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Broadband Internet Access
Many customers are 'converting' to Broadband Internet Access these days, mainly for two reasons. First, dial-up access was invariably on a 'pay-as-you-go' system whereby you paid for the time your were online. This was usually a local rate telephone charge that appeared on your quarterly phone bill.
This is okay for the occasional user, but for anyone who spends more than 30 minutes a day online, can prove an expensive option in the long run. And of course, dial-up was slow - painfully slow sometimes!Secondly, whenever you are online your telephone line is being used, that means you cannot make outgoing calls, and of course you can't receive incoming calls - very inconvenient. Broadband solves this problem by (crudely put), splitting your phone line, one half taking and receiving calls, the other half allowing internet access. That's why your broadband will not work if (for example) you took your laptop and broadband modem into a neighbours house and tried to connect to the internet - your number, and line, is dedicated to the broadband setting on your phone line.
There is a lot of rubbish spoken about Broadband Internet Access - mainly speed of download. Figures such as 8Mb, 4Mb and so on our often quoted as being obtainable with this package, or that package. The fact is that most home users would be more than happy with 1 or 2Mb, it wasn't that long ago than 512 was the norm and everyone thought that was great!
Frankly, if you are just surfing the internet, writing an e.mail or two - what could be considered 'average' home user, then anything more than 1-2Mb is going to be a waste. However, if you are a serious 'downloader' - of legal software, films, music etc, then maybe you should consider faster broadband.
Can I get Broadband where I live?
First, you must be within 3.5 and 5.5 kilometers of an ADSL enabled exchange. To check if you are, click here first to visit BT's website (opens in a new window).
Which Broadband Package?
We are often asked 'which is the best broadband package?'. A difficult question to answer because the broadband providers like those shown below, are competing like crazy for your business. As a result there are new packages appearing almost daily and it is difficult to keep up sometimes!
To get an idea of what is on offer, click on any of the broadband banner links below. They all open in new windows, so you can easily compare the packages.
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