Choosing an ISP, like just about everything else these days, seems to be a bit of a lottery, in that they all promise great service but they all fail in some way to deliver it. In other words, for every person that raves about one offering there will be another who says the same offering is rubbish.
To get the best deal you need to work out what
you need. My Internet requirements are modest. I browse a few websites. I don't do gaming, I don't stream video apart from the very occasional BBC or ITV programme (one of each so far since the start of the year) that I was not able to record onto my digital video recorder as it was transmitted. All of that downloading is more than adequately covered by my unlimited non-fibre broadband contract that gives me a top download speed of about 18Mbps. The upload speed on my connection is snails pace, around only 1Mbps but since the only uploading I do is sending emails with a maximum attachment size of 1MB it too is enough for my needs.
I almost certainly could get a cheaper ISP deal that my current arrangement by buying both my landline and broadband connection from the same provider BUT I stick with a split arrangement for privacy reasons. First, my landline number has been 'ex-directory' since way, way before the rise of cold calling so the only people that know my number are those people that I have given it to. Second, my landline number is permanently withheld when I dial out, so I can call companies and they can't capture my number and add it to their systems. The likelihood of these two features, which I see as benefits, getting lost if I switched provider is not insignificant. Thirdly, the email system of my landline provider does NOT include the ability to create an unlimited number of different email address, my (separate) broadband provider does allow this, meaning when I have to give an email address to a company I can create one that is specific to that company. If that email address then stars sending me junk I can delete the email address and I get no more junk. This, coupled with the automatic spam filtering done by my broadband provider, means that only
one piece of spam has reached my computer in living memory (a blatant phishing message arrived the other day).
So, what are
your needs? If you want to stream video then an unlimited and very fast connection is a must, so that the video downloads without stuttering. Uploads speeds are less important
unless you want to
send large files, e.g. share a video file that's on your own computer by uploading it to somewhere like YouTube/DropBox/etc. If you have a slow upload speed it will take a while for such a file be sent across that slow connection. There is also a greater risk of a large file getting corrupted across a connection (meaning you have to send it again).
That brings us back to which ISP? If you Google 'recommended ISP UK' one of the top hits is
this article in the Independent that talks about an Ofcom report that illustrates what I hinted at at the start of this post, it's a very mixed picture out there.
Ken
Yes, I guess that one should be symmetrical.
Dave.
