TalkTalk is UK's worst broadband provider

Customers have voted TalkTalk and NTL the worst UK broadband providers, as customer satisfaction falls across the industry with more people switching ISPs, according to annual rankings by research company JD Power and Associates.

Telewest came out top of the rankings, which are based on responses from 1,438 customers across the UK, for the second year running, scoring highest on performance and reliability, and customer service and technical support.

Telewest was followed by AOL, Tiscali, BT and Orange, with NTL and then TalkTalk at the bottom of the rankings. AOL scored highest on image and Tiscali scored highest on cost.

The 2006 UK Broadband ISP report also showed the overall customer satisfaction ranking, which is based on things like performance, reliability, customer service, cost and billing, fell this year due to lower customer service scores across all the ISPs.

In particular the average waiting time to speak with customer service agents has increased by two minutes to 8.7 minutes since last year.

"The 2006 study highlights the adverse affect poor call management can have on customer satisfaction levels," said Caspar Tearle, director of service industry research at JD Power, in the report.  

As dissatisfaction with broadband services increases, the number of customers switching supplier is rising, with one-fifth changing their ISP in the last year -- up from 15 per cent in 2005. Another quarter of customers said they are likely to change ISP in the next 12 months.

It's not only consumers looking to change their broadband provider. Results from another 2006 ISP satisfaction survey by AccountingWeb show that reliability is the most important factor for 78 per cent of business customers, with half of the 400 companies questioned saying they would consider switching ISP to get improved reliability.