I have a small belief that using the Internet should cost as little as possible with a good level of quality service, it should be for everyone. Am I being unpractical? Of course not! ISP's [Internet Service Providers] should remember that they NEED our custom, not us paying for the 'privileged' of us using them. With this in mind I thought 1984 should see who's in touch with their users, skip the brightly coloured packaging and intelligent installers lets just jump straight in to what matters most; good service that's conveniently priced. I found nearly 250 ISP's but only these on this page managed to land with in I think my reasonable criteria.
To find out who was providing the best value of service and product I needed some sort of criteria. These are what I look for in an ISP for a normal Internet and email user:
Must support Mac access [obviously]
Yearly costs must not be more than £145.00
Set up costs should be less than £12.00, preferable nothing
No monthly costs over £12.00 with VAT
Web space given must be 5mb or more
Must be unlimited access, not charging after a certain numbers of hours
Must have local call rate covering the whole country
All must support a maximum of at least 33.6 speed modems if not 56-flex
1Way - 0117 9414141• www.1way.co.uk
WebSpace: unlimited Set up £0.00 Monthly £11.75 Yearly £141.00
AAP InterNet - 0181 4271166 • www.aapi.co.uk
WebSpace: 5mb Set up £11.75 Monthly £12.91Yearly £133.95
Amity Internet - 0500 200171 • www.amity.co.uk
WebSpace: 5mb Set up £0.00 Monthly £11.63 Yearly £116.33
BT Internet - 24hr tech 0800 800001 • www.btinternet.com
It was strange to see Global Internet, Easy Net, Demon and the likes of CompuServe missing. These ISP's failed in one or more areas of the criteria. Mind you should have heard the bull I was getting from some slippery ISP's I will not mention, wanted me NOT to mention certain prices and just put N/A so they did not look bad, unlucky guys!
Ok I can understand that businesses and specialised users will need to make a more careful selection, but a massive amount of the people joining the Internet each day get ripped off until they grow wiser to the hidden costs. I also still can't understand why All ISP's cannot provide 24 hour technical support. The large majority of online surfers are home users and they will use the Internet outside office hours.
My main tip is go to:
www.telinco.co.uk
I have based my findings on simple no messing service costs. If you require more services such as multiple email addresses, mail forwarding, ISDN, larger bandwidth and lease lines then you'll need to dig deeper.1984's site will have a full UK ISP guide online shortly, including many not mentioned here.
