[UK] Ofcom Research on Transparency of Traffic Management

The nice consumer guide issued by Ofcom on UK ISP's Traffic Management practices (see "[UK]: Ofcom Consumer Guide for Traffic Management" - here) was based on a research initiated by Ofcom.

Back in April Ofcom announced that "During 2013/14 Ofcom’s work on consumer information will address areas where we believe information provided by the market is insufficient. Examples of this will include: .. Traffic management practices: we are doing further work to consider the transparency of information on traffic management" (see "Ofcom Checks Traffic Management Practices" - here). More background in "Consumer research into the transparency of traffic management information provided by ISPs" - here.

The research was done by Kantar Media and published in "Transparency in internet traffic management"

The key findings related to traffic management are:

• Traffic management policies play little role in consumers’ ISP selection decisions, with only 1% claiming to have considered this for their fixed and/or mobile broadband purchases.
   
• There is a widespread lack of awareness about traffic management information. Roughly 1 in 10 internet consumers were aware of the term and meaning of traffic management, with less than a third (29%) being aware that traffic management processes were currently in use by internet providers.

• Once traffic management processes were explained 6% of internet users claimed they would consider traffic management in their future ISP selections, while the qualitative research indicated it would be of most interest to those who are currently experiencing internet related problems during peak times, particularly among households with multiple internet users
   
• Of the 9% of consumers who were aware of their ISP’s traffic management policy, 73% claimed that the information on traffic management provided was easy to understand.