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Internet Access

What do we need to get access to the Internet nowadays? The hardest part is choosing an access provider (otherwise known as an ISP), but it certainly isn't hard to get cheap internet access any more. This section focuses on broadband internet, but you may find that dial-up access (or access dial up) is sufficient.

Internet Access and ADSL

[07 May 2005 21:45]

The best place to look for a comparative review of ADSL end-user internet access providers^[1] in the UK is adslguide.org, as it seems to have a healthy supply of feedback from end-users and up-to-date package and price information. The comparison and search pages are pretty useful, but the site doesn't actually offer a list of providers in 'reliability' order or 'customer service' order. To make up for this, I've put together an ADSL League Table.

An interesting revelation is that plusnet's 2Mb service is provisioned at 20:1 contention ratio, normally only offered at the business level. Residential users will normally only get 50:1 (ie, you could potentially share your 512kb or 1Mb bandwidth with 50 others), and basically plusnet's reason is that they can't actually get 2Mb at 50:1 from BT. This might be true for other ISPs, and plusnet certainly hasn't made this ratio public knowledge at the point of sale. Furthermore, plusnet has now dropped the metered monthly price to £14.99, regardless of connection speed - 512kb, 1Mb or 2Mb. What a deal!

Now even Faster! Here's a quote from PlusNet on 17 Feb 2005: PlusNet's Broadband PAYG products (formerly known as "Lite") will also be extended to include 4Mb and 8Mb speeds from April. At £14.99 per month, and £1.50 per GB thereafter, speeds of up to 8Mb will be a fantastic value product option for light and infrequent Broadband users. This is something to look forward to!

Some people might like their low prices on "unlimited" (within reason, presumably) package - called Premier.
More prudent users, like me, may prefer the Lite package that limits the amount of bandwidth that you've paid for, and any extra is chargable per gigabyte used. On this plan the 1Mb option is only £15/month with 1GB of bandwidth thrown in; I would recommend this option, possibly with the 2GB bandwidth option at an extra £1.75/month.
Remember that Lite users can always buy more bandwidth if they need it, and will be automatically charged if they exceed their bandwidth usage. That charge is slightly higher than the amount charged if the bandwidth is prepaid.
More importantly, note that you will be charged around Â£15 to switch between 'Lite' and 'Premier' or if you want to change your download speed (ie, you want to go from 512kb/s to 1Mb/s)

It's a bit of a minefield, but first of all you need to have some idea of how much downloading you might do. If you just do ¹/₂ an hour to an hour of checking email and web browsing per night, the 1GB per month bandwidth limit should be plenty. Also, since the 1Mb/s speed costs the same as the 512kb/s speed, you might as well benefit from the faster download speed of 1MB/s. If you anticipate more intensive downloads, but are still not a heavy user, consider extra monthly bandwidth on the Lite package. The Premier package will only really apply to serious internetters.

I was with NTL for a few years, between 1999 and 2004, on their NTLWorld package. Technically the service was reasonable, but their customer service was highly mediocre. You could not expect much, if any, feedback on the rare connectivity outages, instead relying on frequent attempts to reconnect. It wasn't bad value at the time, though, but nowadays (late 2004) looks decidedly overpriced compared to the ADSL marketplace. Raising the bandwidth amounts has helped to narrow the gap, but it still seems overpriced.

Once you've decided on your ADSL provider and package, you then have all the fun of the hardware. I've put together a working guide to using ADSL to help you along.

broadband uk - Google News

Virgin Media to Start Trialing Overground Fiber-Optic Broadband in the UK - Fast Company

Fast Company
Virgin Media is to trial running fiber-optic cables from telegraph poles, piping ultra-fast broadband direct to the villagers' homes. ...
BroadbandBreakfast.com
Stock Watch
PC World
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Conservatives Court UK Voters With Promise Of Superfast Broadband - AHN | All Headline News

AHN | All Headline News
To achieve this we need to ensure we have a superfast broadband structure that gives the UK a competitive advantage over other countries. ...
ITProPortal
TopNews United States
The Press Association
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The National Broadband Plan and Indian Country - Daily Kos (blog)

Daily Kos (blog)
... estimated broadband at the household level in the US as twentieth in 2008, well behind Scandinavian countries, several Asian nations, and the UK. ...

