O2 - UK users pay excess for speed

Broadband users in the UK could be wasting money paying for speeds they do not really need, a study has shown.

The study by O2 has discovered that as much as £700 million a year is being spent needlessly on faster packages, such as 20MBps speeds, whereas the majority need just an 8MBps connection.

Research done on 2,000 customers found that the majority use the internet for activities that require very little bandwidth and speed - such as web page browsing and checking emails. However, a minority need more expensive packages with better speeds, such as those who use broadband for viewing multimedia content (18%) and the 5% and 3% who downloaded music and movies respectively.

Felix Geyr, head of home and broadband, O2 said: "It would be much more transparent if we took the same 'a la carte' approach offered to customers buying digital TV packages, where people can opt in to obtain more expensive services like film and sport."

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