Internet, Email & Telephones > Getting Connected

Getting Connected to the Internet

By Lasa Information Systems Team

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Choosing a provider

Once you know what kind of connection you need you can start choosing a provider.

Whilst there are some websites that claim to give you a list of options based on your postcode or phone number, often these only list a few of the possible options (presumably the ones who pay a referral fee).  A more useful resource is ADSL Guide, which lists every UK ADSL provider with details of their products and prices.  Visitors to the site can also rate their ISP each month, giving an idea of how fast or reliable they are. 

Drawing up a shortlist from ADSL Guide’s list is a good place to start.  Once you have three or four, visit their websites to find if they are available in your area and to check out current offers and the details of their products.

Home vs. Business Accounts

Many broadband ISPs offer products for home and business users.  Organisations do not necessarily have to choose a business product, although it may make sense to do so.  Home products may be able to support even medium sized organisations at a lower price.

Business products often offer lower contention ratios (which mean faster connections in layman’s terms) and dedicated support phone lines.  At the time of writing, many ISPs are only offering their fastest speeds with home oriented products.

Total Cost of Ownership

The ADSL Guide listing gives a total cost of ownership for a year’s connection with each of the ISPs it lists.  Prices and special offers change frequently, so when investigating the ISPs on your shortlist it is a good idea to make your own TCO calculation.  To do this multiply the monthly fee by 12, and add any connection charges.  This tells you how much you will spend over your first year.  Factor in any special offers, for example if you get six months for half price don’t forget to work out how much the remaining six months of the year will cost.

Things to look out for

Lock in

Many ADSL ISPs will give you a discount if you sign up for 12 months.  Others only give the option of a 12-month contract.  You in turn should certainly be looking at getting a Service Level Agreement in return for such lock in.

Some ISPs offer these SLAs, which guarantee a minimum amount of uptime per month.  The presence of an SLA is a sign the ISP is confident it can provide a good service, although you shouldn’t discount ISPs that do not offer SLAs – they are currently quite rare at the cheaper end of the broadband market.

If the provider does not give good levels of service, you will need to be able to change without any penalty.  This can be achieved by having an SLA or a short contract (e.g. 1 month).

Another trick used by ISPs to lock you into their product is making it difficult to change providers.  It should be possible to seamlessly switch between providers with no downtime.  This is achieved using a Migration Authorisation Code (MAC) number.  You should ask prospective ISPs if they will issue a MAC number should you wish to move providers.  If they won’t, perhaps they are not confident they can provide you with a good service.

Some ISPs require you to switch your telephone services over to their system.  This is probably not such a good idea, even if it seems to save you money.  What happens if your internet and phone lines go down?  Will the ISP be able to provide as fast a response as BT?  How will you contact them if you have no phone line or internet connection?  Being able to get an engineer out at short notice is far more critical for phone systems than internet.

Download caps

Some ADSL products have a monthly limit on how much can be downloaded.  You need to assess whether this will be enough for your organisation.  The amount required will vary depending on the size of your organisation and how you use the internet.  Check to see how much extra downloads will cost, and whether you can upgrade to a plan with a higher cap should you need to.

The WebUser broadband usage calculator may help you estimate how much you will need to be able to download.

Support

If the internet connection goes down, at what times will you be able to speak to someone in technical support?  Will you be paying extra for premium rate support lines?  Hopefully you’ll never need to call support, but if you do, will you be speaking to someone who is capable of solving your problems?

Extra Services

Beware of free hosting and email services offered with your package.  Often these are very basic, and may not meet your needs.  They may well turn out to be a lock in feature making it trickier to switch providers, rather than the useful extra you expected.

Static IP addresses

Most basic ADSL connections give you a new IP address each time you connect to the service.  If you will be hosting your own mail server, web server, or Voice Over IP equipment you will need a fixed IP address.  Some ISPs offer this for free, but not automatically – you’ll need to ask for it to be set up.  Static IP addresses are commonly included with products aimed at businesses rather than home users.

Copyright © 2006 Lasa Information Systems Team

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