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Devil's Advocate: Waking up to broadband
Cynic or laggard - you decide?

By Martin Brampton

Published: Tuesday 13 May 2003

It has taken a lot to convince Martin Brampton to sign up for home broadband. So why has he taken the plunge now? And why might you?

Call me backward if you like but I am only just about to become a broadband user. I have tried various means of internet access but so far have remained sceptical about the value for money offered by broadband. As prices have fallen, the temptation has grown until at last it has proved irresistible.

One concern that held me back was that ADSL broadband is absolutely controlled by BT. You can buy it from all sorts of people, but in reality it is almost certain to be supplied by BT. Now, although BT frequently offers a range of alternative pricing plans, whenever I have worked out the details, they all turn out to be almost exactly equivalent.

Promotions stress the very high speeds offered by broadband, yet typically fail to give details of the contention which results from selling a single high-speed link to a whole bunch of people. In fact, the only time I have heard BT make much of contention is when they are trying to sell a leased line service against the much cheaper business broadband offerings.

Another worry has been the method of payment. Many internet providers have insisted on payment by continual charges to a credit card. Now that kind of charge can be very difficult to stop. The card provider cannot stop it, leaving you with the job of persuading the provider to cease charging. Maybe you are better organised than I am but typically when I want to cancel a service, I struggle to find the correct details.

Am I too cynical in thinking that providers deliberately make the details obscure to discourage defections? I suspect not. When I have asked why they insist on credit card payments, the honest answer has been that it is so much easier for the subscriber to cancel a direct debit. That is my point exactly!

For a while, I was very satisfied with a flat rate dial-up service. For only £10 per month, I could use the internet as much as I liked, any time I liked. That scheme was never withdrawn, nor did the provider ever admit to altering the service. My experience, though, was that the availability and performance of the service was steadily degraded to the point it became unusable. That is one way to get rid of customers who have secured a deal the provider thinks is too good.

Latterly, basic pay per minute access seems to have served my purposes adequately. It discourages casual browsing but is not really so expensive as to stand in the way of any serious purpose. The monthly bill has never been painfully large, and with pay per minute the provider has an incentive to maintain the service quality at a decent level. I even found that by shopping around it was possible to obtain technical support at reasonable cost.

All the same, broadband has always had some attraction, even if it is only to avoid the tedious wait for modems to negotiate. And the cost of my dial-up access has been increased by the BT subscription for a second line, used purely for data purposes. With the latest attractive offers from non-BT suppliers, payable by direct debit, I have finally succumbed. The total cost should not be a lot different from my savings from dispensing with the second line and its data call charges.

The starter pack is with Parcelforce, which attempted to deliver while nobody was home. It may be a virtual world but unfortunately we still need real deliveries for all kind of things, including making the initial connection. I’ll let you know how it goes in future weeks.

** Martin Brampton is a director and founder of Black Sheep Research (www.black-sheep-research.co.uk ), an independent consultancy providing research, writing and speaking services on a wide range of business and technology subjects. Martin was previously a director at Bloor Research, and has worked with IT as a user and analyst for over 20 years. He can be contacted at silicon@black-sheep-research.co.uk.

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