MORRISTOWN, NJ — October 13, 2009 —TM Forum, the world's premier industry group focused on business effectiveness for the communications and media sectors, revealed today that residential broadband Communications Service Providers (CSPs) are meeting rising customer expectations for rapid service delivery and fast problem resolution. This assessment of residential broadband services is made in TM Forum’s Insights Business Intelligence Report, “Winning in a Shrinking World: Seizing the Opportunities,” based on TM Forum Business Benchmarking studies and Analysys Mason projections.

The report finds that residential broadband is growing faster than expected, with major expansions in portions of the developing and emerging markets, and migration to double- and triple-play bundles in developed markets.

Results from the Forum’s Business Benchmarking studies show that best-in-class CSP service activation performance — the time from order to availability of customer-usable service — is one hour, while the average performance is about half a day. Leading CSPs are now meeting their service delivery commitments 95% of the time. This is dramatic improvement from the time when a CSP took two weeks to deliver broadband service as highlighted in TM Forum’s 2006 Broadband Business Performance Study.

Support response times and numbers of incident re-reports have also improved, with best-in-class incident resolution performance of 1 hour — a dramatic drop from over 6 hours a year ago. Average incident resolution times have shortened by 67% and problem resolution now typically takes one day.

“Subscribers now have more CSPs to choose from, making broadband subscriber churn a reality,” said Martin Creaner, president and COO, TM Forum. “Increased market share will go to service providers who provide residential broadband services at an attractive price with high quality.”

“With increasing sales of VoIP and IPTV bundles, it has become critical to maintain residential broadband service continuity,” added Tonia Graham, TM Forum Business Benchmarking program manager. “CSPs now have heightened commitment to service continuity and are treating their residential broadband customers with the same care that they provide subscribers who have Service Level Agreements.”

“Winning in a Shrinking World: Seizing the Opportunities” is the latest in a series of TM Forum Insights Business Intelligence Reports, exclusively available to the Forum’s membership of more than 700 companies, addressing strategic issues for Communications Service Providers. TM Forum members can download the report now at http://www.tmforum.org/ResearchPublications/7097/home.html.

To learn more about this Business Intelligence Report, or to participate in the Business Benchmarking program, please contact Tonia Graham at [email protected] or visit www.tmforum.org/benchmarking.

Members of the press interested in obtaining a copy of the report should contact Geoff Devlin, PR director, TM Forum at [email protected]