UK

Online Banking In The UK Leaves Customers Short-Changed
UK banks may be gleefully reporting big fat profits every quarter, but new research from eService provider Transversal claims that online customer service from Britain’s banks has sunk to an all time low.
Their study found that fifty per cent of the major banks surveyed were so rubbish that they were unable to answer a single one of ten basic customer questions asked via their websites (these questions were based on typical customer enquiries about credit card offers, borrowing and mortgages etc).
A minority of banks, however, achieved excellent results, revealing the growing gulf between the best and worst performing banks.
Taken as a whole, the sector registered a lamentable average of 2.5 out of ten, managing to answer just 25 per cent of common questions.
Although this looks like an utterly abysmal score, things have actually got worse over the past year, with only two banks scoring nul points in 2005, and the sector mustering up a mighty average of three questions answered.
Despite 56 per cent of Brits now using online banking, these results suggest that banks are more interested in increasing profits by closing down High Street stores than serving their customers, with further cost-cutting measures seeing call centres shunted offshore into unknown foreign lands, often increasing customers’ frustration.
No email contacts for customers
As if to wind up their customers further, sixty per cent of bank websites didn’t allow consumers to contact them via email, forcing them to ring up and face the horrors of ‘on hold’ phone music.
Of the forty per cent that bothered to provide an email address, there was clearly no rush to answer their customers’ questions, with the banks taking a leisurely average of 22 hours to respond.
The fastest response was a still-casual 8 hours – a whole working day – while the slowest was a massive 69 hours: enough time, the report noted, for the beleaguered customer to hop on a plane and travel to the offshore centre to ask the question personally.
The study also noted that only half of the major banks troubled themselves to provide a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page, and in many cases these were lurking in dark corners of the site, and not clearly marked for users.
A summary of the overall 2006 average banking results is as follows:
Average number of questions answered online: 2.5 out of 10 (2005 findings: 3)
Percentage of companies that responded to email correctly: 40% (2005 findings: 55%
Average email response time: 22 hours (2005 findings: 17 hours)
Percentage with customer FAQ pages: 50% (2005 findings: 60%)
Percentage with customer search: 60% (2005 findings: 40%)
Transversal
2 August, 2006
Rural WiFi Boost From Ofcom?
UK regulator Ofcom is looking at plans to introduce high speed Internet access to broadband-starved remote areas by boosting the power of Wi-Fi signals.
Talking to the BBC, James Saunders, chief marketing honcho of Wi-Fi suppliers, The Cloud, welcomed consultation from Ofcom, adding that the turbo-charged Wi-Fi could, “provide great opportunities in rural areas that are currently without broadband. It makes it much more possible to put up a wireless network.”
Current limitations on the strength of Wi-Fi signals in the UK makes it prohibitively expensive to provide coverage to sparsely populated rural areas, but cranking up the power would make it possible to reach far more users without breaking the bank.
The bigwigs and boffins at Ofcom are currently mulling over the pros and cons of three proposals.
The first would see wireless signals (which are restricted to a tenth of the power permitted in the US) in all parts of the UK; the second would see the power increase limited to rural areas only; while the third option would include a balance of the first two plans, backed by a code of collaboration to minimise signal interference.
City networks
Although most UK towns and cities offer outside Wi-Fi access through hotspots in cafes, pubs and libraries, city-wide seamless networks are yet to be established.
Known as mesh networks, these let Wi-Fi’d folks roam freely from hotspot to hotspot without any interruption to their Internet access.
Although such networks are already starting to roll out in the US, the restricted Wi-Fi transmission levels in the UK mean that mesh networks would currently be prohibitively expensive in the UK.
Selina Lo, chief executive of home Wi-Fi antenna firm Ruckus explained, “With lower power you have to use a lot more access points to form the network.”
“A typical network will have hundreds or low thousands of access points. If you have power limits, these nodes have to be closer together and you need a lot more nodes,” she added
Ruckus, who are currently working with Google to test a free mesh network in Mountain View, California, have developed a new Wi-Fi antenna to help home users connect to city networks.
“People running city networks know that the Wi-Fi in customers’ home equipment is not powerful enough to do an outdoor long range connection….our device is designed to bridge that connection,” said Ms Lo.
Interference
Although boosting Wi-Fi signals looks to be a top notch idea, it’s not without its drawbacks in urban areas, where US hotspot operators are already experiencing “significant” interference between suppliers.
