Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection

Transcription

1 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection What You Need to Know Before Switching to Broadband or Changing Providers The term broadband refers to fast Internet access, compared to the traditional, slow dial-up Internet connection (known as narrowband ). With a broadband connection, everything you do on the Internet can happen much quicker, but it needn t cost a fortune. If you re considering making the switch to broadband for the first time, or wondering whether to change to a different (perhaps faster) broadband package, read on to discover what to check, what you ll need, and what options are available. By Rob Young Windows All I 660 / 1 The Truth About Broadband: Benefits and Misconceptions... The First Step: Make Sure You Can Get Broadband... Now Choose a Suitable Broadband ISP... The Final Step: Signing Up for Your Broadband Package... This article shows you how to: I 660 / 3 I 660 / 4 I 660 / 7 I 660 / Make sure you can have a broadband connection... Choose and sign up for broadband Internet access 47

2 I 660 / 2 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection Dial-up used to be the only option These days, dial-up access is difficult to use The main reasons for switching to broadband The Truth About Broadband: Benefits and Misconceptions All the way through the 1990s we managed very nicely with our dial-up Internet connections. There was no other choice, or at least none that was affordable. We waited while the modem screeched and warbled, we collected our or visited a few web pages, and then disconnected as quickly as possible partly because it was costing several pence per minute, and partly because no-one could phone us while we were online. Many Internet users still do things the dial-up way, but these days it isn t as easy. It s still rather expensive, and it still ties up your telephone line, but there s another problem: as the world has gradually shifted to broadband connections, the Internet has begun to take advantage. Web pages have become weighed down with pictures, animations, videos and sounds; any software you download is probably much larger than the equivalent program would have been a few years ago; and everyone sends you with fancy backgrounds, stylish text effects and pictures. So, although your Internet connection still runs at the same speed it would have 10 years ago, everything you do online takes longer now because everything is so much bigger. One major argument for switching to broadband, then, is simply to make the Internet more useable. With broadband, you re able to send and receive data much faster, so you won t spend as much time drumming your fingers while you wait for things to be sent or received. 48

3 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection I 660 / 3 The increased speed is the main reason most of us switch to broadband, but there are four other good reasons: With a pay-as-you-go dial-up connection, you are charged for every minute you re online, just as if you were making telephone calls. Broadband comes with a single monthly fee that lets you stay online all day and all night (if you want to!). Broadband doesn t tie up your phone line: you can make and receive telephone calls while your computer is connected to the Internet, because the two signals (phone and Internet) are separate. Dial-up connections are rather unreliable: you can be halfway through downloading a large file only to have your connection cut off and have to start again. With broadband, this rarely (if ever) happens. Broadband is far more affordable than it was a few years ago. With prices from as little as 14 per month, a broadband connection may cost little more than you currently pay for dial-up. As I ll explain a little later in this article, the pricing isn t always quite as straightforward as you might hope. You have to take into account any one-off setup charge as well, and with some broadband packages the amount you pay varies each month according to how much you use the Internet. The benefits probably all seem rather attractive, and there are no real negative aspects to weigh them against. However, there are two misconceptions about broadband that are worth clearing up before we move on: Telephone and Internet are separate 49

4 I 660 / 4 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection Only the speed of Internet access is increased Things won t always happen as quickly as you hope Broadband doesn t speed up your computer! If you think your PC is taking too long to start up or programs are too slow to open, a switch to broadband won t make any difference. Broadband is essentially a change to your telephone line that lets data travel to you from the Internet more quickly, so it can t make a bit of difference to the speed of your PC itself. Broadband increases the top speed of your Internet connection, but it doesn t guarantee that everything reaches you at break-neck speed. You can only receive information as fast as it s being sent to you, and if the website you re connected to is very slow (as it might be if it has a lot of visitors at the same time), it may be struggling to send data to everyone at a decent speed. It s a bit like buying a Ferrari: you can now travel at 150 mph, but you ll still have to spend the odd few minutes in a traffic jam! Whether you re sending or receiving , visiting a website, or downloading a program, there s a computer at the other end very much like your own sending you the data over its own Internet connection. If that computer is under-powered, or a lot of people are connected to it at the same time, or its Internet connection isn t fast enough, the information may reach you at a trickle rather than a flood. If it s any consolation, everyone else connected to that computer is probably getting a trickle as well. The First Step: Make Sure You Can Get Broadband Almost everyone in the UK can get broadband, but it won t always be the same type of broadband (more on that in a moment), and there s the outside chance that you don t fall into the almost everyone category, so it pays to do a little checking first. 50

