Survey says ADSL users can't get no satisfaction

Web surfers are less than happy with the high-speed Internet service of two new market entries, a Consumers' Foundation survey showed yesterday.

These two local ADSL providers -- Giga Media (和信超媒體) and Taiwan Fixed Network (TFN, 台灣固網) -- began offering the service to the public last summer.

Faring better in the survey were Chunghwa Telecom Corp (中華電信) and Seednet Co (數位聯合).

"The public's satisfaction toward market veterans Chunghwa and Seednet is above the average, while new players joining the market last year made consumers less than happy," said Yu Ming-kuo (游明國), chairman of the foundation.

The Consumer Foundation survey, conducted between Oct. 24 and Nov. 2 last year, was designed to measure the public's level of satisfaction with five internet service providers -- Chunghwa, Seednet, Eastern Broadband (東森寬頻), TFN and Giga Media.

More than 9,000 individuals participated the survey.

Since the sampling scale was relatively small, minor operators such as Sparq (速博) and FETnet (遠傳) were not listed on the survey, the foundation said. The most important criteria to consumers, after price, are transmission speed and connection stability.

"Most users say they may change service operators, when the connection quality is bad or the price is too high," said Shieh Ce-Huen, a professor at the electrical engineering department of the National Chengkung University, and director of the research.

Fifty-six percent of Giga clients expressed dissatisfaction with the company's slow connection speed, the report said.

For TFN -- part of the mobile phone giant Taiwan Cellular Group (台灣大哥大) -- subscribers complained of slow installation time, with about 85 percent of customers saying they had to wait more than 15 days to get connected.

The survey also showed that more than 70 percent of Chunghwa users felt the service was too expensive. A market insider, however, said high prices would remain.

"With state-run Chunghwa still in control of `last mile' connections to most Taiwanese households, their monopoly on power makes the high prices possible," said Lin Ching-heng (林慶恆), a senior official at the Directorate General of Telecommunications.

Because of the time required for private companies to finalize their networks, the price won't actually drop for several years, he said.

Meanwhile, ironically, the Consumer Foundations' Shieh hinted Giga's ads were slightly deceiving, since they boasted they topped the competition on speed.

"The company should spend more money on increasing bandwidth rather than on marketing campaigns."

A Giga official questioned the survey.

"We are very skeptical about the report's accuracy," said Christine Fan (范佳馨), public relations manager at Giga Media.

She said that based on their own research, Giga's customer-turnover rate is less than 3 percent, meaning users are basically satisfied with the company's services.