The YouGov survey, an independent one held amidst a group of 2083 respondents ranks T-Mobile’s service number one in six customer satisfaction parameters out of a total of thirteen. As a matter of fact, this result trails behind the nine out of thirteen thumbing feat achieved by the same ISP in the previous survey.

Apart from winning top marks for getting connected, T-Mobile also bagged the top honours for the mobile broadband network coverage category. Other categories topped by the Germany-based mobile broadband provider were billing, installation and ease of use. Finally, in the customer services category it was declared joint topper.

Even though, T-Mobile has put up a decent if not remarkable performance in this quarter as well, their trailing behind in the categories such as quality, upload and download speeds, value for money and daytime reliability might pose a few sleepless nights to the enthusiastic think-tank of the mobile broadband supplier.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile’s UK Internet and Entertainment head, Richard Warmsley has commented that they were aiming to provide their customers with total liberty to surf the internet, check emails and share images, as accessing internet from any spot was continuing to rise up their priority list.

With Eclipse business broadband packages, the customers can make 1000 minutes free calls to UK landlines and cheaper calls to mobiles (Eclipse TalkMore) and can use other services like Hosted Sharepoint, Hosted Exchange and PC Data backup for emailing and storing digital data and files.

Home Lite offers 2GB monthly download limit for £7.95 a month and includes other features like 10 email addresses and 50MB of personal web space to build your own website.

With Home Select deal, you get 10GB monthly usage allowance, 10 email addresses and 100MB of personal web space for £12.95 a month.

Home Pro is ideal for heavy users or professionals. Home Pro comes with free setup, wireless router and huge 50GB monthly download limit. You also get free overnight usage, Eclipse TalkMore telephone connection, free domain name, 10 email addresses, 100 MB of personal web space and PC Backup service.

Eclipse Home Office, the basic business service from the provider offers 3 GB usage allowance for £14.95 a month and also includes one email address and a TalkMore phone service.

Business 20 will now cost £19.95 a month. You get unlimited email addresses, one free domain name, 250MB web space, TalkMore and access to one Hosted Sharepoint service.

Business 50 which offers 50GB usage allowance will cost £29.95 a month. You get unlimited email addresses, one free domain name, 250MB web space, TalkMore and access to five Hosted Sharepoint services and two Hosted Exchange services.

With Business Unlimited broadband packages you get two 250MB web space, unlimited email addresses and two domain names and access to ten Hosted Sharepoint and five Hosted Exchange services. The package will cost £49.95 a month.

Some of the online activities like streaming & downloading videos, file sharing require faster speeds, however, the average broadband speeds available in the UK are pretty lower than what is required, the research shows. As for the broadband performance, Japan was placed in first position while the UK, Australia, Italy and Spain are a few broadband developed nations that are yet to improve their standings in terms of speeds and performance.

This research, funded by New Cisco Systems used the speeds results from speedtest.net and broadband network in these nations were tested more than 8 million times. Japan topped the table with an average speed of 16Mbps while Sweden was placed in second position with 9Mbps. Russia, which is placed in 10th position offered broadband services of average speed 6Mbps. As for the broadband service quality or performance, Japan again leads other nations while Sweden, Romania, Netherlands and Germany could find a place in the list of top ten nations.

Alastair Nicholson, a member of the research team from the University of Oxford’s Said Business School spoke to the Guardian:

“Average download speeds are adequate for web browsing, email and basic video downloading and streaming, but we are seeing more interactive applications, more user-generated content being uploaded and shared, and an increasing amount of high-quality video services becoming available,”

“Moreover, because the study also found significant correlation between a nation’s broadband quality and its advancement as a knowledge economy, policy makers may need to consider how to create an environment to improve key broadband performance parameters in the future.”

In the UK, the average broadband speeds are yet to improve to match the standards in nations like Japan, Sweden, or Germany where fibre based, cheap unlimited broadband networks provide faster broadband connections to the growing broadband population. While Virgin Media, the cable broadband provider has planned to launch its 50Mbps service nationwide by the year end, BT has recently revealed its investments plans to deploy fibre broadband network in the UK to provide 100Mbps broadband service to more than 10 million households in the next four years.

According to the report, the number of broadband customers who go for broadband bundles that combine broadband internet service with home phone, satellite TV and mobile phone broadband services from their existing provider shows a growth of 7.5 percent during the quarter. As many internet providers also include bundled packages which are relatively cheaper than stand-alone broadband packages, broadband users are increasingly opting for broadband bundles, according to the report.

Nadeem Azam, Marketing Manger of Froggybank has commented:
“At froggybank.co.uk we are expecting to see this kind of switching continuing in the months to come. The big winners will be the firms that realise this and offer the best bundle and pay as you go deals.”

As the new migratory regulations issued by Ofcom, UK telecom regulator have made the switching process much easier, nearly one-third of the broadband customers switch their providers, according to a report. It should be noted that the internet providers should issue the MAC number within five working days while independent regulators like Ofcom, Otelo and ISPA help the customers who encounter problems during the switching process.

Mike Bartlett of BT broadband said:
“It’s for people who need to send a lot of data very quickly, very securely and very reliably.
“If you are trying to send massive files to a different office on a copper network, you can have problems. With a fibre network, that can happen pretty much instantly.”

It should be noted that ADSL broadband can offer up to 8Mbps download speeds and 1Mbps upload speeds. Speeds that broadband users receive are often affected by the factors like line quality and the distance between the exchange and the premises of the internet users.

While most nations in the Western Europe like France and Italy offer higher speeds using fibre optic lines, the UK has been lagging behind many broadband developed nations in terms of broadband speeds and general service quality. However, the largest broadband provider UK, BT has recently unveiled its plans to roll out fibre optic network to provide high speed broadband internet services to more than 10 million households in the UK. The project is estimated to cost £1.5 billion and will be completed by 2012.

However, the cable broadband service provider, Virgin broadband offers 20Mb broadband has already launched its 50Mb broadband service on trial basis in some areas in the UK last year and is all set to roll out this super-fast broadband service by the end of 2008.