An estimated 9.8m households are connected to the internet via broadband, according to Point Topic, a market-research company. About 1m of those signed up between January and March last year.
Most providers require you to sign a 12-month contract, so these people are now coming to the end of their lock-in period. When they do, comparison website Uswitch.com says they should change provider. If they don’t, they will almost certainly be paying more than they need for a broadband connection. Consumers can save an average of £180 a year by switching provider, according to Uswitch.
Broadband gives much quicker internet access than dial-up connections, and you can use your telephone at the same time as you are online. It has been used in offices for a number of years, but has only recently become widely available to private households.
Increased demand for broadband and competition among providers has driven down the cost of broadband over the past year. This time last year, the average price of broadband access at a speed of one megabyte (1Mb) a second was £30 a month. Now it is down to £19.37 on average, and can be as little as £9.99.
Jon Miller at Uswitch said: “Suppliers may upgrade customers automatically to a faster service for the same monthly fee, but they are unlikely to take into account their usage requirements, or alert them when they near the end of their contract. Many consumers will not require a faster service, so they should ensure that they pay only for what they need.”
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If you use your connection to surf the web, send e-mails, download music and make use of the new internet phone services (voice over internet protocol, or Voip), 1Mb broadband access will be perfectly adequate. A 2Mb connection will speed up the time it takes for you to download.
If you want to watch television through your broadband connection, you will need an 8Mb package.
When comparing broadband deals, check if there are any restrictions on the amount you can download or upload each month, or the length of time you can spend online.
Pipex has one of the cheapest 2Mb deals at £14.99 a month, but there is a one gigabyte (1Gb) service restriction. This is not a problem if on the average day you send only a couple of e-mails, spend an hour surfing and download one song and a video clip. But if you use the internet more than this, the chances are you will exceed that limit. If so, you will be charged a penalty and may even have your internet service suspended.
The cheapest 2Mb deal with unlimited downloads is from Toucan, at £16.99 a month.
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An increasing number of firms are launching bundles that include home telephone and digital television. For £14.99 a month Talk Talk is offering a 1Mb broadband connection, no download restrictions, plus home telephone with Talk 1. Phone calls with this package cost 2.7p a minute at peak times, to local and national numbers. If you call off-peak it will cost 5p for 70 minutes. Calls to other Talk Talk customers are free.
Toucan has a similar package for the same monthly fee. Its phone package, Toucan Talk 2-For-All, has free calls to UK landlines at weekends, and charges 2p a minute at any other time. Calls to other 2-For-All customers are free.
Both providers have a 2Mb version of these packages. Toucan’s costs £15.99 a month, Talk Talk’s £17.99.
Homechoice offers a package that includes 1Mb broadband, free evening and weekend phone calls and digital television. It costs £17.99 a month, but is currently available only in London and Stevenage, Hertfordshire.
The limited availability of the Homechoice service demonstrates how where you live could affect which broadband deals are available to you. Blair Wadman at Uswitch said: “The larger cities currently have the pick of the bunch when it comes to broadband providers. UK Online offers a 1Mb connection for just £9.99 a month in cities such as London and Birmingham, whereas the same speed would cost £14.99 elsewhere in the country. People in rural areas may find they have only a limited number of providers to choose from, so they may be unable to get the cheapest deals on the market.”
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Websites such as Uswitch and Simplyswitch.com enable you to compare broadband packages, and because they ask for your postcode, they show only the deals available in your area.
Karen Darby at Simplyswitch said: “Getting a new broadband connection or switching your existing one is easy. The first thing you need to do is check you are not tied into a contract because you will be charged if you switch during that time.
“If you are already on broadband you need a migration authorisation code (Mac code) from your exisitng provider — although not if you are switching from dial-up to broadband. It takes only a couple of weeks to be connected to your new provider and there should be no break in service.”
However, do not cancel your existing connection until your new one is live. Neil Peirson, 45, pictured left with his two-year-old daughter Francesca, has recently switched from BT Broadband to Pipex and is now paying £14.99 a month — £12 a month less than he was paying with BT. He also now has a 2Mb connection rather than the 512Kb that he was on before. And although he is tied into a 12-month contract, the new deal gave him two months free. He will save £173.98 this year.
Peirson, a research scientist form Lincolnshire, said: “Switching was easy, even though we cancelled the BT service before looking for another provider. This meant that we were without internet access for a couple of weeks and we didn’t realise that we needed a Mac code from BT.”
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About 8.8m households still have dial-up internet access. Wadman said: “Anyone who has or wants internet access at home should consider broadband. And if you want to make phone calls over the internet, you have to have broadband.
“Even internet dabblers who may feel that there is no need to upgrade from dial-up will find simple things like sending e-mails, surfing the net, shopping and downloading small files are suddenly so much faster and more convenient. And there is no longer a big financial barrier to getting broadband — you may even find you can cut your monthly costs by switching.”
AOL charges £15.99 a month for dial-up and the speed of the service is just 56Kb — you can get 2Mb broadband, which is 40 times faster, for less than that.
If you are currently on a pay-as-you-go dial-up package and do not use the internet very much, you may decide that it is not worth switching because your bills are only a few pounds a month.
It could be worth giving broadband a go, however, because you may find you use the internet much more with a faster, “always on” connection.
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For people who have not used broadband before, it is difficult to work out how much you will use it because you have probably never used the internet to download music or videos. So, rather than signing a 12-month contract only to find you are either paying for more than you need, or struggling to keep within a usage cap, it might be better to go for a provider that offers a monthly deal. You can then switch to an annual contract once you have worked out what sort of package you need.
Pipex offers the best monthly deal. For £14.99 you get a 2Mb connection with a 1Gb download cap. Virgin also offers a range of monthly tariffs. The cheapest starts at £14.99 for 512Kb and the service restriction is 3Gb a month.