Friday, March 29, 2024

I spy a good ISP

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ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

Many people just upgrade their dial-up internet account to whatever broadband package their Internet Service Provider offers and may pay far more than they need to, writes Richard Peach.

But when you start shopping around for better deals, you soon find it’s nearly as mind-numbing as working out which mobile phone package to go for.

So I’ll offer some user experience here, with the rider that I have a vested interest – my chosen home broadband provider will knock 25p off my monthly bill for every customer who signs up to them saying that they were recommended by me!

Actually, I have day-to-day experience of two broadband providers; one at the offices of Platform Publishing, where we produce The Village and other publications, and one at home. One costs more than twice as much per month and is, on the surface, only half as fast.

The expensive one is from an ISP called Fast24 and costs £30 including VAT. This is for a service offering  a download data rate of 512k, but it has the advantage of having what is called a “contention rate” of 20:1. What this means, roughly, is that our particular line through to the internet can be shared by a maximum of 20 different users.

My home ISP is a company called PlusNet and for £14.99 per month (inc VAT) we get a 1Mb connection (twice as fast as 512k). But the contention rate is 50:1, which means that the actual user perception of internet speed is about the same as the Fast24 512k line.

To keep the PlusNet price down I also capped the usage at one gigabyte of data – uploaded or downloaded – per month. But in a household of four, with someone on the internet almost all waking hours, we have never got anywhere near that limit.

By my reckoning, then, we are getting the same service at home for less than half the price we pay at the office. And, even better, the service PlusNet has provided over the first four months has been impeccable.

Signing up and setting up was fast and problem-free and there has never been any down-time caused by problems at their end – while our office has been let down a number of times by Fast24 (although they say they are now upgrading their equipment to prevent this).

The PlusNet account also comes with all you could want, such as a static IP (in case you’re into internet gaming or even want to host your own email server), a web-based email service, 250Mb of web space to play with and a user-friendly members’ area with all sorts of useful information and tools.

So, why haven’t we switched the office to PlusNet? Well, for a start, it’s a good idea to have two ISPs available so you have a back-up, and the office needs an uncapped service as we send whole magazines to printers over the internet. Also, as soon as it becomes a business connection, it gets more expensive anyway, even on PlusNet.

From our home experience however, and from dealing with ISPs for around 10 years now, I would happily recommend PlusNet to anyone – although past performance does not guarantee . . . etc.

PlusNet, like most other ISPs, charges a one-off account activation fee for new users of £58.75, although as we went to press they were waiving the activation fee for people switching their broadband account to PlusNet

Have a look at https://www.plus.net to get an idea of what they offer and, remember, if you do decide to try them, enter the word platform in the box that asks who referred you. Alternatively, go to https://www.villageonline.co.uk and click on the PlusNet logo.

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