The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said Canadians are used to having terrible experiences with their internet service providers (ISPs), according to Blacklock’s Reporter. “There were several dimensions to the reason for not switching,” said the CRTC in a report. With some people, the CRTC said the alternatives all cost about the same. While some people could find a lower price, it said they believed the magnitude of the savings was too small to make it worth the effort and risk to switch. “Some participants said they did not switch because it was ‘too much work,’” it said. “This was often because of perceived time and difficulty of researching alternatives.”Meanwhile, some participants did not explore alternatives, but they settled for negotiating a better deal with their current ISPs. When it came to poor service, it said grumblings about it was commonplace. It found about half of the participants felt less than satisfied with the cost of their cellphone service. Internet service performance issues were cited by about four-fifths of participants. Issues included connection speed slowdowns or outages, it was slower than advertised, it was too slow for how the internet was used in households and connectivity was better in some parts of houses than others. Focus group participants expressed confusion over marketing terms used by ISPs. “Some participants said they did not initially understand ‘unlimited data’ plans typically come with a speed cap,” said the CRTC. “That is after a specified amount of data has been used, subsequent data is downloaded at a slower speed.”Findings of the report were drawn from 19 focus groups. The CRTC paid $128,622 to have Sage Research Corporation conduct it.
