Graham Roberts Home Computer Services

Reputable & reliable computer repairs and servicing for Barlborough, Clowne, Bolsover & surrounding villages.

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Which Internet Service provider?

16th July 2007

One of the most common questions I get asked is which Internet Service provider (commonly abbreviated to ISP) would I recommend and my answer usually is “none of them, their all as bad as one another”.

To be fair though; some are far worse then others but one ore two are at last getting their act together both from a pricing point of view and my own biggest bugbear, the poor levels of support and aftercare. So let’s take a look at what you’re telling me and what I find out when I’m out and about.

For the point of this exercise, I am only going to discuss the major ones used by my customers in and around Barlborough, Clowne and surrounding villages because as you will hear, the telephone exchange has a major bearing on how well you internet connection works. I am also only referring to broadband connections as the few dial up ISP’s that my customers use are basically much of a much-ness.

First of all, who are the major providers in our area? Well according to my customer records they are:

  My views and observations are as follows.

 Orange are the most popular locally mainly on the back of people who started with Freeserve sticking with them. That said, once set up, it is a fairly reliable service but my Orange customers do have problems with excessive amounts of Spam mail and also complain about support being “vague” and hard to understand.

 BT Broadband did have a poor reputation locally both from a pricing and service point of view but they do seem to have got their act together over the past year and by and large, their customers get the best downloads speeds and a fair service. There is a local customer service help centre but support is again foreign based.  It does install its own Yahoo browser but you can still

Tiscali offer a fair if unspectacular service but have had problems of late with their email serve due to Spam and at times seem slow to resolve problems.

Supanet is seemingly bend over backwards to help you if you have a problem, but my customers report that their support doesn’t always seem to have the wherewithal to get to grips with the issue and some have had passwords changed without notice recently.

 AOL customers in the main get a reliable a service and reasonable speeds but be warned. If your computer suffers from a lack of power or is getting on, AOL installs its own browser and programs and this often slows down older PC’s considerably.

 Virgin Media have a UK based support centre and are normally very good, but I personally change from them to BT this year after 10 years as my connection was suffering from a something call a contention ratio problem. This meant that my internet connection was fine in the daytime but very slow on an evening and weekends when more local people came online. I gave Virgin 6 months to sort the problem but unfortunately, BT tend to hold all the aces with hi demand telephone exchanges like the Clowne one (which Barlborough shares) and so I changed to BT and the problem went away. I personally think that this is because they give their own customers separate broadband connections to the other suppliers.

TalkTalk: All I can say about TalkTalk is that in my experience, their support is poor and unclear, and in general, my customers have not been too happy with them especially when setting up for the first time or if things go wrong. In addition, the Smartax router that they supply has been problematic for some of my customers and has had to be replaced, in some  cases on more then one occasion.

Tesco.Net seems to provide a reliable service to a small number on my customers but I would not recommend you have the Tesco security package if your computer is low powered as it will literally slow it down to a standstill.

Sky Broadband initially overstretched themselves with their free package in my opinion and many local customers had problems with inexperienced support and getting email addresses. Please note though that at the time of writing, the free broadband is not available to residents of Barlborough or Clowne and Sky do not expect to install thee service into the Clowne telephone exchange during the coming year. Sky customers in the likes of Bolsover and Arkwright Town however are already getting free broadband.

So who would I recommend?

Well it would have to be BT Broadband even though in my case, it’s been an “if you can’t beat them join them” scenario that caused me to change over. I have to say though that BT have delivered everything I’ve asked of them and did it when they said they would. the speed is much quicker and I also find it more convenient as the bill it integrated with my BT telephone bill.  

Following my promise to only advertise products or suppliers that I personally use and have been satisfied with, I have put a link to BT broadband on my home page if you wish to check it out their various packages.

Further thoughts…

Generally speaking, people are reluctant to move from their ISP because of having to change their email addresses etc but having just done it myself, the end result outweighed the frustration of putting up with a substandard service. The main thing to remember is to email any friends or business contacts with your new email address and change your details on any important website that you use (like banking or shopping).

Before changing, you also need to ask yourself what you need from your Internet connection. If you are occasional users, you probably just need the cheapest one available and be warned, many of my customers have ended up paying for a service that they don’t need due to the salesperson pushing a more expensive produce. Do a bit of research online before you contact your new supplier and stick with what you want to have, no what they want to sell you.

Of course, if you’re heavy users or there are several computers connected simultaneously in your house, you may need a quicker or more flexible package.  By flexible, I mean the amount you are allowed to download in one month and this can vary from 2GB (short for Gigabytes), to unlimited and the price usually rises with the size you can download. If you’re a regular user, I would not get too obsessed with your download allocation as I download things daily for my customers and I have never got anywhere near using 2GB in a month.

Also there are add-ons that you may want to consider like Broadband Talk which allows you talk exactly like a standard phone but over the internet and calls are normally free evenings and weekends.

And Finally…

Don’t just accept that your connection speed is really what your provider tells you it is as often, I find  it’s really much slower in our area.

If you want to find out your true internet speed, click on the Broadband Speed Test link below which will take you to an impartial website that will run an accurate speed check on your internet connection.

Broadband Speed Test

Graham

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