Choosing a British Internet Service Provider

Many people make mistakes when arranging their internet connection and e-mail address. This page is intended to be a simple guide with some basic rules.

• Never use an e-mail address provided by your ISP. One of the main reasons that ISPs offer free e-mail addresses to their customers is to tie you in to using that ISP indefinitely. This is because in many cases, if you stop being a customer of an ISP, you may lose any e-mail addresses provided to you by that ISP and will have to start all over again, and so this discourages people from switching ISP. Treat your internet connection and your e-mail address as two independent separate services. Get a free e-mail address from a third party such as Yahoo or set up your own domain name for as little as USD 5 per year. You can then keep the same e-mail address, no matter which ISP you use for your internet connection.
• If you want to switch ISP and keep your existing e-mail address provided by your old ISP, then try to convert your existing ISP account to a no-subscription pay-as-you-go dial-up account with 0845 access, which you don't then use. You should then be able to keep your existing e-mail addresses from your old ISP at no charge while you use another ISP for your internet connection. Some ISPs may expect you to dial-up to their service on the 0845 number once every few months in order to keep the account active, but this is a very small price to pay to keep your e-mail address.
• Before paying a fixed monthly charge for a dial-up connection, check how much broadband would cost. Some dial-up services cost more than the cheapest broadband services, and in any case dial-up is very poor value for money compared to broadband. For up-to-date advice on choosing a dial-up ISP, visit Net4Nowt.
• For up-to-date advice on choosing a broadband (ADSL) ISP, visit ADSL Guide. Although you need a BT line for ADSL, it is entirely up to you which ADSL ISP you use on that BT line. There is a very useful comparing tool that allows you to compare the speed, reliability and customer service ratings for up to 6 ISPs at a time.
• As well as ADSL (via a BT line), you may live in a cable area serviced by Telewest or NTL, both of whom provide cable broadband, for which you don't need a BT line. Beware that NTL caps its customers' downloads at 1Gb per day and it also blocks many ports. Both of these cable operators give you a very low upstream speed unless you choose a very high (and more expensive) downstream speed. To check which types of broadband services are available in your area, click here. If you are on a central London BT exchange, then you may like to consider a very high speed ADSL service from Bulldog.
• Many of the best known ISPs charge the most and are rarely the fastest or highest quality. A general rule of thumb is that if an ISP is a well-known household name that advertises on television, then it's probably worth avoiding.
• One of the biggest mistakes people make when choosing an ISP for ADSL is to choose the same ISP that they already use for their dial-up connection because it seems like a logical choice. Your dial-up ISP is very unlikely to be the most suitable ISP for ADSL, so start again.
• Never install software (e.g. applications from a CD) provided by an ISP. All necessary software for connecting to the internet is already provided with Microsoft Windows. The exception is modem drivers, which are usually safe to install. Beware that AOL requires the installation of non-standard applications just to establish a connection to the internet.
• For ADSL, do not buy a USB modem, as it restricts the type and number of devices you can connect to your ADSL. Instead, buy an ADSL modem router or half-bridge modem with an RJ45 network socket. This will make it easier to connect more than one PC to your internet connection. ADSL modems are cheap from Ebuyer and network cables are cheap from Redstore. You don't need to buy a microfilter for every phone socket in your home, as you can instead buy one ADSL faceplate from Solwise that fits over your BT NTE5 master socket.
• Do not buy hardware (e.g. ADSL modems and microfilters) from ISPs, as it will nearly always cost you considerably more than it would from third party suppliers.
• Many ADSL ISPs offer one month minimum contracts, although in some cases it is possible to get a better deal by signing up for twelve months. However, many of the worst ISPs will tie you in for twelve months without giving you a better deal.
• Don't be too tempted by ADSL ISPs that offer you a free connection charge or free ADSL modem (usually USB), as you will often end up paying for this through a higher monthly charge. This is because the ISP has to pay BT a fixed amount for connecting your BT line to ADSL, and the ISP will pass this cost on to you, either directly or by dividing it by 12 and including it in the monthly charge of a minimum 12 month contract.
• Your choice of ADSL ISP should depend on a number of factors, for example price, minimum contract period, whether or not reliability and optimum speed is important to you and how heavy a user you expect to be.