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Guide to Selecting an ISP |
I have looked at many alternatives and usually have 6 or more ISPs loaded on the main machine to choose from. CompuServe, although unreliable, at last now offers pay on use option and has survived because some people still use our email address at CompuServe and enter our web sites through the CompuServe homepage. The OU service was first restricted to tutors only then withdrawn - that must count as one of the most costly mistakes the OU has ever made by restricting the service when others were exploiting the opportunity (The share price has at times valued every Freeserve client at about a thousand pounds and the OU had 50,000 captive users!). The others all offered something additional when they were loaded.
There is now a further comprehensive review looking at ISPs for Small Business use in the new Small Firms section of the web site.
It is worth briefly examining why Freeserve is so successful. Firstly it is very fast and they have always kept up with demand - I have never in 21 months had a busy line and rarely fail to negotiate a connection first time. Freeserve is fast because it is on the Energis backbone, uses the latest Internet standards and has a cache between you and the main web so much of the time there is a local copy of the pages you are accessing. Secondly Freeserve set very high standards and keep you informed - any interuption to service is not considered acceptable and there will be advanced warning for even a few minutes planned outage and explanations for delays or outages available almost immediately on their Web site and Newsgroup. The management and technical staff at Planet Online which provide the service are extremely professional in their approach - they have also responded to the views of their users. Thirdly their original help pages were excellent and usually enough to solve problems and perhaps most important of all they initiated many dedicated newsgroups full of people who were very knowledgeable and willing to help people at every level. I have never needed to ring their help lines.
So why does one need any other ISP other than Freeserve? The approach which gives them the edge in performance can have occasional drawbacks - 99.9% of the time you never know a cache is present except that you get access only limited by your modem and telephone line, however there were a few ISPs/Domains which did not initially implement standards rigorously and sites implemented particular security barriers where I suspected this could be a problem. I felt it desirable to have a fallback and that led to my installing Telinco (now called Tiscali after a series of takeovers). Another compromise is in Dial-up access - to avoid misuse of the system Freeserve demand that Caller Line ID (CLID) is enabled which can rule out use through some switchboards and use from some contries. They have now enabled partial functionality enabling web use and accessing mail without CLID but you must use their telephone numbers with CLID to send mail or upload a web site.
Other providers now offer additional specialist features and that is why I have investigated most of the other providers. BTcellnet's Genie was an excellent service but is no more since Cellnet became O2. Freezone not only offers a very good and reliable free service (using Tiscali (which was called Telinco before a series of takeovers and mergers) to provide most of the basic facilities) but also offers a very cost effective Domain Name hosting service linked back to hosting packages - for under 75 you can set up the first year of a .co.uk domain or 85 a .com domain. I used an even better early offer for hosting pcurtis.com .It also has a free email virus checking service which alone makes it a top choice. The Prudential 's Egg Internet Service is worthy of watching as it promises access to a group of ISPs offering local call access in many coutries although it is not clear if that will be free.
Provider | Email No | Web Space | POP any DUN | Upload any DUN | SMTP any DUN | Web Mail | SMS | Domain Name Hosting | Global Access | Backbone |
Freeserve | Many | 15 | Y | ? | Energis | |||||
Freezone | 3 | 20 | Y | Y | Y | Tiscali | ||||
CompuServe | 1 | 5 | Y | Y | Y | CS | ||||
Egg | 5 | 10 | Y | Y | ? | C and W | ||||
Tiscali | 1 | 50 | Y | Y | Y | Tiscali |
The field is moving fast - this is a snapshot and my choices for investigation have been biased by our needs for mobile access in the UK and abroad. Check the date at the bottom of this page!
Copyright © Peter and Pauline Curtis Content revised: 5th August, 2002 |