Paul Doherty -- Why not BT?

Thinking of getting broadband from BT?

BT is the biggest Internet supplier in the UK, but it's not usually the best choice. Don't fall (or pay for) for the advertising.

You don't have to get broadband from BT, even if you have a BT line.

To understand this, you have to realise that BT-the-phone-company is not the same as BT-the-ISP.

You sign up for broadband from an ISP (Internet Service Provider) and the ISP arranges with BT-the-phone-company to do two things:

Do stuff at the exchange to make the cable that goes from your house to the phone exchange "ADSL-enabled". This means it can carry your computer's data to the exchange at all times, even if a phone call is in progress.
Transport the computer data from the exchange to the ISP over a separate data network (not the telephone network).

Any ISP can arrange this with BT-the-phone-company; BT has also been allowed to create its own ISP, but BT-the-ISP has no more power or influence with BT-the-phone-company than any other ISP.

There are more than 100 suppliers offering broadband on BT lines; most are cheaper and better than BT.

BT-the-ISP is the biggest ISP in the UK; many people with BT phone lines assume they have to get broadband from BT, and don't explore the competition. This may be why BT-the-ISP does not offer the best products or the lowest prices - the customers just keep coming anyway! BT's broadband products were an unusual combination of poor offerings at high prices, which may explain why its market share is falling.

BT products are confusing.

For the home and small business market, BT has four home broadband products (prices as at 1 April 2005):

BT Broadband Basic. Costs £17.99 a month, but usage is capped at 1 GB per month.
BT Broadband. Costs £24.99 a month, usage is capped at 15 GB per month.
BT Yahoo! Broadband. Costs £26.99 a month, usage is capped at 15 GB per month.
BT Yahoo! Broadband. Costs £29.99 a month, usage is capped at 30 GB per month.

Until April 2005, the BT Broadband products did not include e-mail (which virtually every other ISP includes) and which was a major failing.

Historically, BT's broadband products have been highly-priced and poorly-featured. In April 2005 things improved greatly, and some of the products are now competitvely priced and include a reasonable range of facilities. But BT's record is not good; let's hope it keeps up the improvement.

There are factors to consider other than just speed and price: number of e-mail addresses, amount of webspace, quality of support, cost of support phone numbers, minimum contract term, reliability and so on, and BT still scores badly on some of those.

There are plenty of suppliers who offer similar or better products but without a usage limit. Unless you are very sure that you won't ever use the service much, a cap is a very poor idea. People generally have no idea how much they will use a broadband service, and usually end up using it much more than they expect (and much more than they would use a dial-up service). A usage cap introduces an element of worry into your Internet use - how much have I used it this month? can I risk using it some more? - and even if you don't reach your limit it involves you in the extra hassle of checking and monitoring your use. Also, of course, if you catch spyware or a virus which uses your broadband connection, you could run up a big bill. There is no need to accept a capped service – there are reputable suppliers who provide an uncapped service at a lower price than BT provide a capped service.

If your usage is low enough that a capped service is not a problem, there are suppliers who will provide a service where users pay by usage – if your usage in a month is low, you pay much less than you would with BT; if it's high, you pay a little less than you would with BT and there is no usage limit (just a price limit).

To BT's credit, it has just introduced a speed upgrade for all users (from April 2005), but the prices are still high, and there are still usually suppliers who match BT facilities at a lower price, or who offer a better product for the same price.

Is AOL better?

AOL is the other big advertiser of broadband in the UK. Its products are very non-standard (it really wants you to use only the software it provides; for example, if you want to use standard software like Outlook Express, you need to know that AOL does IMAP not POP3, and its SMTP servers use port 587 not port 25).

When it first lowered its prices, they were often for low-speed broadband. It offered 256 kbps broadband at the price at which other suppliers managed to supply 512 kbps broadband; 256 kbps was (and is) an unusual speed for broadband (indeed, some would say it hardly qualifies as broadband at all) so people didn't expect it, and the speed was hidden in the AOL small print. It now needs to rebuild trust in its products.

So avoid the big names?

Yes. For a given price you can have a service:

from AOL which uncapped but non-standard;
from BT which is fast but capped;
from a smaller supplier which is fast and uncapped.

Or if your usage is so low that a cap is not a problem, you can get broadband at much less than BT or AOL prices.

For both BT and AOL, their products have only recently become broadly competitive with the rest of the market. If their better-value offerings succeed in driving out some of the smaller suppliers, I don't yet have confidence that they won't go back to their old, high-charging, habits.