TV, Internet subscribers dissatisfied, survey finds

Only days after AT&T announced plans to buy DirecTV and a few months after Comcast announced plans to buy Time Warner Cable, a new survey shows that satisfaction with those and other players in the pay-TV and Internet business has hit a new low.

“It’s really a combination of reliability — dropped calls, poor picture, slow Internet speed — and incredible prices,” said David VanAmburg, managing director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which was released this morning. “We consumers feel we pay tons of money for our household service, and we’re not getting very good quality for it.”

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According to the annual report on the telecommunications and information sector, satisfaction with subscriptionTV providers fell 4 points, to 65, on a 100-point scale, while Internet providers dropped 3 points, to a score of 63. The survey was taken between Jan. 13 and March 11.

The dismal ratings are “more of the same,” said telecommunications analyst Jeff Kagan. “The same results we have seen year after year after year.”

Officials at Time Warner and AT&T said they had not seen the survey and could not comment on its findings.

However, AT&T officials said that U-verse’s Internetbased technology has many advantages over older, cablebased technologies, which has led to their service being “one of the most honored TV products for service innovation in the industry.”

Customer satisfaction is deteriorating for all of the largest pay-TV providers, the survey said, but viewers are much more dissatisfied with cable TV services such as Comcast and Time Warner than fiber-optic and satellite services such as DirecTV and