Despite this, Saunders said The Cloud was committed to making mesh networks happen in the UK in the future, but warned that, “a number of factors are needed to make mesh networks economical”.
The company is, however, already working with the Corporation of London to deploy a mesh network in the City.
The Cloud
Ruckus
Offcom
1 August, 2006
BT Change From Per Second To Per Minute Billing
As of today BT is reshuffling its phone pricing structure. In a typical move of a power-crazed ex-monopoly, it’s giving with one hand and taking away with another.
The ability to get going on this was given by Ofcom when they lifted restrictions on BT’s UK landline pricing structure.
The ‘giving’
BT hasn’t had the take-up with its bundled packages that it had hoped. From today, subscribers of its Option 2 & 3 package will receive around a third price cut. The included-evening/weekend calls to landline packages will move to £3.95 & the all landline calls to £9.95. This is the packages that they’re trumpeting – shame that most people won’t benefit from it isn’t it?
The other part BT is drawing attention to, is the reduction in price of calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers – the sort of numbers most people have been forced to call to speak to their banks. Oh … and they tell us that they’ve reduced the price of calls to mobile phones.
Almost to add insult to injury, BT is offering all of their 16m subscribes 25p off their monthly line rental at the end of the year- TWENTY FIVE PENCE! We’ve just wasted that typing this. Of course, much to our distress, most broadband services (supplied by BT Wholesale) need to pay the line rental. Why should we? and how much longer can this be allowed to continue? Come on Ofcom.
The ‘taking’
The majority of BT’s 16m customers pay per call on the Option 1 scheme. Sadly for them, things won’t be such a bargain. BT is changing their standard charging unit from per second to per minute – not something that we’ve seen since the wild-west days of early mobile phone companies, where the cowboy operators tried to extract the maximum amount of money from the ~~suckers~~ customers.
We think it more than sneaky that BT have given people Call Minder, their free phone answering service, then charge people a fixed fee (3p) or ‘setting up’ the call, then charging whole minutes. When many people get an answer phone, they hang-up because they don’t want to leave a message, or to try to call their mobile – in the meantime BT will collect the setup fee PLUS a whole minute charge, for a couple of seconds.
As to how much the minute will be – we don’t know. We’ve looked, really we have, pretty hard too – we’ve even tried to use their price list search – but to no avail. Isn’t it a bit of a give away that if you need a search engine for your price list, you’re possibly going to be confusing the customer.
Interestingly, for the first time, BT have listed Skype on their pricing structure on the press release. Welcome to the future BT.
If you’ve got a couple of hours to spare, and fancy trying to extract pricing information, you can have a look at the BT Together site.
1 August, 2006
Vodafone 3G On Apple MacBook Via USB
Well they got there finally, Vodafone UK have announced that they’re releasing the less than catchy named Vodafone Mobile Connect USB Modem in the Autumn. It will support their 3G data service and, surprise, surprise, connect to computers using a USB lead. Rather neatly the software disks aren’t needed, as they’re installed directly from the modem.
This advance will broaden out the service to any machine that doesn’t have a full sized PCMCIA/PC Card slot because it’s too old, or it’s too modern, like the some of the new laptops which only support the smaller ExpressCard, or their Apple Macintosh’s that might not support either.
Connection to the HSDPA network, in optimum conditions, will be a healthy 1.4Mbps receive and 384Kbps transmit. Currently Vodafone high-speed 3G network covers the major conurbations in the UK, but not the whole of the UK. Their stated plans are 75% of the population by summer 2007.
There will be a suggested limit of 1Gb of data transfered a month. Those who do not comply “may be asked to moderate their usage,” and persistent usage in excess of the limit “may also result in suspension or termination of the customer’s service.”
1 August, 2006
Sky Results: Long-Term Concerns?
BSkyB results for the last year were broadly in line with predictions, but seasoned watchers of all things financial, recognise tell-tale signs of a flattening of the growth curve. The company has managed its spend on programming well, but technology costs remain high, with significant outgoings on expensive High Definition equipment, that won’t bring instant revenue returns.
Sky, as the company brands itself in the UK, looks increasingly like a utility platform-come-broadband wars‘ that are unlikely to see any great financial gains for those taking part.
As Telcos have become drawn into offering entertainment packages to make their own offerings ‘sticky bundles’ – that their customers are loathe to detach themselves from – the entertainment companies are forced to provide competing phone and broadband packages, along with the capability of on-demand TV downloads. This won’t be cheap, as Sky has already found to date with its Easynet purchase, and may prove to be more expensive, if they decide to acquire the UK AOL subscribers from Time Warner.
