Six reasons consumers don’t engage in the broadband market

New research from Which? explores what stops consumers from engaging in the broadband market and what this means for the success of future investment.

As our lives become increasingly more reliant on being connected, a broadband market that meets the needs of consumers is more essential than ever. Investment in better infrastructure is needed to deliver this. It’s great to see this being more widely recognised in public and political discourse; government has recently brought forward the target to achieve gigabit-capable broadband nationwide to 2025. But consumers need to understand the benefits of these connections and take advantage of them by adopting these new services. 

Recent Ofcom figures highlight consumers are missing out on savings of around £100 a year, on average, by not engaging. Less than half of households have upgraded to superfast since availability reached 95% last year and some consumers feel safer paying more for an inferior product instead of making changes to their contract. Why is this? We wanted to find out.

Today Which? published new research - gathering an in-depth understanding of why consumers aren’t engaging in the broadband market. 

This behavioural research identifies six key barriers to engagement among disengaged consumers:

1. Consumers have low confidence in assessing what they need and identifying a suitable package
2. Consumers are confused about how pricing works in the broadband market
3. There is a lack of effective communication about current and alternative packages
4. Consumers believe their service is ‘fine’. This is despite many experiencing problems or paying a relatively high price for their package. 
5. Consumers aren’t willing to risk changing provider as they worry that it may result in a worse broadband service
6. Consumers believe that making changes to their contract may result in unexpected add-on costs.

You can read more of the insights we uncovered in the full report written in partnership with BritainThinks at  https://www.which.co.uk/broadband-engagement

Yesterday we hosted a roundtable where we presented the findings to senior leaders in the industry, as well as government and the regulator. This must be the start of the conversation about how to address a range of factors that impede consumer engagement, and we need to all work together to identify more effective solutions.

Clearly there are issues that need addressing right now to help consumers understand the benefits of engaging in this market. But as we move closer to a wide scale roll-out of full-fibre connections, unless action is taken to overcome these issues, there is a huge risk of undermining public and commercial investment, leaving the UK without the world-class digital infrastructure it needs for the future.