5 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection I 660 / 5 As you might guess, some of this checking is most easily done on the Internet, so if you don t currently have any Internet access at home, I d recommend going to an Internet cafe or library, or nipping to a friend s house. There are two main types of broadband: BT s ADSL (which is by far the most common), and cable. Narrowing down your choice here is easy: If you have a telephone service provided by Virgin Media (until recently called ntl:telewest), you can have cable broadband provided by the same company. If you have a phone line provided by Kingston Communications in Hull, you can have broadband, but this must be provided by Karoo (the Internet service arm of Kingston Communications). If you have a standard BT phone line, you ll probably be able to have ADSL broadband, but this is where some checking is needed. If you can have broadband, you ll have a variety of companies and packages to choose from. By standard BT phone line, I don t mean that you must necessarily be paying BT for your phone calls: you may have opted for a phone package from a different company and receive bills from that company instead. However, it s probably a standard BT line you have. If your line has ISDN or Home Highway (and you ll definitely know if it has), that s not standard: before you can order broadband, you would have to arrange for the ISDN/Home Highway to be removed. If the result is that you ll be taking the BT ADSL route, as the vast majority of broadband users do, it s time to do a quick check to ensure broadband is available to you. If you already have broadband, Use the Internet to do your research if possible Select the type of broadband you ll be using Make sure ADSL is available 51

6 I 660 / 6 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection but you re thinking of switching to a faster package, this is also a worthwhile step to take as it will give you a rough idea what sort of speed you could hope to achieve. Start Internet Explorer (or whichever web browser you prefer to use) and visit this website: You ll arrive at a web page like the one pictured in the following screenshot. In the box on the right, type your complete telephone number, including STD code, then press Enter or click the GO button to the right. Type your telephone number here and press Enter Check whether your line is suitable You ll see an estimated maximum speed A pop-up window will open showing the results. This will tell you whether your local telephone exchange has been upgraded to provide ADSL, and (assuming it has) whether your own telephone line is suitable for broadband. If your telephone line is suitable, you should also see a mention of the sort of speed you can expect from a broadband service, which is measured in 52

7 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection I 660 / 7 Mbps (mega bits per second, sometimes abbreviated to meg ). Don t worry at this stage about that Mbps figure: the main thing to pay attention to is whether you can have broadband at all! However, it s worth making a note of the Mbps figure for later reference. If your exchange hasn t yet been upgraded to provide ADSL, I m afraid there s nothing you can do but pester BT to find out when this will happen. If the results of the check above suggest that you can t have ADSL on your line for some other reason, it s probably not an insurmountable problem, so give BT a ring on to see what they suggest. Now Choose a Suitable Broadband ISP As I mentioned earlier, if you re a Virgin Media customer or a Kingston Communications customer, your choice of Internet Service Provider (ISP) is made for you: it will be Virgin Media or Karoo respectively. You will still have a choice of broadband packages at different prices, though, so you ll need to decide which type of package suits you. You can find more details of the packages at the websites below, and I ll explain the terms you ll come across later in this article: Virgin Media: Karoo: If you ll be taking BT s ADSL broadband, it s decision time! There are numerous ISPs in the country, all of which would dearly like to provide you with a broadband package and relieve you of some money. Which will you choose? Well, let s see if we can narrow down the choice a little: For ADSL you can choose from various providers 53

8 I 660 / 8 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection Check the top-rated broadband ISPs Do you currently have telephone, mobile phone or TV service from Sky, Virgin, Tiscali or Orange? If so, you may get a good deal by switching to an all-in-one package with the same company that also includes broadband. Have you been considering a digital TV subscription (such as Sky or Virgin Media) as well? If so, getting broadband and TV together from one company will be cheaper than buying each from different companies, and probably simpler too. If you currently have dial-up Internet access with a certain ISP and you ve been happy with them, why not start by investigating the same company s broadband offerings? Consult friends and family to see which broadband provider they signed up with (as long as they ve been happy with their choice!). If that hasn t narrowed things down for you, another way is by finding out which companies are rated most highly by their customers. A great site for this is ThinkBroadband.com. Visit this web page: and you ll see an alphabetical listing of broadband ISPs like the next screenshot. Alongside each, you ll find a rating of up to five stars indicating what the company s customers think of it. For want of a better method, you might draw up a shortlist of the highest-rated ISPs in this list. Star ratings are collected from actual customers 54