Sky’s average revenue per subscriber (ARPU) has dropped by £4 and along side this they’re facing stiffer competition from Freeview, the UK Digital Terrestrial platform. Freeview now has a free-to-air movie channel (Film 4) and is due to add two further entertainment channels provided by the UK channel ‘Five’ this autumn. Cost-conscious multi-channel homes will continue to gravitate to this low frills platform.
Sky, like pay-TV services worldwide, has a high churn rate, although its managed to reduce this, it remains somewhere over 10% (that’s the percentage of subscribers over the past year who ended their subscriptions). Achieving this has been costly with increased promotional spend and marketing offers to keep current subscribers signed, which has in-turn hit the bottom line.
James Murdoch the CEO of BSkyB told the corporate world that “Our industry is changing faster than ever before and for Sky, 2006 has been an important and exciting year.”
With the NTL/Telewest /Virgin mobile merger and its re-brand starting to gather traction, it looks like Sky can look forward to even more excitement in 2007.
31 July, 2006
Brits Love Affair With Mobiles Continues
In the largest UK study of its kind, the Mobile Life Report has revealed our attitudes towards mobile phones and how they have impacted on our lives, with more than 90% of UK mobile users saying they can’t get through the day without using their phone.
More than 16,500 people were surveyed for the report, which was published by The Carphone Warehouse in collaboration with the London School of Economics.
Text-tastic
The report revealed that the British love affair with texting is still in full flow, with people sending an average 3.6 mobile text messages a day compared with 2.8 voice calls a day.
Not surprisingly, it’s amongst da yoot that texting is the most popular with 51% of 18-24 year-olds sending/receiving at least six text messages a day, but with only 15% troubling themselves to have six or more mobile phone conversations a day.
Better than the tele
In the same 18-24 years old age bracket, mobile phones were declared to be more important than television (26% to 11%), with the figure jumping to 32% for women in the same age group.
Thievery
Mobiles continue to be hugely popular with muggers/thieves, with nearly one in ten people (9%) reporting that they’ve had a mobile phone stolen.
Not unexpectedly, 18 to 24 year olds were found to be at the most at risk, with 17% of women in that age group having had their phone purloined compared with 10% of men.
Citizen journalism
People were also found to be ready and willing to use their camera phones to record evidence of a crime (50%), or to snap a crime in progress (47%), with more than a third (36%) saying that they’d use their mobiles to grab a mugshot of a passing celebrity or newsworthy event.
Sex and mobiles
With a keen eye to garnering some press in the tabloids, the research bothered to ask about ‘relationships and mobiles’.
Lord knows why people bothered to answer these questions, but the survey found that a quarter of people bothered to disconnect their mobiles before indulging in a bit of hanky panky, with 11% switching them to silent (writer resists cheap joke about vibra-alerts) and 14% turning their phones off altogether.
The study also found that phones could be used to ward off unwelcome suitors, with over half of women under 25 admitting to getting out their mobiles in public situations to deter people from approaching them.
Tribes
For reasons best know to itself, the study also identified six tribes or groups of mobile phone users.
These are:
Generation Mobile – single, style conscious, 18-24 year olds who are students or working in their first jobs
Phonatics – single, employed folks aged 18-34 who elevate their mobile into being their most important electronic possession.
Practical Parents – young, cost-conscious families aged 18-34 who choose their mobiles for practical rather than style or function.
Smart Connecteds – affluent families and professionals aged 25-44 who use their mobile to organise their hectic work and social lives.
Fingers & Thumbs – married, middle-aged or retired folks with children or grandchildren.
Silver Cynics – affluent, married with children rapidly heading for retirement.
Mobile Life Report
25 July, 2006
SMG And UTV Merger On The Cards?
Following the surprise resignation of SMG’s Chief executive Andrew Flanagan, the pieces are in place for consolidation of the Scottish and Ulster media outfits that provide the Celts with their ITV services.
SMG’s share price has been underperforming and in this time of ‘challenging market’ conditions in the advertising sector, any opportunity to trim costs will be welcomed by city investors and commentators alike.
SMG, although mainly associated with television, has a diverse media portfolio including the cinema advertising outfit Pearl and Dean along with Virgin Radio. The two look a good fit, the well managed UTV stable owns the Wireless group that includes the successful Talksport station and is becoming active in what they refer to charmingly as New Media. UTV had been named as possible buyers of Irelands’ commercial broadcaster TV3, but this was ultimately unsuccessful, it may now look to expand in Scotland.
