Baffled By Broadband?
2006 saw the Broadband War breaking out, with UK firms undercutting each other to win our Broadband business.
On this page, we look at the basics of broadband, and what consumers in the UK need to know...
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What is Broadband?
Broadband offers a fast connection to the Internet. Speeds of up to 8Meg are common with most providers, but this is subject to your distance from your phone exchange, and other users in your area, so is variable. 8 Meg (Megabits per second) works out to around 160 times faster than good old dialup.
As every technology has to have an acronym, you should note that broadband's is ADSL - 'Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line'.
Here are a few things you need to know:
- You need a special modem, called an ADSL modem. Many UK providers bundle one in for free. Depending on what you're given, the modem connects to your PC either via a USB cable, an ethernet network cable, or via wi-fi - Double-check that the modem you're ordering can be connected to your PC
- When you're connected to Broadband, you can still use your home phone
- You can stay connected at no extra cost - no need to log on and off
- You pay a fixed monthly fee for access. Most providers 'cap' your account (e.g. a monthly download limit of 10Gig). This is to stop people causing congestion by being on 24/7 downloading music and movies.
- You need to connect little boxes to your existing phone sockets. Called Microfilters, these allow standard phones to be used on a phone line that's been broadband-enabled. These are pretty cheap, and you normally get a couple free from your Internet provider.
- No engineer needs to call. The modem is posted out to you, with instructions and software, and you're given a 'migration date', at which time the line is switched over at your phone exchange.
How to get Broadband
You have to make your choice on which Internet provider to go with - but you also have to check that your within range of the telephone exchange. To get a feel, try a check with BT first... enter your phone number and postcode at bt.com/btbroadband
Who do I go with?
As we've outlined in recent podcasts, there's a real battle hotting up for our broadband business - and the push is to offer consumers a package (often referred to as quad-play... Internet, TV, home phone, mobile phone) that's attractive and retains customers.
Here are the things to check for before signing:
- Speed - Commonly, speeds of up to 8Meg are available, but your distance from the telephone exchange may make a big difference... "up to 8Meg" doesn't mean 8 Meg.
- Monthly download limit - How much you're allowed to download each month
Here's a quick summary of the current broadband offerings, and our take on them:
| BT Broadband |
They're also strong on extras, such as virus checking, wi-fi hotspot minutes and free calls over the Internet. For the top package, you can also get a BT ToGo, a Blackberry-like Smartphone..
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| Sky TV | In July 2006, Satellite TV firm Sky Digital entered the broadband marketplace in July 2006, offering free broadband to subscribers of its satellite TV service. The free package offers speeds up to 2Meg, but for a small extra monthly payment, you can ramp up to 8Meg. Note that there's a £40 setup fee. As of February 2007, only 50% of the UK population is served by a phone exchange suitable for Sky's free Broadband, but this is set to increase between 2007 and 2008.
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| Virgin Media |
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| TalkTalk | In April 2006, TalkTalk launched their free Broadband service, for customers of their home phone tariffs. You can get speeds of up to 8MB, but you have to get your home phone calls through TalkTalk (their 'Plan 2' package costs £5.89 a month). At launch, TalkTalk were swamped with requests for free Broadband, meaning connection delays. We understand that this has now eased off.
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| Tiscali | Tiscali offers broadband and dial-up access, and at the start of 2007, they tied up with London-based TV-over-Internet outfit Homechoice, offering TV services as well as Internet. They offer up to 8Mbps access from £12.99 a month
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| Be Broadband |
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| AOL |
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| Orange | If you're with Orange for your mobile phone service and are on a £30 a month tariff, there's free broadband for you.
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How to switch your Broadband
In August 2006, we decided to switch our FrequencyCast broadband from Zen Internet, over to BT. This was to prepare us for the upcoming BT Vision television service. Here's what we did:
- Contacted Zen Internet Customer Services (by email) to request a MAC code. This reference number is needed by the new provider, to confirm that the old provider is OK to release the account. We got this within a couple of hours.
- Ordered BT Total Broadband Option 3 online at (www.bt.com/btbroadband). This took about 5 minutes. We're told we can expect speeds of 6Megs on our line. Date for migration has been set (about two weeks time). BT Total Broadband Option 3 comes with a voice-over-IP phone to work with the supplied Home Hub, but as there are problems with the supply of this phone, BT are sending a freebie phone. Nice.
- On the day of migration, a courier turned up with our kit - a BT Home Hub, a BT Total Broadband software CD, and a phone. We were meant to get a voice-over-IP phone, the BT Hub Phone 1010 - but when we ordered, we were told that the phone was not available, and would be shipped in 6-8 weeks. As compensation, the phone we got (which we can keep), is a perfectly acceptable BT Freestyle 3500 cordless answerphone
- As for the switch itself - this went very smoothly. We got an email from BT at 7:47 confirming that the migration had been completed - We waited for our connection to drop, but saw no loss at all - on checking, we were still with Zen - when we plugged in the Home Hub, we were with BT, and all was well. Surprisingly smooth, and hassle-free.
If you're looking for information on how to connect, set up and configure the Home Hub for broadband and wi-fi, see our Home Hub Configuration section.
Broadband questions
| Speed issues | The speed of your download connection depend on a number of factors - distance from the telephone exchange, heavy load by other users, or noise on your line. To test your speed, run the BT Speed Tester. |
| Can't get broadband |
NB: If you're with Tiscali, they offer a free dialup accelerator There's also skyDSL Satellite Broadband
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| Wireless Broadband | Assuming you have Broadband in your house, what happens if you want to connect wirelessly. so you can surf from your laptop?
If you don't have a wireless ADSL router, and you only have a USB modem, you can buy a wireless router online from PC World , BT Shop , Dabs.com or Amazon. These connect to your phone line, and allow you to connect wirelessly using wi-fi, or by a wire (Ethernet cable) from a PC that has an Ethernet socket. On our wi-fi page, we have an example of a typical wi-fi-setup. |
| More on your Broadband line | Some useful links:
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Mobile Internet. One other option is to get a high-speed wireless connection using the mobile phone network. With a suitable modem, you can connect your PC or laptop to the mobile phone network. We recommend you take a look at 
The thing you need is a Wireless Broadband Router - you may have one of these already, or you may have a standard USB modem. New customers of More info:
- BT Total Broadband - Check if your phone exchange is Broadband enabled
- Home Hub - Info on the wireless broadband router supplied with BT Total Broadband
- VoIP - Information on voice and video over broadband
- We covered "Get more from Broadband" in Cast 02 - Show notes
- Wi-fi - Some general information on what wi-fi has to offer
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Got a question on Broadband that we can answer in our next podcast?
Call 0208 133 4567 or send us a message
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