What do we know about the service experiences of Australian ISP customers and the quality of services provided by their ISP?

Abstract

A key challenge, of interest to researchers and practitioners in the ISP (Internet Service Provider) industry is the assessment and management of customer experiences. Majority of past research in networking area on quality of services is system oriented and minor attention is paid to user level service quality issues. This paper presents the justification for the need to not just measure network operational parameters from regulatory viewpoint, but also consider the end users perception of quality of services provided by their ISPs. This is influenced by various factors that lie outside the ISP network such as complaints handling, responsiveness and empathy. This paper is aimed towards providing a better understanding of the sparse knowledge about customer experiences in ISP context. It also clarifies a number of past findings on customer experiences and that there are no theoretically founded, academic research that has so far examined the relationship between service experiences (technical and non-technical) of ISP customers and the quality of services provided by their ISP. The main contribution of this paper is that it has identified the gap in ISP service environment which has heavily focused on technical side and not on functional aspects. The initial research review has helped us to identify that the customer experiences have an impact on the evaluation of quality of the services provided by their ISP. The technical experiences in ISP context involves inherent quality aspects of the ISP network and non-technical experiences involve the service quality aspects of the ISP