US Broadband Clients Suffer From Inadequate Service
In a study commissioned by Motive Communications, researchers at Harris Interactive polled Americans on their experiences with broadband service providers and found many unhappy customers.
Over half of those polled, 51 percent, have encountered service and support problems with their broadband providers, with the main complaint, shared by 33 percent of those polled, being the need to contact the provider several times for resolution. The next most common complaint (20 percent) was the length of time between recognition of the problem and the ultimate repair. Seven percent said their problems were never fully resolved.
Even though 45 percent of respondents indicated interest in additional features of broadband connectivity such as streaming media and games, 90 percent of the respondents said they would not purchase these add-ons from their current providers because they had no confidence in them.
Another 20 percent of broadband subscribers in the United States said they are considering dropping broadband service altogether or changing providers.
Flat Growth Expected for Mobile Sales in Western Europe
Several factors are set to drag down the mobile handset sales in western Europe this year, according to a study conducted by Strategy Analytics.
The research found that replacement sales will be the largest source of revenue for mobile phone companies, with 70 percent of sales this year expected to be attributable to replacements.
Other factors impeding overall sales growth is the slower-than-expected rollout of phones sporting multimedia message services (MMS) and doubt over costs for the new services.
Stagnant pricing for mobiles last year stayed at roughly $98 per phone, which is thought to be driving the growth in multiple mobile phone ownership in western Europe. Strategy Analytics predicted the number of subscribers to have two or more phones will increase from 5 percent in 2001 to about 12 percent by 2007.
Online Newspapers Attract European Upper Crust
Demographic data was compiled by Forrester Research and recently released on the behavior and social status of Europeans that regularly visit online newspaper sites.
The study found that while only 8 percent of the total European population, or 21 million people, are regulars at their favorite offline newspaper's Web sites, the majority of those people are younger, wealthier and have a higher level of education than the traditional or average online consumer.
The Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet, has the highest proportion of consumers that are multi-channel readers (39 percent of its readership. La Republica, an Italian newspaper, has the second highest proportion, with 20 percent of its readers viewing the paper both online and offline.
Spain's Internet Use on the Rise
Spanish research firm AIMC reported to Nua.com their recent findings of the landscape of Internet use in Spain.
The number of Internet users logging on from Spain has more than doubled since May 2000, reaching 7.89 million in May 2002 from 3.94 million just two years earlier. In March 2002 alone, the Spanish Internet population grew by 160,000.
Other findings include: Only 13.7 percent of Spaniards access the Internet more than eight days a month, while 50 percent access the net just one day in a month; 60.7 percent are male; Spaniards between the ages of 25 and 34 account for 32.2 percent of the total users; 80.5 percent connect to use e-mail; and the Basque region has the highest concentration of Internet users at 29.3 percent.
XXX Spam on the Rise
As every e-mail user can attest, spam (unsolicited e-mail) continues to increase. A new study conducted by BrightMail, and reported on by CyberAtlas, lends hard data to support this.
According to the BrightMail research, spam from adult Web sites has increased by 450 percent in the last year alone, but that only represents 8 percent of the total amount of unsolicited e-mails received during the period from June 2001 to June 2002.
Accounting for 47 percent of spam messages are e-mails advertising general products and financial services. A further 13 percent of unsolicited messages are regarding Internet and computer-related products. Six percent of spam e-mails are of the fraudulent variety, such as the Nigerian banking scam e-mails.