A new YouGov survey of 2,301 UK adults has reported that 28% of people experienced an internet connection that was “slightly worse” than usual during the COVID-19 lockdown, while 7% said it was “much worse” and 57% saw “no change“. At the same time 73% said they were making heavier use of broadband due to home working etc.
Out of those who claim to have experienced some form of internet connectivity issue during the lockdown, some 69% said it affected general online activities, while 67% noticed an impact upon streaming (Netflix, YouTube etc.), 59% say it impacted video calls and 52% noticed an impact upon work-related tasks.
Naturally some of the mainstream media (and Which?) have immediately leapt to the assumption that broadband ISPs are to blame, although multiple studies of network performance during the height of the COVID-19 crisis showed very little impact upon service speeds (examples here, here and here). Daytime capacity demand also remained below some pre-crisis peaks (ISPs can cope with surges of many times above normal).
As usual the YouGov survey isn’t deep enough to help understand the picture they’re examining and thus it’s difficult to draw any solid conclusions from such limited feedback. We can better illustrate this problem by highlighting some of the potentially significant caveats in this kind of survey below.
Caveats of the YouGov Survey
1. It doesn’t clarify what kind of disruption was actually experienced by users, which is necessary in order to help identify a probable cause (e.g. did video streams degrade in quality or was more “buffering” experienced etc.).
2. It doesn’t to show whether the problems were caused by remote servers on the internet or the broadband providers themselves. We know from evidence that ISPs generally held up well, but this doesn’t mean to say that other online services did too – problems elsewhere on the internet are not your ISPs fault. Likewise some people could have perceived the decision of major streaming providers to drop their video quality as being related to their broadband, when in fact it wasn’t.
3. It doesn’t clarify whether the “worse” connectivity was via a mobile or fixed broadband service.
4. It doesn’t identify whether or not the issues experienced were due to a customer’s local network or the internet connection itself (e.g. slow WiFi and congestion of the local home network can also affect your experience, even though this is not directly the fault of the broadband connection itself).
5. It doesn’t show whether the customers surveyed could have taken a faster package (assuming the issues were even related to broadband speeds). Many people, but not all, on slower packages live in areas where a faster service would be available if they were willing to switch or pay a bit more. Sadly those on slower lines are more likely to notice problems in a lockdown when everybody is forced to share the same limited speed.
A good example of this issue is the fact that around a third of the UK still connects via a slow copper line ADSL broadband service, which is despite so-called “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) services now being available to more than 96% of premises. But admittedly even “superfast” lines can easily be taxed by a busy family.
Admittedly none of this is to say that broadband ISPs were somehow perfect during the crisis. Most of the biggest providers did show a slight decline in broadband speed (only around -2% to -3%) during the peak of the crisis. Some, such as Virgin Media, also happened to suffer a particularly bad outage during the period, which wasn’t directly linked back to the COVID-19 crisis but neither did the operator ever reveal much detail (some other ISPs were also impacted).
We should point out that service outages happen all the time (routing / hardware faults, power failures, street workers accidentally cutting through cables etc.) and tend to vary in both their severity and length, although most of those that occurred during this period were what we’d perceive to be fairly normal.
Olivia Bonito, YouGov’s Digital Media Research Manager, said:
“New YouGov research shows that the internet had become even more important to daily life during the coronavirus lockdown, with Britons using their household broadband connection for entertainment and to work from home.
Of course this means that many are now using their internet much more than usual but a significant proportion – a third – are experiencing worse internet performance than they did prior to the lockdown. This difficulty in accessing stable internet increases as the number of household residents rises, suggesting internet performance is being affected by increased demand.
While many might be able to cope in the short term, it could start to affect productivity if working from home becomes the ‘new normal’.”
Till Sommer, Head of Policy of the UK Internet Services Providers’ Association (ISPA), said:
“As indicated by the survey results there has been a significant increase in broadband usage in households during the lockdown with the UK’s workforce logging on from home and friends and family keeping in touch only virtually. However, despite this large increase in usage, the network has proved to be resilient and continues to provide vital support for the public through this difficult period.
The performance of the network itself has a vital but not exclusive impact on the user experience – in-home devices, the number of users, corporate IT set-ups and capacity constraints within online services (e.g. video-apps) can play an equally significant role.”
As ever there are different ways of interpreting the results from such a limited survey and it’s important to remember that much of the UK is still in need of an upgrade because demand is forever rising. The work to extend “gigabit-capable” broadband is therefore vital for helping the country to remain competitive but, as we’ve highlighted above, gaining access to such speeds doesn’t always solve every underlying problem.
Meanwhile we suspect that normal network outages, which might have otherwise gone unnoticed, may be felt much more keenly by people as more people find themselves working from home. In a way this is good because it will drive more complaints and that in turn should encourage further improvements.
