Research carried out for mobile data company Acision has revealed that most UK consumers have experienced Quality of Service issues. 84% of respondents – people who either use mobile broadband on a portable computer or via their phone – said they'd had problems. Slow speeds had affected 67% of consumers, while 49% had suffered from poor network coverage. In addition, 45% hadn't been able to connect and 40% had lost connection at some point.
Steven van Zanen, Acision's senior vice president marketing for mobile broadband, said "When reviewing the research, we identified three key areas where operators can deploy capabilities to raise QoS levels. The first one is defining fairness. When asked about the contentious issue of fair usage policies, 56% of research respondents were not aware if their operator had a fair usage policy in place and 71% were unaware that in many networks, 5% of users generate over 80 per cent of broadband traffic, causing slow download speeds and connection problems for all users. However, once aware of the issues surrounding the fair distribution of bandwidth, consumers responded positively to the option of allowing sophisticated fairness policies if this helped to improve the overall service."
Marek Vaygelt, head of consumer, technology and telecoms consulting at YouGov – the company that carried out the research – said "Mobile broadband is a frequent topic of debate with UK consumers. Mobile broadband growth has been faster than its fixed-line counterpart, with usage increasing rapidly over the last few years. However, user habits have also changed with more focus on video and downloading data than simple web browsing. The research conducted for Acision clearly highlights that many consumers are suffering regular and significant problems with their mobile broadband and can be frustrated with the service they receive. It is also apparent that if approached in the right way, consumers may be open to content adaptation, service differentiation as well as the option of having bandwidth distributed fairly amongst all users to provide a better service."