According to a new survey, over 70 per cent of small and medium enterprises (SME’s) would switch provider if their service became unreliable.

The survey conducted by Zen also revealed that the level of support offered buy the ISP was the most important factor in choosing a business broadband provider, with 85 per cent of SME’s placing this at the top of their criteria.

However, the survey revealed that small businesses do not switch ISPs often, and will generally stay with one provider until problems arrive. Just 13 per cent of businesses are currently considering a switch, while more than half of SME’s said they were happy with their current provider. Just over a third of small businesses had made a switch in the past year.

As 98 per cent of SMEs find a reliable broadband connection to be vital to their business operation, it is unsurprising that just 40 per cent would switch on the basis of saving money.

The UK risks a future of declining broadband speeds if it does not get its act together regarding next-generation broadband, an analyst has warned.

Speaking at a Westminster eForum keynote seminar on next generation broadband, Ian Fogg, research director at analyst house Forrester Research warned: “"If we get this wrong — which we might do — or if we're slow to do it, tomorrow's broadband speeds may be the same as today's broadband speeds. They may be worse without that investment.

"People use iPlayer, they use World of Warcraft, they use these things more and more and if there isn't the network investment going in, the actual speeds that we enjoy will actually reduce over the next few years. We need to get this right and we need to get this right today."

More than a quarter of small businesses will be cutting back on staff over the next 3 months, as the demand for UK goods weakens with the financial crises.

According to the latest SME Trends report from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), employment is shown as beginning to fall in the last quarter, after a year of growth.

A balance of +13% of SME’s were found to reducing their staff, representing the largest quarterly fall since October 2003. The figure shows a dramatic change from 3 months ago, when a balance of +6% of SME’s were increasing their workforce,

A decrease in orders both domestically and abroad seem to be behind the cuts, with 30% of SME’s claiming that orders have dwindled 

The public sector should take a minor role investing in high bandwidth broadband, according to communications regulator Ofcom.

Peter Phillips, partner for strategy and market developments at Ofcom, said public investments should be “targeted at areas left behind by the markets”

Speaking at Westminster eForum conference, “Next Generation Broadband”, Phillips stated that Ofcom believed that the infrastructure for super-fast broadband should be funded largely by the private sector.

This reflects both Ofcom’s belief in the dominance of private investment, and the view that the current economic climate makes heavy public investment less appropriate.  

As the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee starts it’s meeting today, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) is calling for an interest rate cut to save millions of UK small businesses.

A recent poll by the FSB revealed that almost 1.5 million small businesses risk going bust, with unemployment figures expected to rise as a result.

According to the poll, 75 per cent of FSB members would welcome interest rate cuts, where a third of respondents said they would have to close their business if the current credit crises continued. More than half of respondents said they had experienced reduced trade in the last two months

Nearly 40 per cent of respondents said they had felt less optimistic about the future in the last two months, and round 20 per cent had already been forced to cut staff, while 32 per cent were considering it.