How to buy
What to look for to ensure you get the right deal for you.
What to look for to ensure you get the right deal for you.
Standalone broadband services start at around £10 a month in some areas, rising to about £50 for high speed services; prices vary according to the connection speed you opt for, and how much data you download.
Unlike with some dial-up services, you don't pay for the time spent online.
Many ISPs insist you sign up for a year, although some smaller ISPs, such as Eclipse, Metronet, Nildram, PlusNet or Zen Internet, offer monthly contracts.
Details of cancellation fees for cancelling within a 12 month contract are available in our reviews, which you’ll find on the Overview page.
You may need to pay up front for line activation (around £60) and though some ISPs waive these fees in return for tying you to a 12-month contract.
Some also throw in a free modem in exchange for a 12 month contract (inclusion of routers or wireless equipment is relatively rare), although you may have to return the equipment if you switch away.
Many providers put a limit, or cap, on how much you can download and upload of anything from 250 megabytes (MB) to 50 gigabytes (GB) a month. A limited service could save you money but, if you watch TV or video on the net, download large files and send lots of emails with attachments, an unlimited deal is a better option.
1GB a month would let you surf for 2 hours a day, send and receive 100 emails a week, and download 30 music tracks a week. Note, there’s no mention of video in that estimate.
Some ISPs charge for exceeding the limit, from around £1.50 for each extra GB.
If you opt for a service with no limits, look out for ‘fair usage policies’, which may result in warning letters, restricted speeds or, at worst, cancelled services for people who abuse the policies.
You’d have to try pretty hard to exceed most fair usage limits though – for example, AOL gives the following examples of excess downloading in a single month: more than 12,000 music tracks, more than 30,000 high quality photos or around 60 movies.
ISPA (the Internet Service Provider’s Association) has told its members that they must inform customers of fair usage policies in their sales and marketing literature.
In the past many people opted for speeds of 512Kbps – about 10 times faster than dial-up. This should let you download a 3MB file (a 3-minute MP3 track, say) in about 45 seconds, rather than 8 minutes.
Over the last couple of years, broadband speeds have been on the rise. For really speedy downloads, up to 8 megabits per second (Mbps) is becoming much more common – you could download the same 3 minute music track in a matter of seconds – and a few companies have even introduced speeds of up to 24 Mbps.
To find out more about internet connection speeds have a look at our broadband speed report.
However, what you pay for ain't necessarily what you get - a recent Which? speed test found that most people promised up to 8Mbps actually achieved less than half that speed on average. For more on this, and reasons for the difference, take a look at our Speed page.
In practice, most people will find 1 or 2Mbps adequate for their needs if all they want to do is surf the net, send emails and download the odd music track.
But if you fancy taking advantage of some of the newer, more data intensive things you can do with broadband – like downloading films, watching TV over broadband, or online gaming – you’re more likely to see the benefits of faster speeds.
Check how much it costs to call the ISP's technical helpline, particularly if you’re new to broadband. Prices range from free to 50p a minute – if you run into difficulties a free or low-cost technical helpline could be a life saver. We give details of technical helpline costs on our product pages.
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