UK Study Finds Serious Losses of Internet Connectivity are Common

Oct. 10, 2011 - PRLog -- A new ISPreview.co.uk survey of 527 broadband users in the United Kingdom (*) has revealed that one third (33%) have, at some point in time, suffered a loss of internet connectivity due to bad weather conditions (snow, thunderstorms etc.), although 22% claimed that such problems were "Very Rare" (i.e. once a year) and most (32%) outages were fixed within a matter of hours or even minutes (8.5%).

Unfortunately many others have been forced to endure between two and three (15%) or more than three (19%) losses of connectivity in a single year. Furthermore 21% claimed that the resulting outages lasted several days and some (10%) were even left without a broadband service for weeks on end.

"Home broadband services typically rely upon highly complicated networks that can, from time to time, fail due to bad weather conditions or any number of other reasons," remarked ISPreview.co.uk's Founder, Mark Jackson. "At the same time people do have a right to expect that any major service outages are resolve within minutes or hours rather than days or weeks, with the latter being worryingly more common than we ever expected."

"It's important to remember that such outages are often unavoidable and consumers should report related problems to their ISP as soon as possible, otherwise the issue may go unnoticed. We also recommend that people do all they can to check that their own kit isn't at fault, such as by rebooting any connected computers or connectivity hardware (routers etc.). Some problems are not caused by your ISPs network, for example, nearby lighting strikes are notorious for causing power surges that can damage connection hardware and or cause brief losses of connectivity," concluded Jackson.