Swiftel, among others) and their customers, Whirlpool members or not, were encouraged to fill it in. Obviously Bigpond/Telstra would not be keen to promote the survey as they wouldn't want everyone to know how dis-satisfied they were. Why don't you fill in the survey when it is re-run at the end of 2004?

    What exactly is fair about:
    - Telstra competing with other ISPs as their wholesaler and also its reseller
    - Telstra rejecting customers for ADSL when they apply through another ISP, but approving them when they apply for Bigpond directly
    - Counting both uploads and downloads as traffic (almost all ISPs offer free uploads)
    - Not having free intra-state traffic
    - Telstra falsely advertising its 10Gb shaped plans as unlimited plans

    I have spoken to several people who will not sign up with broadband because they believe "with broadband you have the risk of getting huge bills" if you go over your set limit (which isn't always explained well to new broadband customers in the first place).

    Almost every other ISP has the option of capping the speed to modem speeds after a certain limit is reached; because of Telstra's inability to do this, and its corporate dominance of the telecommunications sector, people get the impression that DSL = expensive, when in actual fact you can get a 2Gb plan (plenty for people just starting out) with shaping for $50/month.

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