With many predicting the imminent departure of Charles Allen, ITV, a shareholder in SMG has troubles enough of it’s own to be ruled out of a takeover.
Although it would have a battle to justify expansion north of the border now, given time the advantages to all concerned mean a single ITV is likely to be the final end-game.
24 July, 2006
Whitehaven First English Digital TV Town
Today it was announced that Whitehaven, Cumbria will be the first area in England to have its TV reception changed over from analog to digital.
Ahead of expectations, Broadcasting Minister Shaun Woodward and Industry Minister Margaret Hodge announced their intentions today to switch over the analogy signal in Autumn 2007.
A year later (don’t rush it will you), Selkirk in the Scottish Borders will start the transition in Q4 of 2008, with the whole of the Borders area being converted by Q2 2009.
Whitehaven has been specifically selected as they have always suffered from a weak analog signal, and following the switch they will end up with 18 channels rather than the four they currently receive.
The first area in the UK to switch over was two villages, Ferryside and Llanstephan, situated on either side of the River Tywi, in Carmarthenshire, Wales back in March 2005.
Who will bear the cost of the hardware in each home to change to digital has been unclear for quite a while. The have government appeared steadfast in insisting that the generally the public must bear the costs, with assistance available to some.
Today they’ve finally made it clear who will get support
Extra help with switchover will be available to: all households with one person aged 75 or over; all households with one person with a significant disability (receiving attendance allowance, disability living allowance); help will be available free of charge to households with one person aged 75 or over/disabled households receiving pension credit, income support or jobseekers allowance; other households will pay a modest fee; specific support for households where one person is registered blind or partially sighted.
Many feel see the expense of having to buy extra equipment as a tax on the citizen to enable to government to then sell off the analog spectrum to the highest bidder, raising income for the government. Todays clarifications will have taken some wind out of their sails.
Digital UK
20 July, 2006
Sky Broadband: Analysis
Yesterday saw the press unveiling of Sky Broadband, showing the eventual absorption of EasyNet, the UK ISP that they 3).
If your reaction is, “Don’t Sky do satellite TV?,” you haven’t been paying much attention recently.
Sky’s offering is simple. Three different speeds of connection – 2Mb (Base) for no payment; 8Mb (Mid) for £5/month; and 16Mb (Max) for £10/month. Connection fees vary with Base at £40, Mid £20 and Max being free.
Each of the bundles include a wireless router and McAfee security software.
Sounds cheap? Well there’s a slight caveat to the ‘free’ service; you need to be a subscriber to their TV service.
Registration via their Web site or SkyActive has been available from noon today and the product will start selling from August.
Sky marketing have been taking their now-expected simplistic approach to the name of the product, with Base, Mid and Max. It’s genius like this that produced the name Sky+, the name that sold 100k+ PVRs to the UK public, when previously they didn’t understand what the hell it was.
How does it fare against the others?
The prices are considerably lower than most of the offerings in the UK, with an equivalent pay-for 2Mb connection from BT costing £18/month.
True, to qualify for these Sky Broadband services you do need to subscribe to Sky TV, but surprisingly at only the cheapest, £15/month package. This approach differs from what they’ve done for many of their other recent ‘hi-tech’ offerings like Sky By Broadband, Sky By Mobile, which required subscription to one of their ‘Premier’ packages.
The closest offering to ‘free’ broadband in the UK are two fold – Carphone Warehouse’s TalkTalk, and Orange, post merger with Wandadoo. TalkTalk requires an 18-month contract for a phone line with a rental of £20.99/month and Orange requires a mobile phone bill of at least £30/month.
Installation
As per most UK broadband offerings, Sky is expecting most of their installations to be done by the customer, after they’ve received their bits and pieces through the post. The wireless router (which looks like a 3Com unit), sounds self configuring, with the subscriber just needing to load software on their suitably-equipped PC, or …. shock/horror, Macintosh.
If people feel they’re not up to the job, the ever-helpful Sky will send an engineer around to your house to install it all for £50, unless you’re a Sky Max subscriber, in which case it will be free.
This is a big differentiator with the Sky offering. This isn’t offered by other ISPs – it’s simply not economic to do it. It’s also quite a bargain. Depending on the part of the country you live in, you would normally be hard pushed to get someone to come around to your house to install and set up your DSL and a wireless network for that sort of money.
