As reported by The FT, London City Hall and the UK’s leading business groups have joined forces to ask Ofcom to implement an automatic compensation scheme for fixed business connectivity.
Theo Blackwell MBE, Chief Digital Officer for London, said: “The quality of internet services in London is critically important to growth. As a regulator, Ofcom has a key responsibility and has an opportunity here to increase business productivity by promoting quality-based competition amongst business internet providers.”
The British Chamber of Commerce (BCC), Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), and the Institute of Directors (IoD) have all given their support to the Vorboss-led campaign to implement automatic compensation for fixed business internet customers. In an open letter to Ofcom, the business groups state: “We know from our members that having access to resilient and reliable connectivity helps all types of businesses to operate successfully. And that loss of connectivity has a significant impact on productivity.
“Supporting businesses to increase productivity and economic growth is critical, and solutions which drive improvements in UK connectivity infrastructure will play an important role in achieving this.”
The Federation of Small Businesses, the British Chamber of Commerce, and the Institute of Directors represent every size and type of business in the UK.
This collaboration is a significant step toward a regulatory change that will benefit the entire business community, and drive productivity growth for the UK. Government extended the ‘growth duty’ to Ofcom and other industry regulators in 2023, asking that they consider the growth of the UK economy in their decision-making process.
Vorboss, has been pushing for enhanced service standards for businesses through the introduction of an automatic compensation scheme since April 2024.
Vorboss Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, James Fredrickson, added: “It’s clear from the responses of the biggest business internet providers that compensation is anything but automatic. Hiding behind compensating on a ‘case-by-case’ basis is exactly what Ofcom needs to put a stop to.
“Our research shows that 61% of businesses that experienced an outage in the last year did not receive any compensation, with 44% saying requesting compensation wasn’t worth the time and effort.
“For those that do pursue compensation, the typical payout is hardly worth the effort. Standard business internet tariffs today would offer only £7.53 per hour of outage in compensation – about the price of a pint of craft beer in a London pub – for outages costing a typical London business more than £18,000 in productivity a year.
“By forcing internet providers to automatically compensate, Ofcom would incentivise networks to minimise outages and compete on resilience of connectivity. Our research shows that even marginal improvements will have dramatic productivity benefits for UK businesses.”
Vorboss has offered to be a founding member of an automatic compensation scheme for fixed business connectivity. Vorboss already backs its network quality by committing to automatically compensate customers with at least one day’s worth of service credits if its service is down for just four minutes, and two months’ worth of service credits if the service is down for a day.
“We should all be incentivised to compete on quality – that would force an uplift in network performance, and in turn drive a much-needed economic boost,” said Vorboss Founding CEO Tim Creswick. “The support of these business groups moves businesses one step closer to getting the protection and service they need.”
