Congestion on the UK’s increasingly contended public internet infrastructure is threatening customer relationships for 30 percent of enterprises, according to research from fibre network provider Geo.

Geo surveyed IT and network professionals in large private and public sector organisations across the UK on whether they felt they could access sufficient bandwidth for their businesses and their experience of network slowdowns and outages. The research showed that 30 percent of businesses experienced slowdowns and faults. In fact, 27 percent of those surveyed said there was potential for them to lose a customer. A further two percent actually reported losing a customer.

70 percent of respondents reported losing at least one hour of operational time per week to poor network performance, wasting more time than the average daily UK commute (54 minutes, according to WorkWiseUK). Furthermore, 29 percent of these lost a day (7.5 hours) or more every week to slow network speeds or faults. This trend, which was acknowledged by IT and network professionals working for some of the country’s biggest banks, manufacturers, retailers, life insurers and local authorities, could cost the UK’s economy millions of pounds in lost productivity each year.

Geo’s research suggests that these alarming slowdowns in blue chip networks are caused not, as some anecdotal evidence suggests, by staff using social networking applications over corporate connections, but by the sheer volume of business that is now transacted online. While nine percent of network professionals cited HD video applications such as telepresence and web conferencing as being a notable drain on company bandwidth, nearly 40 percent said slowdowns were simply caused by overall increased demand for data services.

Mark Ryder, director of enterprise for Geo, said: “These disturbing results call into question many telcos’ claims that they provide businesses with the 99.999 percent uptime to trade effectively. Moreover, the news that faults and slowdowns do erode relationships between businesses and their customers suggests that UK enterprises must act to resolve this now.”