Plans for faster trading hit by poor broadband speeds

The recent report released by Ofcom advising that the majority of broadband users in the UK dont get the connection speed that they are paying for has led to Allerdale business users talking about how their ability to trade is being affected by low speed broadband connections.

Although the average broadband connection speed in the UK has gone up from 3.6Mbps in January 2009 to 4.1Mbps there are still a significant number of users who are not getting the broadband speeds that they pay for according to the watchdog. The study found that a fifth of the UK’s broadband users paid for an 8Mbps connection but got speeds of less than 2Mbps and less than 9 percent of users got broadband speeds of 6Mbps or higher.

The owner of Angling and Outdoors on Market Place, Cockermouth, Jim O’Neil said: “The speeds we get using the internet here are nowhere near what I am told we should be getting. It is quite a big part of our business because we use it for emails to get in touch with our customers, finding stock and placing orders.”

Daleth, the owner of the Internet book company Cobra Books in Maryport advised that slow broadband connection speeds were causing him to lose business. He said “I was told I would get up to 8Mbps. I probably get 4Mbps. I haven’t calculated it properly but I definitely lose business. My sales also depend on how many books I can advertise on my site. If I had better broadband connection I could put them on more quickly and therefore sell more.”

The information systems manager for Sealy Beds in Aspatria, Jim Ferrier said: “We had to pay to get special links put in because the standard ones would not have done the job. All our communications go through our group head office in Lancashire. Slow broadband speed has not really handicapped us because we have already put these extra links in place as part of a new business system.”

Although some business can pay to have specialist lines installed this is not going to be the case for smaller businesses and this will often put these businesses at a significant disadvantage when compare to the larger companies or even company in other areas who can obtain much faster broadband connections.

Source – www.timesandstar.co.uk