9 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection I 660 / 9 I ve suggested a shortlist for an important reason: most ISPs offer a range of different broadband packages, and unfortunately it s not as simple as just plumping for an ISP you have to pick a suitable package. These packages can vary in features and pricing, so it s worth comparing the different packages offered by your shortlisted ISPs. That s the next topic we ll examine in this article. If you look at the list of star-rated ISPs, you ll see columns containing green ticks with numbers in brackets. Each column represents a different broadband speed ranging from a comparatively slow 512 Kbps up to a fast 8 Mbps (and a Faster column covering all speeds above 8 Mbps). If one of your shortlisted companies has a green tick in one of these columns, it means they have broadband packages at that speed available. The number in brackets indicates how many different packages you can choose from at that speed. As an example, the previous screenshot shows that the company named Boltblue broadband only offers 2 Mbps packages, and they have four to choose from. Picking a Broadband Package: Speeds and Prices Isn t it annoying to be given choices? It makes everything so much more complicated than you want it to be. Unfortunately, when it comes to broadband, there s no escape: every company gives you a choice of packages. Let s try to wade through the things that matter. First and foremost, you ll be choosing a connection speed. That will be the relatively-slow 512 Kbps, or 1, 2 or 8 Mbps, or perhaps something even faster. This is the maximum speed at which information Even slow broadband will be much faster than dial-up 55

10 I 660 / 10 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection from the Internet will reach you. Even the slowest of those (512 Kbps) is about 10 times as fast as a dial-up connection would allow, so you don t need to agonise too hard over this if you re upgrading from dial-up, absolutely anything will be faster! You can always upgrade later The speed will only matter greatly to you if one of these two factors is true: You expect to spend a fair amount of time using the Internet, so you don t want to wait around for things unnecessarily. In that case, go for 2 Mbps to start with. You ll be downloading a lot of large files, watching or downloading a lot of video or TV programs, or listening to or downloading music. For watching video, especially, a bare minimum of a 2 Mbps connection is recommended, and an 8 Mbps connection would be better. You probably know already if either of those will apply to you. If in doubt, opt for a fairly low-speed package, such as 1 Mbps, as it should be cheaper; any ISP will be happy to upgrade you to a faster package later on if you decide you need one. (In fact, they ll be thoroughly delighted to do that!) When you checked whether broadband was available for your telephone line, I advised you to make a note of the speed you were expected to achieve with a broadband-enabled line. Keep that figure in mind as you choose a speed now: there s no point in paying for a super-fast 8 Mbps connection if your line s maximum speed is expected to be about 2 Mbps. (The maximum speed depends mainly on the distance from your home to the telephone exchange.) When you pick an ISP and contact them, you can ask them to do a speed check on your line. This is advisable to make sure you won t be paying for a fast, 56

11 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection I 660 / 11 expensive broadband service and failing to get the most from it. Hopefully that s got the speed sorted out. When you know what speed you ll choose, the next step is to compare the packages offered by different companies to check their prices and other details. Here again, the ThinkBroadband.com website can help you: just click one of the companies in the list and you ll find details of the different packages and prices it offers as well as links to that company s own website. There are five things you need to check: Package price: if you ve decided to go for a 2 Mbps package, for example, see what the company charges per month for its 2 Mbps package. Setup charge: you ll only pay this once, when you purchase your broadband package, but it can vary widely from one company or package to another, with some companies charging nothing and others charging 60 or more. Cost of telephone support: some companies charge up to 50p per minute for calls to their support staff while for others it s just a local-rate call. You probably won t need to call their support line very often, but you may want to check this cost just in case. This will probably involve visiting the company s own website and looking for links to Support where they should publish the cost of the calls. Hardware: is hardware included in the price you pay, or can the company supply the hardware at an extra cost, or do you have to find and buy your own hardware? We ll examine the hardware issue a little later in this article. Download limits: does the package you re interested in have a download limit or a usage Check the costs and limitations of packages Setup charges vary enormously Check for a download limit or a usage charge 57

12 I 660 / 12 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection charge? A download limit means that you re only allowed to download a certain amount of data per month, such as 3 GB. If you regularly exceed this amount, the company will want to charge you extra (or move you to a moreexpensive package with a higher download limit). A usage charge means that the amount you pay each month varies according to how much you download from the Internet. Watch out for packages that come with a usage charge, because the basic monthly fee will appear to be quite low compared to other packages, but it could end up costing more. Most packages have some sort of download limit, and I think you ll find that anything from 2 GB per month upwards will be quite enough to cover what you want to do, unless you expect to be downloading a lot of large files (particularly video). Some packages claim to allow unlimited downloads, but these are subject to a Fair Use policy. If the company thinks you re regularly downloading far more than it regards as reasonable, it may want to surcharge you. I sincerely doubt you d run into this kind of problem, but be aware that what that word unlimited really means is There is a limit, but we won t tell you what it is! Your ISP may supply the hardware you need The Hardware Needed for Broadband Internet If you already have broadband and you re thinking of switching to a different ISP, this section won t apply: you already have the hardware you need for broadband, and the same hardware can be used to connect to your new ISP. You will need hardware if you re signing up for your first broadband package. The company you 58

