The price of home broadband has been gradually falling since it replaced dial-up connections as our main means of getting online. The question is, how low are broadband prices likely to go? Plusnet's recent decision to offer 4 months free on its standard value package meant the cost of their home broadband package is just £4 a month over the course of a 12 month contract. This is lower than their competitors, undercutting AOL by £1.99, but will Plusnet's choice to offer £4 a month broadband lead other companies to cut their prices and is that really what customers want from their broadband provider?
Broadband by its nature is a service. The broadband provider agrees to provide the customer with the necessary equipment and then offers them the connectivity and speed which will allow them to surf the world wide web. However, as with many services, customers are not only interested in price. A quick browse of the customer reviews on this site reveals the importance of not only price but also quality of service, communication and support. As broadband prices continue to drop, the inevitable question is how the broadband providers are able to offer such low prices and whether anything has to be sacrificed to make offering low prices a profitable option. Many providers for instance now outsource their customer support centres to countries where they can find and employ a cheaper work force. Another oft levelled criticism is that broadband providers rarely provide the speeds which they offer in advertisements. Low price services which offer up to 8MB on advertisement rarely reach anything near to that.
Customer reviews also reveal issues with reliability, communication response time, hidden charges and changes in terms of conditions, all of which leave a black spot against the lowest price providers. It also seems from the sheer number of 1 star reviews across the board, that all broadband providers should be focused on providing quality rather than finding ways to be cheaper.
It is hard to say how low the price of broadband is likely to fall in the coming year as companies decide to respond to the undercutting of competitors, in an attempt to win new custom. The question instead should be whether low price broadband is good value for money compared to its higher price equivalents. From studying customer reviews of the lower price providers there certainly may be something to the well known phrase, you get what you pay for.
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