Customer satisfaction with residential telephone service has increased notably in 2009, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Residential Telephone Customer Satisfaction Study(SM).

Overall satisfaction averages 653 on a 1,000-point scale, an increase of 18 index points from 2008. Service providers continue to make incremental improvements to their service offerings in an ongoing effort to attract new customers and retain current customers. For instance, the time spent on hold to resolve a customer's most recent problem or issue averaged 8.8 minutes, down from 9.5 minutes in 2008. Despite improvements in service, the number of customers who left their provider increased to 10 percent from 9 percent in 2008.

"Competition in the industry is at an all-time high, as providers are offering a variety of technologies to vie for increasingly savvy customers," said Frank Perazzini, director of telecommunications at J.D. Power and Associates. "This has resulted in stronger product performance than in the recent past, which is supported by more efficient service - making customers the big winners."

The study finds that improvements in residential telephone service have driven an increase in recommendation rates among customers. Nearly 70 percent of customers say they "probably will" or "definitely will" recommend their service provider, an increase from 64 percent in 2008.

The 2009 study marks the third consecutive year that traditional cable television providers have achieved the highest rankings in all regions included in the study.