Consumer Satisfaction with Broadband Declines

Overall customer satisfaction with residential high speed Internet service declined slightly in 2010, according to the 13th annual J.D. Power and Associates survey of residential high-speed Internet services.

While DSL customers remained more satisfied with their broadband services than cable modem subscribers, the gap between DSL and cable narrowed in 2010, J.D. Power found. Overall customer satisfaction in the 2010 survey stood at 634 on a 1,000-point scale, a drop of five points from 2009. DSL customers ranked their service at 638, versus 621 for cable modems, but the difference between the two types of service narrowed by eight index points to 17. Overall customer satisfaction with the cost of their service dropped by 12 points to 584 in 2010, but the percentage of customers who actually switched service providers during the last 12 months for reasons other than moving declined by more than 25% compared to 2009, J.D. Power found.