The year-long study, called Fat Pipes, Connected People, was conducted in partnership with the Broadband Stakeholders Group and watched how eight families, two home workers and two businesses used broadband.
James Crabtree, co-author of the report, told silicon.com that the telecoms industry is failing users because of a focus on speed rather than ongoing support on how to get the best out of broadband.
"Broadband is meant to be the Internet at its best but the industry sees selling broadband as the beginning and end. It is difficult to install. More support is clearly needed," he said.
Spam was the main concern of those in the study. Crabtree acknowledged that it is a problem for all internet users but said broadband users are particularly exposed to it as they tend to use the Internet more. And because spam has got significantly worse in the last six months, many new broadband users blame their fat pipes for the increased volumes of junk email.
The study also showed that people are not just interested in being pushed rich media content to consume but instead want to use broadband to create and share their own.
"People want to know how to create things and how to use digital media, rather than sitting there like digital couch potatoes sucking up rich media content. People just aren't interested in that," he said.
However, he added that many people do see the increased opportunity to download "free" music as something of a return on investment on the cost of broadband subscriptions.
Crabtree warned that not only are existing users getting disillusioned, but beyond the early broadband adopters, the service providers will need much more compelling offerings to convince people to sign up.
"We are getting close to the point where the service providers are not going to be able to get people to sign up to broadband just because it is broadband. It requires a different way of selling. It is not just about speed," he said.
Talkback
BT is the biggest sinner of all when it comes to inflexibility and lack of customer support. Gripes for me include rubbish modem, no Mac OSX support (for months), no chance to switch to a fixed IP without cancelling my contract and moving to a business package. Since I came onto their (then) monopoly ADSL over 2 years ago I have seen the Ts & Cs change to include a bandwidth regulatory statement stating that over 1GB per day and they can cut me off. Their customer support is a joke and they are no longer competitive either.Also , why are they so scared of people doing 'home hosting' from fixed IPs? We all want to broadcast stuff from time to time - that's why we pay for the connection. Oh if only 802.11g was useable (sigh)
Absolute rubbish!
Your just as likely to suffer from SPAM wether your on dial up or Broadband - it makes no difference whatsoever!
James Crabtree says Broadband is hard to install. How so? You plug it into your USB port and then into your phone line in exactly the same manner as you would any other external dial up modem!
Crabtree also states that people want to create their own media instead of just sitting like couch potatoes - what has this got to do with Broadband? Simply put Broadband is a faster (10x) internet connection - Broadband is NOT a Web Page / Graphics Designer. If people want to make their own content then they need to do what everyone else who has done this needed to do - ie LEARN!
I hope Crabtree wasnt paid for this year long "in depth" report.
Get a Mac!!!
With Apple's great machines - no spyware, v.little spam with a .Mac email address, and a wonderful pop-up free web surfing with Apple's Safari browser. I'm a PC network consultant and I use mac's at home with wireless broadband for the last few years with great satisfaction. Get rid of those PC's!!
NTL are a very suportive, and are at the moment praviding suport for a wide raing of viruses, unlike other ISP's. But still we need both speed and suport.
NTL are gash! They are slowly becoming the RyanAir of the internet world - I know, I have NTL. Cheap and cheerful
BT Broadband has made my business fly and cut down my coffee consumption. Why should I or anyone else involved take another teabreak just because the download is more than a megabyte. Only my hotmail address has been overwhelmed by spam, and few peoplwe I want to hear from use taht address any more.
Spam overload is due to user carelessness.
The main problem is that there is no mechanism to heavily penalise the companies sending the spam. Forget the direct marketting companies arguements, ANY unsolicited sales junk IS spam.
Careful internet use however can protect you from spam. I have been using the internet at home for 6 years now. The last 2 years on broadband.
I am always careful about where I give my details. About 8 online stores and a similar number of mail subscriptions.
The few spam mails I have received have always been deleted straight away. Never take the option to reply and be removed from the subscription list unless you actually joined the list yourself.
As a result I've averaged about 1 Spam mail/month.
NTL broadband is excellent.
I've had NTL broadband for 2 years now. Always on, always reliable.
Tips:
-Make sure you use ethernet not USB to connect to the cable modem.
-Get rid of the dumb connection app they provide.
I use NTL Broadband, have never told anyone my NTL Email, but still get 30 -40 spams a day.
Would want to pay more for a system that didn't give me any spam.
No, users should NOT have to be scared of giving their e-mails because they will get spam.
If people were actually imprisoned for sending spam everybody would enjoy the internet more. Not just that, but it would help our economy because in Britain a lot of companies rely on this directly and indirectly...
