Poorer people and those living in rural areas are paying more for broadband and receiving slower speeds according to figures released yesterday.
In the study, done by Simplifydigital.com, they found that those customers living in post code areas that are well served payed on average £8.40 per month (not including line rental) for their broadband, compared to those living in post codes that were not well served who were paying around £16.26 per month. The least well served post codes also trended to be in rural areas and many also in some of the poorest areas of the UK.
The reason for these prices differences is due to the fact that broadband providers can install their own equipment into the local telephone exchanges, they mainly choose the areas that have allot of people and more urban areas where there will be far more demand for their services than in rural and countryside areas where they won’t be able to make as good a return on their investment.
This means that prices in the areas where there is not so much competition are higher due to companies not competing for the customers so strongly.
To add insult to injury, customers in rural and more countryside areas also tend to receive slower broadband speeds due to the fact they they are usually further away form their local telephone exchange than those living in towns and cities. This can mean that not only are they paying more for their broadband, they are also getting an inferior broadband speed too.
The study looked at the prices that were charged by BT, O2, Orange, Plusnet, Sky & TalkTalk.
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The survey was done for O2′s latest campaign “Niggles and Narks” and as such we can probably expect that the question may have been worded in a way that would perhaps favour the kind of results that O2 would be hoping for, add to that not many people have to deal with the NHS, Crime or job cuts on a daily basis (maybe a yearly basis) so this does help with how to interpret the results of the survey. However, small issues are definitely something that do affect people and can cause daily issues and as such they do need addressing.