Some of you may have noticed Ofcom’s recent press release in which it announced the availability of the TopComm website. Ofcom say the website is ‘designed to provide consumers with a comparison of quality of service levels among fixed-line telecoms providers in the UK.’

So, after a sweaty round of beach volleyball, I suited-up and checked it out. My first TopComm flight! I felt the need . . . the need for some fixed-line telecoms comparison!

I went to the main screen, clicked on ‘residential’, ticked BT, ntl, and Talk Talk, and ticked the ‘complaints’ compare option and clicked on ‘view comparison’. The above chart is what I got in response (I think you can click on it to enlarge).

Goose, the hard deck for this hop is apparently 91.3 percent. This badly distorts the resulting chart. ntl are only within 2.82% of BT — effectively equal — but the chart makes it look as if BT and Talk Talk are much faster at handling complaints. Ofcom should have ensured that the data is presented along a 0 to 100 percent vertical axis, so small percentage differences are not distorted. To be fair, the ’service provision’ comparison is aligned on such an axis.

Also, milder criticism, the vertical axis should be labeled ‘percent resolved timely’ or something similar, because otherwise the entire purpose of the chart is subverted if the reader is not careful (ie, they may wrongly think the smaller bar represents fewer complaints).

Anyway, my initial verdict - the website has some helpful information, but it needs some more work to make it really useful.

TopComm: it needs a wingman.

(thanks to Roger Darlington for the Top Gun theme)