BT Cuts Prices On Bundle Of Telephony, Broadband Services - Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal
LONDON (Dow Jones)--UK telecommunications firm BT Group PLC (BT.A.LN) Thursday cut the prices on its bundle of telephony and broadband services after ...
Easier (press release)
Top 10 Broadband
Register

Tesco's Rehauled 20Mbps Broadband Package May Be UK's Best - ITProPortal

ITProPortal
While the packages doesn't include calls on 0845 and 0870 numbers, they do come with a number of advantages. http://broadband.talktalk.co.uk/ Talktalk basic ...

[1] Internet Access Providers or IAPs are otherwise known as Internet Service Providers or ISPs. The two are technically different, as an access provider merely 'plugs you in' to the internet, whereas a service provider gives you lots of online services (such as email, webspace and the like). Almost every internet access package comes with such online services anyway.

Gadget Show - Not Good Enough!
[12 November 2007 20:51]
How ironic. As part of their 'Gadget Show Truth' campaign, the Gadget Show on Five ran a piece this evening (20:45, 12 November 2007) on how ...
Virgin Media 50Meg product - is it a revolution?
[03 January 2009 15:08]
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3822-virgin-media-50meg-product-is-it-a-revolution.html Broadband has come a long way in eight years, from ...
More Fibre for Broadband
[01 August 2008 00:00]
Up to 10 million homes will get fibre-optic based broadband in the next few years, if recently announced plans to replace much of the UK's existing ...
Fancy New Belkin ADSL Router
[27 March 2008 10:38]
Dabs is taking pre-orders on the Belkin N1 Vision Modem Router, which features a large display that shows your network's broadband speed, computer ...
PlusNet go Max Permium
[18 March 2008 20:17]
What's this latest offering? PlusNet Max Premium gives you a boost on your uplink speed, to the business-standard ADSL rate of up to 832Kb/s ...

Craphone Warehouse: Free Broadband
[11 April 2006 21:10]
The Carphone Warehouse isn't just a mobile phone retailer; it also offers a landline service, called TalkTalk, through the BT network. It ...
The Broadband Resource
[09 July 2005 00:00]
Here's a useful site that covers all types of terrestrial broadband: SDSL, ADSL and Cable. The Broadband Resource concentrates on exchange ...

Orange Broadband
[21 June 2006 10:03]
Another phone provider is offering 'free' broadband - it's Orange, and you have to subscribe to one of their monthly mobile phone contracts. ...
Don't always blame your ISP!
[02 June 2006 22:23]
I had a connection problem tonight, with my ADSL. Got an ADSL connection, but no PPP. I had this the other morning and got a full connection ...
Change of ADSL Provider
[01 May 2006 11:40]
I've decided to migrate ADSL Providers. Having been with PlusNET for the last couple of years, their service has generally been good. More ...
What Router?
[23 March 2006 21:34]
Puzzled about how to build a wireless home network? Here are some factoids and some jargon to get you started. You can easily have a wireless ...
Carphone Warehouse: Free Broadband??
[09 April 2006 20:30]
The news is that Carphone Warehouse is set to announce a free broadband service for its Talk Talk (landline) subscribers. This announcement ...
PlusNET Network Usage
[09 April 2006 13:19]
Over the last 48 hours, here is PlusNET's broadband traffic by usage type: And here is the number of customers using the network: ...
Higher Uplink Speeds
[09 April 2006 13:07]
It's not just download speeds that are increasing... it's now possible to get over 800kbps upload speeds! For most people (just doing web browsing ...

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