Analysis - O2 gaining traction in the UK broadband market

[HEXUS]

Bucking the trend towards commoditisation, O2?s strategy of emphasising customer service is paying dividends.

Read more.

[Bob Crabtree]

Scott,

Pleased you highlighted 02 in this piece!

I've recently had personal experience with the company's tech support and I was impressed!

The first-line support person that I spoke to on the phone was someone who was based in the UK and clearly did know his techie stuff - he wasn't just reading from a script.

And I've had others tell me they've been impressed by this side of things, too.

I also have to say that I reckon the pricing is pretty good.

I mean to say, I signed up to 3Mobile's cheapie mobile-broadband service in March, opting for £10 per month on an 18m contract with a 1GB download limit - anything more costs you an arm and a leg.

On top of that, I pay £25 per month to Virgin for a reasonably fast fixed internet service - downloads of close to 10mbps.

So that's £35 in total, compared to £20 with 02. Okay, 02's landline broadline is slower than my Virgin connection but that 3GB limit of 02's for mobile broadband seems to be far more reasonable than the 1GB I have with 3mobile.

Cheers

Bob

[Scott B]

What speed do you get with Virgin Bob?

[ionicle]

its all well and good to have good customer service

but a good broadband provider, in my opinion anyway

you wouldnt need to contact the customer service...

it should be unlimited, with NO fair usage polocy

it should have 8mbps, and BE 8mbps, not 5,4,3 or anything else

and it should almost always work, if there ever is a problem (inevitable) then the customer service should be there to reassure customers and perhaps ring them, rather than waiting to be rung ....

all that for 20 - 25 quid a month would be ideal..

so what 02 are offering is some of it..

i wont really be happy till i get all of it..

[Bob Crabtree]

What speed do you get with Virgin Bob?

According to thinkbroadband it's 9.4mbps down and 0.5mbps up (click the link to see my chart).

According to ZDNet's checker, it's 6524kbps down (the checker doesn't look at upload speeds).

All I know, though, is that downloads now feel electric - unless, of course, they're coming from slow sites.

[Bob Crabtree]

its all well and good to have good customer service

but a good broadband provider, in my opinion anyway

you wouldnt need to contact the customer service...

I find that illogical. Care to justify that comment?

[TAKTAK]

its all well and good to have good customer service

but a good broadband provider, in my opinion anyway

you wouldnt need to contact the customer service...

Qui?

SCANs customer service keeps me going back to them... they are efficeient and havn't done anything wrong with me (i've done things wrong on my orders everytime) and SCAN have sorted things... i would want the same thing from a broadband provider....... which is what O2 offer...

and you don't have to be having a problem to ring customer service...

it should be unlimited, with NO fair usage polocy

no... it shouldn't... otherwise you get the minority who suck uip all of the connection and leave everyone else high and dry... BT's network cannot support unlimted usage... the FUP is there to benefit their other customers... and make it fairer to everyone overall

it should have 8mbps, and BE 8mbps, not 5,4,3 or anything else

again... nope... BT's network can't handle the speeds.... and besides.. they do say when advertising that they offer UPTO 8Mb... the only reason that there is the variation in speed is down to BT's infrastructure...

and it should almost always work, if there ever is a problem (inevitable) then the customer service should be there to reassure customers and perhaps ring them, rather than waiting to be rung ....

but there is no way you can possibly do that... so an exchange goes down.. and you want the company to make enough people available to call everone affected and still be able to deal with other exchanges that could be having problems and general enquries?

all that for 20 - 25 quid a month would be ideal..

all of that would be ideal... i agree.. but it aint gonna happen until BT roll out fibre to every home in britain...

i wont really be happy till i get all of it..

Your not going to be happy for a long, long time then

[moogle]

According to ZDNet's checker, it's 6524kbps down (the checker doesn't look at upload speeds).

The ZDNet one is crap. Use ThinkBroadband and http://speedtest.bbmax.co.uk or http://www.speedtest.net

Much more reliable.

[themaidenmaniac]

I switched to 02 Broadband 6 months ago. Best broadband provider, period. Excellent speeds, and excellent customer service to boot after my hideous experiences in the past. It's taken hold of a whats is really a simple business plan because all of the others have performed so badly in many departments. For those of you who don't know, 02 use the BE* network to move its BB.

[moogle]

just had a routing problem today at 9pm and was all sorted by 11, still doing good it seems.

[SuicidaL]

just had a routing problem today at 9pm and was all sorted by 11, still doing good it seems.

i had that to, and must have affected a sizeable slice of the network as most of the xbox'ers must have been ringing up (xbox live was down or unusable) as i couldn't get through for a while - first time that it has taken me more that 2-5 mins to get through. funny thing is that there were only 2 sites that worked for me - stan james and my clan site, neither hexus or google worked. i could still use email and update avg - but newsgroups and teamspeak were goners.

[Mr Pants]

it should have 8mbps, and BE 8mbps, not 5,4,3 or anything else

Try to understand how ADSL works before saying comments like these, if you want guaranteed sync speed then get cable - although with throttling your cable line may not run at full speed.

and it should almost always work, if there ever is a problem (inevitable) then the customer service should be there to reassure customers and perhaps ring them, rather than waiting to be rung ....

You do realise that some problems cannot be detected from the remote (o2) end, that is asking for a bit much.

What happens if the customer doesnt know how to install their broadband are the companies going to use their psychic powers?

i wont really be happy till i get all of it..

Well you will be waiting a long time.

[manwithnoname]

its all well and good to have good customer service

but a good broadband provider, in my opinion anyway

you wouldnt need to contact the customer service...

it should be unlimited, with NO fair usage polocy

it should have 8mbps, and BE 8mbps, not 5,4,3 or anything else

and it should almost always work, if there ever is a problem (inevitable) then the customer service should be there to reassure customers and perhaps ring them, rather than waiting to be rung ....

all that for 20 - 25 quid a month would be ideal..

so what 02 are offering is some of it..

i wont really be happy till i get all of it..

It's an interest concept in customer service. I do like the idea of someone ringing you up to tell you you're broadband not working, if that virgin media had that service they'd ring me everyday - I power down my modem when I'm not on the internet.

At 20-25 notes a month you have no chance of getting that level of service. At work we have 24/7 support for the internet but I think it's a bit over £25pm.

[Nikumba]

just had a routing problem today at 9pm and was all sorted by 11, still doing good it seems.

Had this problem as well. One reason given was a fire at one of the data centres in London which seems very unlikely.

The other reason and one which is much more reasonable is a firewall misconfiguration, that blocked traffic, the reason I believe this is the reason as the o2 internal network also had firewall problems during the day.

But its all running now which is good

[s_kinton]

O2 is the best broadband provider I have ever been with, easily. The customer service is second to none, they answer the phone and know what they are talking about, plus its well priced.

I can't see another provider being able to tempt me away from O2 now. People have been crying out for a well organised bb provider for years, customer service has always been lacking at every ISP i've used so its refreshing to see a company enter the market and succeed with a simple, effective business plan!