UK Call Failure Rates Double

ISP call failure rates in the UK have more than doubled compared to the last quarter of 1998, according to the UK BenchMark Report by Inverse Network Technology.

Calls during the evening hours (6 pm to midnight) have been most effected by failures, Inverse found. In March, the evening call failure rate was 9.5 percent, which means almost one out of every 10 phone calls to an ISP failed to connect. This was more than double January’s evening-hour call failure rate of 4.1 percent.

Call failure rates during business hours also increased during business hours (9 am to 5 pm) from January to March, from 2.9 to 4.9 percent.

“The higher call failure rates are largely attributable to the enormous growth of Internet take-up over the past six months in the UK,” said Peter Dove, Managing Director of Inverse’s European operation. “This has undoubtedly put a lot of pressure on ISPs’ network capacity.”

According to NOP Research, there were more than 10.6 million people online in the UK in 1998.

The Inverse UK BenchMark is conducted by placing identical, automated calls into dial-up access numbers from standard-configuration PCs based in three main UK centers of population (London, Bristol, and Leeds). Inverse makes an average of 3,600 automated calls to each measured ISP’s published dial-up access number during a two-week period every test month.