ISPreview UK Study Finds Pay TV Not a Savior for Big Broadband ISPs

London, United Kingdom, September 10, 2014 --(PR.com)-- A new survey of 821 ISPreview.co.uk readers, a popular consumer broadband Internet access and related technology website in the United Kingdom, has claimed that 68% of respondents would be unlikely to stick with their current Internet provider just because if it offered an attractive and affordable Pay TV service (note: 15% said "maybe" and 17% said "yes" they would be more likely to stay).

One possible reason for the lack of interest might be because 39.5% of respondents already take some form of paid TV service (60.5% said they don't), while 72% said that their current broadband ISP also offers a TV product. This isn't surprising since all of the biggest national providers (e.g. BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and Virgin Media) are able to bundle premium TV services with their existing broadband and phone solutions.

"Broadband providers like TalkTalk and BT have spent big and fought hard to carve out a modest slice of the established UK Pay TV market, which until recently was largely dominated by Virgin Media and Sky," said ISPreview.co.uk's Founder, Mark Jackson. "So far that approach, aside from BT's offer of free sport content, hasn't completely reshaped the market for Pay TV, but it certainly has helped some ISPs hold on to their existing customers."

"Never the less, our survey suggests that interest in pay TV remains somewhat of a finite commodity. Meanwhile the availability of alternative services (e.g. Netflix, NOW TV and Amazon Prime Instant) has opened up a range of possibilities, which do not strictly require you to pick a specific ISP in order to enjoy their content. Some providers are already harnessing this new medium but many still fail to separate it from the big and bulky set-top-box bundles of old," added Jackson.