UK People Want More Choice of Bundled Broadband ISP Routers

April 13, 2015 - PRLog -- A new survey, which was conducted with 2,725 readers of the ISPreview.co.uk consumer information website, has discovered that consumers do pay attention to the quality of bundled home wireless routers, which are supplied by most modern broadband providers. Overall 37% said that the quality of an ISPs router was important to their choice of provider (35% said it wasn't important and 28% were undecided). On top of that consumers also want more choice.

Most broadband packages from the major ISPs, such as BT, Virgin Media, Sky Broadband and TalkTalk, include a "free" wireless router, often regardless of whether or not you actually need one. However the survey found that 70% of respondents supported the idea of ISPs giving customers the option to save money by not forcing them to take the providers own hardware (i.e. customers could buy a router separately).

The survey also asked respondents to identify which of the big providers bundled the best home broadband router. The results put Virgin Media on top, although it should be remembered that ISPs often ship several different router models and this makes it difficult to do a simple like-for-like comparison. It's also more likely that people voted through the viewpoint of perception rather than experience, since it's unlikely that all of the respondents would have been able to test the latest router from each ISP.

In your view, which big ISP has the best bundled home broadband router?
Virgin Media - 37.5%
TalkTalk - 26.8%
Don't Know - 16.2%
BT - 10%
Sky Broadband - 6.8%
EE - 2.4%

"The results of our survey suggest that ISPs need to pay more attention to the quality of their routers," said ISPreview.co.uk's Founder, Mark Jackson. "In particular some providers like Sky Broadband, which currently has no 5GHz or 802.11ac WiFi support on its hardware, might potentially be losing out to competitors’ that are able to offer more advanced kit."

"At the same time consumers clearly want more choice, particularly concerning whether or not to take what the ISP gives them. Many consumers may prefer to buy their own third-party router, which could easily be more advanced than the budget level kit supplied by most ISPs. But ISPs then have the difficult task of weighing that desire against the fact that bundled routers also make providing support for end-users far easier, not least by offering a common platform and fixes via remotely managed firmware updates," concluded Jackson.