I've had BB (ADSL) for almost two years
and I would have to agree that spam can be a nuisance, as can pop-ups/unders, spyware and all the rest of the intrusive garbage. BUT I've learned to deal with it. There are programs available, many of them free which can make all these nasties significantly less of an inconvenience.
ALL BB users should install afirewall.
ALL BB users should install an anti-virus
program.
ALL BB users should install a cookie control program.
Once these are in place and set up correctly the web experience is much nicer.
I come across people who just can't be bothered to learn enough about their computers to operate them competently. These people treat their computer as a sort of TV which they just turn on and look at with scant regard for security, which in the main their entirely ignorant about. THESE are the people who complain about unpleasant images turning up on their desk top. THESE are the people who get virii. These are the people who get tagetted by spyware. The rest of us are immune. In ten years of heavy use, two of which I was connected to an "always on" ADSL connection I have had ONE virus and that came from a friend who inadvertently picked it up in a malicious email
while his virus program was switched off.
Trouble is PC's are sold and touted as being easy to use...and really that's not true, I still consider myself to be a novice user, but one who is aware of the downside and careful to protect myself from it.
I too used to subscribe to tesco.net. Although I never divulged my email address to anybody I didn't trust, I was inundated with spam, and was forced to abandon the email account. There was strong evidence that the tesco.net site had been broken into, and a complete list of primary email addresses taken and sold to various spammers.
Since I subscribed to ntlworld.com, I have had no spam at all - although my daughter occasionally gets spam about phone services. Barring disasters such as the tesco.net debacle above, the usual way to attract spam is to post to usenet newsgroups using your real email address. "Spambots" regularly trawl these groups collecting email addresses to add to spam lists. I always post as "brian@nospam.net".
we took on wholesale broadband services to configur for our customers. We are getting as many people from other providers who fail to give the servce, as new signups.
With AOL BB I receive on average 2 or 3 junk mail messages a day. AOL have a report spam facility which I always use (although not sure what happens with it), taking care not to open any messages from unknown senders - and in supplying my details online. It would be nice not to get junk mail, but this I can manage.
One of the largest failings of Broadband is the inability for BT to connect up exchanges..
I've been a user of ISDN for many a year since it's the only thing I can get in this area; but have recently gone back to using a modem due to the line rental costs & the additional phone charges.
Spam affects any internet user, No matter how much you use the internet. I'd say i'm a fairly active emailer, and I haven't noticed a great increase in spam over the past 5 years. Users just have to go into it understanding they'll get the odd mail or two.
Of course it'll affect your opinion of the internet; but have you tried to do anything recently without having your fun spoilt ? (noisy cinemas, yobbish behavior.on the streets)
Lack of filtering, lack of mail features, too much hyperbole and pretty pictures of happy people warming themselves by the glowing monitor. AND why doesn't Blueyonder offer me the same speeds, prices and quality that the Swedes get? Go on, tell me about overheads, market forces, protecting the shareholders and reinvesting in new technologies. I believe that the telcos (all of them) are attempting to milk us by frightening us with the "Information Gap" 'twixt "broadbanders" and "dialers". I also believe that price fixing goes on, thereby removing any real choice from the marketplace. Can anybody tell me how I can sign up at Continental prices for their speeds?
re AOL Broadband: I had AOL 8.00, no problems, except that to log on to various sites I had to minimise and use Internet Explorer, again no problems, just a few pop-ups. HOWEVER, AOL then offered their customers free download of McAfee Firewall, which is a really marvellous programme. Then I upgraded to AOL 9.00, and despite many conversations on line with Chat Agents, I was having a lot of trouble with the McAfee program interfering with the AOL 9.00! I also purchased Spam Filters and Pop-up Filters for use when I was on Internet Explorer, because I managed to acquire some horrid pop-ups which wouldn't go away whatever I did, short of unplugging.
End result, the whole system kept hanging. So I had to uninstal the Spam Filter and Pop-up Filter, and now I use AOL 8.00 again. Anyone else had such problems? I have plenty of memory/cache available.
Um... just one small point.
Tesco = NTL
NTL = Tesco
I know this because I work for both of them. Same IP range etc.
Your just as likely to get spam on the NTLWorld account as any other.
You just have to stick around for long enough.
You must have blagged it into you IT job then because a simple look on your bill tells you that infact NTL provide Tesco.net's technology. Therefore it makes it no more likely you'd get spam with Tesco.net than with your NTHell account. I received no spam with Tesco.net, until I was foolish enough to post my real e-mail account on an e-pal site - at which point every criminal in Nigeria assumed I'd fall for the old "I've found a bank account of the Nigerian Ambassador who died in a plane crash and there's $142,000,000 in it. Give me your bank details and I'll give you 40% of it".