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Broadband beginners guide
Why bother with dial up?
Millions of people have made the move to broadband and half of all UK adults now have a home broadband connection, having ditched their dial up in favour of faster, more reliable connections. Of the people with no home internet connection at all, 23 per cent are planning on connecting in the coming year when more than three quarters will opt for broadband (Ofcom 2007).
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So with broadband prices at an all-time low, are there any reasons left to keep your dial up connection?
Advantages of Dial Up
1. Moving on is easy
With no minimum contract term, pay as you go dial up customers get the reassurance of being able to switch to a new provider whenever they want, unlike many broadband subscribers who usually have to sign up for 12, 18 or even 24 months. This means that if you’re unhappy with your service you can simply leave, with no need to get a MAC code, making it more flexible than most broadband packages.
2. Pay for what you use
Using a pay by the minute service, you get instant internet access using a free sign-up CD. There is no registration process and no monthly fee. This also means that unlike a cable broadband connection, you don’t need an engineer to visit your home.
A number of providers offer a pay-as-you-go service, and costs vary, but BT Broadband (www.BT.com) charges start from 1p a minute (with a 6p call set-up fee).
3. Freebies
Many dial up providers will offer a month free - or similar - when you sign up, such as AOL Broadband (www.AOL.co.uk) which currently offers a month’s free trail on its Anytime dial up, with any time internet access for £19.99 a month. And with no minimum contract, you could, in theory, just switch away when your free time is up if you decide that dial up isn’t for you.
4. Customer service
Since you just need to plug in your phone line to connect to the internet, you are less likely to experience the problems that some broadband customers have encountered. However, if you do have problems, you could find it difficult to solve them, as you would need to disconnect your dial up to call customer services.
5. Portable internet
If you have a fixed dial up account, you can take it with you wherever you go. If you move house you won’t experience a break in connection. Or even if you just want to use your laptop at a friend’s house, or out of office, you can just plug it into any phone line and surf.
Advantages of broadband
While the benefits of dial up seem quite appealing on paper, there are still many reasons to ditch the aging technology and go broadband.
1. Speed
Getting a broadband connection will increase your internet speed by at least 10 times. A 512k connection is 10 times faster than the old 56k dial up, while popular 8Mb connections are 160 times faster and you can even get speeds of up to 16Mb from Sky Broadband (www.Sky.com), 20Mb from O2 Broadband (www.O2.co.uk) and Virgin Media (www.VirginMedia.com) and even 24Mb from Be Broadband (www.BeThere.co.uk).
2008 has seen BT offering speeds of up to 24Mb to other ADSL providers such as Eclipse Broadband (www.Eclipse.net.uk), and Virgin Media launching its 50Mb cable broadband later this year.
Even though the published speed of dial up is 56k, the reality - as with all internet connections - is that you won’t get the full advertised speed. You would probably only get about 35k on dial up, so you would definitely notice the difference in switching to broadband.
2. Cost efficiency
Although you have to pay a flat rate bill every month, a decent broadband connection is about the same price, if not less, than a fixed dial up connection. For example, AOL Anytime dial up is £19.99 a month for a connection of up to 56k, but its Wireless 8Mb package, giving you all the benefits of broadband, is only £4.99 for the first three months and £14.99 thereafter - making it cheaper than the slower dial up option.
Broadband providers are constantly offering new, cheaper products such as TalkTalk Broadband's (www.TalkTalk.co.uk) “free broadband” and Tiscali’s “free line rental” (bought by TalkTalk in 2009)- that immediately cuts your bills by at least £132 a year.
The flat rate bill also means that you don’t need to worry about how much time you spend online.
Click here to compare broadband packages against the cost of your dial up.
3. You can use your phone
Unlike dial up, which uses your home phone line to run your internet connection, broadband leaves you free to make and receive calls. This also means that any problems can be dealt with in real time with customer services.
4. Always on
With broadband your internet connection is always on. This means that you don’t have to wait to get online and you can use it whenever you like without paying extra. What it doesn’t mean however, is that your PC is permanently connected to the internet. Just as with dial up, your connection drops when your PC is turned off.
5. More for your money
The faster download speeds available with a broadband connection allow you to take advantage of faster page loading, music and movie downloads, internet telephony (VoIP) and online TV catch-up services like the BBC iPlayer.
6. Freebies
As well as the “one month free” offers that you get with dial up connections, broadband ISPs offer a host of other freebies, from money saving “free broadband” and “free line rental” to free internet security and wireless routers. You can even get yourself a free laptop or Sony PlayStation 3 from 3 Broadband (www.Three.co.uk) or AOL.
7. Wireless internet
Once you have your broadband connection, you’ll be able to install a wireless router - which you might even get free from your provider - allowing you to connect to the internet wherever you are in the house, or garden, without having to run wires everywhere. You’ll also be able to connect multiple PCs, laptops and games consoles to the internet at the same time.
8. A whole new world
Upgrading to a broadband connection not only allows you to download faster, it also lets you experience the internet’s true potential. You can listen to online radio, catch up on missed programmes with the BBC iPlayer and Channel 4’s 4oD, download DVD quality movies, watch television online and connect to your office PC from home - things that you would find very difficult or impossible with a dial up connection.
If you’re still attached to your dial up, or are unsure about whether or not to get a broadband connection, why not contact us and see if we can help.
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