13 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection I 660 / 13 choose will often provide this, although you may have to pay extra for it. If they do, it s generally a good idea to accept this offer, because the company will provide instructions on how to set up the hardware, and their support staff will be able to help if you run into problems. The hardware in question will be one of the following: ADSL Modem: this device connects to your phone line and to a USB socket on your computer. It s the equivalent of the ordinary dialup modem you currently use to connect to the Internet. (For Virgin Media customers, you ll be using a cable modem which is more or less identical.) ADSL Router: this device also connects to your phone line, and you can connect several computers to it to give them all Internet access. Each computer will need a network card, which costs about 10 (although your computer s case has to be opened to install the card if your computer doesn t already have one, so you might prefer to ask your local computer shop to install it). Cables connect the router to each computer s network card. Wireless ADSL Router: this is almost identical to the router mentioned above, and can be used in exactly the same way. However, it also has wireless capability: if your computer has a wireless adapter, you won t need a network card, and you won t need to string a cable between the router and your computer. Most modern laptop computers have a wireless adapter built-in, and you can buy USB wireless adapters for about 25. If you have several computers, they can all receive Internet access from this router, either wirelessly or using cables. Routers allow several computers to use the Internet at once 59

14 I 660 / 14 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection Routers are always online Plug filters into each telephone socket you use The ADSL modem is used exactly like a dial-up modem: you can connect and disconnect from the Internet as you like (although there s never any reason to disconnect as you never pay for time spent online), and the programs you use for and Web will connect you automatically when you start them up if you re not already connected. The routers usually remain plugged in and switched on permanently, and are always connected to the Internet. Whenever you start your computer, it will connect automatically to the router and Internet access will be available whenever you need it. You ll need filters for your telephone sockets Along with the modem or router, you ll also need some little devices called filters. These are roughly the size of a box of matches, and their job is to split the broadband and voice signals of your phone line. A filter plugs into a telephone socket and provides two more sockets: one of these is the broadband socket that you plug your ADSL modem or router into; the other is the voice socket that you plug your telephone, fax machine, Sky box and other ordinary telephony equipment into. You ll need one filter for every telephone socket in your home that you plug something into. Once broadband has been set up on your line, your telephone will only work when it s plugged into the voice socket of one of these filters. You can buy the filters at any time and plug your phones into them you don t have to wait until your broadband has been set up and they cost about 3 each. (If your chosen ISP will be supplying your modem or router, they ll probably include at least one filter as well.) 60

15 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection I 660 / 15 The Final Step: Signing Up for Your Broadband Package When you ve chosen an ISP to sign up with and decided which of their broadband packages you want, the last step is to get in touch with them and place an order. How this works depends on whether you re signing up for broadband for the first time, or switching from your existing broadband supplier to a different one. If you already have broadband and you want to switch to a different ISP, it s important to do things in the right order. First, contact your current broadband provider and tell them you want to change to a different provider. Make it absolutely clear you don t want to stop broadband service altogether, but you want to have your broadband supplied by someone else. Ask your current provider to give you a MAC code. This stands for Migration Authority Code, and it s a unique number that identifies your request to change suppliers. Whatever you do, don t cancel your current broadband account. Next, telephone the company to whom you want to switch, and tell them you d like to sign up for your chosen package. Explain that you currently have broadband from a different supplier, and tell them the MAC code you were given. The new company will then handle everything required to transfer your service and cancel your account with your old provider. This should take about a week, and in most cases there shouldn t be any interruption to your broadband service. Signing up for your first broadband package is much simpler, of course: just phone your Switching providers? Get a MAC code! 61

16 I 660 / 16 Internet: Upgrading to a Broadband Connection selected ISP and tell them you d like to sign up for the package you ve chosen. They will submit an order to BT to have broadband enabled on your line (which generally takes about a week), and send you the hardware and instructions. Much as I d love to explain how to set up the hardware, it will depend whether it s a modem, a router or a wireless router, and which make and model it is. Your ISP s instructions should be straightforward, but you may need to give them a ring if you run into difficulties. You can connect your hardware when it arrives Although you can connect up your hardware as soon as it arrives, keep in mind that it won t work until your line itself has had broadband enabled. You ll receive a notification from your ISP when this has been done, but there s another way to find out sooner: most modems and routers have a variety of lights on the front, and one of these lights indicates whether the modem or router has made a broadband connection successfully. In most cases, this light flashes on and off when it s impossible to make a broadband connection, and lights up solidly when a connection is made. If you plug your modem or router into your phone socket (remembering to use one of the filters I mentioned earlier), and have a look at it every so often, at some point you ll see that the flashing light is now shining solidly, and this should mean that your broadband service is now set up and ready to use. 62