Online football fails to score with viewers

New research shows a distinct lack of appetite for internet streaming of football matches, just as the Football League looks to the web for new revenue streams.

Just 2% of respondents in a joint YouGov and SMG Insight survey of 2,122 British adults said they were likely to stream football over a home computer, despite a concerted effort among broadcasters and football clubs to generate revenue from football fans consuming media online.

Britons admit they just can’t live without home internet

Domestic web connection joins holidays, mobile phones and fridge-freezer among necessities of modern life, Joseph Rowntree Foundation finds.

A computer and an internet connection at home are no longer viewed as luxuries but as essentials, according to research published today. The latest Minimum Income Standard report released by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the social research charity, gauges what members of the public think people need to achieve a “socially acceptable standard of living”.

Participants decided that a computer and internet access at home were now vital for all working-age households to enable people “to participate in society”, both to access job opportunities and to get discounts on services.

Good news for night owls: 2 AM ‘fastest time of day for broadband speeds’

Web users have to put up with wildly varying broadband speeds each day, with an average fluctuation of 33%, according to new research.

Analysis from Top10.com reveals that, on average, customers see their broadband speeds vary by a third over a 24-hour period.

Top10.com measured over 250,000 speed tests on its website over 90 days to calculate average speeds at each hour of the day for customers of every major broadband provider in Britain, helping it identify the speeds reached at the fastest and slowest times.

The Top10.com analysis is good news for night owls: the fastest time of the day for web browsing is 2AM, when the average speed is 7Mb, while the slowest time is 8PM, where a relatively sluggish 4.73Mb is achieved on average.

Broadband speeds vary for a number of reasons. The main reason is that demand on the network in the evenings slows down speeds compared to those received during the day. However, many internet providers adopt the practice of “traffic shaping” to control what speeds their customers can receive to stop heavy users hogging the available bandwidth.

To see the full results click through to http://top10.com.

Web access a “fundamental human right” according to major survey

A major survey, conducted for the BBC World Service, has revealed that a vast majority of people believe access to the World Wide Web is a fundamental human right.

Over 27,000 people from across 26 countries took part in the survey, with 79% of people supporting the belief.

Over half of respondents (53%) also revealed a belief the web shouldn’t be government regulated, whilst 44% admitted they could not cope without web access. Fraud was listed as the biggest concern for respondents, with nearly a third pointing identifying it ahead of violent and explicit content.

The survey was conducted by GlobeScan, with nearly half of respondents described as non-internet users. “Despite worries about privacy and fraud, people around the world see access to the internet as their fundamental right,” said GlobeScan chairman Doug Miller commented. “They think the web is a force for good, and most don’t want governments to regulate it.”

Three-quarters of UK respondents believed web access was a fundamental right.

Tracking the Consumer Experience

Ofcom recently published its annual Consumer Experience evaluation and research report which looks at the overall experience of consumers in the communications market and show that consumers are finding new ways to save money on their phone, broadband and pay TV services.

Bundles

An increasing number of consumers are choosing to take discounted ‘bundles’ with their providers. In 2009, 35 per cent of consumers took a discounted ‘bundle’ compared to 30 per cent in 2008.

The research also found that some consumers could make significant savings by taking some or all of their phone, pay TV and broadband services from the same provider. Typical communications baskets for some groups of consumers revealed possible savings of between £88 and £140 a year.

‘Switching rates slowing down’

The research also shows that, despite consumers seeking better deals, there has been a large reduction in the proportion of those consumers who take bundles switching providers in last 12 months (from 24 to 13 per cent). More generally consumers are not switching as much in the communications sector as they are in other sectors such as energy and car insurance. 

To view the whole report log on to http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tce/

These are Ofcom’s annual reports into the consumer experience of the fixed and mobile, internet and digital broadcasting markets. The research report is aimed at measuring how well consumers are faring in respect of: choice, price and range; availability and take-up; awareness, comparing and switching; protection and concerns.