Switching broadband providers

By andy
Published on December 16th, 2006

I can’t help but think that the advent of impulse buying on-line has made consumers forget a useful skill - picking products from a provider with proven track record, or stated customer service guarantees.

An email from Oftel this morning announces,

From 14 February 2007, [...] Service Migrations will require broadband providers to supply consumers with a migration authorisation code upon request and free of charge. The new rules will also make it the responsibility of all broadband providers to ensure that technical and operational problems such as tag on line do not hinder consumers’ ability to switch.

Why must bad providers (the sort who would block users from migrating if they want to) be supported by regulation like this ? If users have to think carefully about who they buy connectivity from, the bad providers will either have to improve, or will fail as users avoid signing up. The new regulation is well intentioned, but counter-intuitive.


Comments

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.