One thing that Sky does excel at, is customer service, and they clearly want this to go as smoothly as possible.
Coverage
These packages aren’t available all over the UK, as Sky Broadband’s reach is limited to the number of exchanges that have been unbundled by EasyNet, as was. Sky are quoting coverage at 28% of the household of the UK, with the high speed (16Mb/s) service only available to an estimates half of these, giving coverage of about 14%.
With their promise to invest around £400/m over the next three years, Sky will be increasing coverage with the stated aim being 70% of UK households by 2007.
Those who fall outside these have to make do with what they call Sky Connect, which is limited to an 8Mb/s service at £17/month.
Analysis
Sky are doing a smart thing here – effectively getting their customers to install another means of Sky delivering content into their homes.
No-one at Sky would be drawn to talk about any firm plans to deliver video content over the broadband connections, but clearly that will be the next move. They can pre-load films, while the connection isn’t being used by the family.
That explains one of the reasons they’re doing it, but why else?
Since James Murdoch took over running Sky, its stated ambition has been 10 million subscribers by 2010, but as we get closer to that, it’s getting hard to convert over those naughty-non-subscribers.
To build toward 10m, Sky really need to keep hold of their current subscribers, and some find they don’t need satellite TV anymore. Bringing them in and locking them into a broadband service is a great way of doing it.
The other thing they need to bring in, is new subscribers and offering potential subscribers incredibly cheap broadband is a pretty good way of doing it.
Other things that Sky are doing is getting their subscribers more closely linked in, or locked in to their service. It’s interesting to see that Sky will be providing a personalised portal of their own, providing photo management and address book. If you’ve ever tried to extract yourself from a photo sharing service – and escape with your photo’s – you’ll know it’s not easy.
Other bits that will be given over are as the previous Sky By Broadband offerings of film, sports and news clips. Oh and, big wow, you’ll also be able to get an @sky.com email address (wonder if [email protected] has gone already?)
Sky will really put the cat among the pigeons with this one. It’s a very keen price, that will hopefully start bringing down the price of broadband for the UK.
Sky Broadband
19 July, 2006
Sky Broadband – From Free!
As expected, Sky has released details of their new “free” broadband promotion, which offers their 2Mb Base package for nowt.
[Read our analysis of Sky Broadband news]
But skinflints looking for a free feast of broadband take note: you only get the service if you’re already an existing SkyDigital network customer, and it comes with the additional sting of a £40 activation fee.
I’d rather jack
Punters who don’t know their phone jack from their Monterey Jack can also expected to be thwacked around the head with the extra optional £50 fee to get their home install sorted by Sky.
Users of the free broadband deal will find their downloading pleasure limited to a 2GB monthly usage cap, although they can upgrade to the ‘MID’ package, offering up to 8Mbps on a 40GB data cap for a fiver a month, with a lower £20 activation fee.
There’s also a ‘MAX’ option, which gives ‘unlimited’ downloading at a speedy 16Mbps with no activation or home install costs, all for a tenner a month.
For users out of a Sky network area, there’s the pricey ‘Connect’ option which offers up to 8Mbs connectivity, 40GB usage cap, £40 activation fee and £50 home install for a distinctly upmarket £17 per month.
All the offers include a free wireless Sky broadband box.
Growing the network
Easynet (owned by Sky) now owns a LLU network covering roughly 28% of UK homes, based primarily inside urban/city areas, with the company expecting to reach 70% coverage by the start of 2008.
Sky reckons that its broadband service – currently swallowing up £400m of operating profits and costing £250m in capital expenditure – will start to hit the break-even point sometime between 2009 and 2010.
30 per cent of Sky customers on broadband
The company also said that it expects 30 percent of its approximately 8 million customers to be signed up to its new broadband service by 2010.
Sky’s chief executive James Murdoch claimed that many of his rivals had been overcharging their customers, “A lot of incumbent players have been charging a lot of money for a long time for not a lot. It could be uncomfortable for them.”
“We can see huge growth in this market from a revenue perspective and for customer loyalty. We can also grow market share,” he added.
Jon Florsheim, managing director of Sky’s customer division, was ready to go even further, insisting that research showed that Sky would pick up new business from competitors.
“The bloodbath is not going to be on our front lawn,” he added, in his best Clint Eastwood voice.
It wasn’t all joy and happiness in the City after their announcement though, with Sky’s shares slumping 3.9% after the announcement of the new broadband service.
Sky Broadband
18 July, 2006