It wounds my heart but I've finally taken the miser's plunge and opted to pay for something I already get for free. My home 512Kbit/s DSL line, generously funded by employers here at IT Week is creaking under the strain of work related email, web browsing and file transfers, and needs a bandwidth upgrade.

I should make it clear that the music downloads, Internet shopping and eBay activity, plus the two teenage IM freaks fond of online gaming and the latest Girls Aloud video clips that I share the connection with, have nothing to do with the poor performance.

I haven't migrated yet to a new service yet, but I've got as far as using the excellent adslguide.org website to at least select a new ISP based on their estimated track record for service, performance and reliability.

What disturbed me was some of the literature for one ISP's product, which said that priority on the contended connection (meaning you might share it with up to 50 other users at any one time) would go to the people paying more for the service.

So, if you only pay £15 rather than £20 or £25 a month (the extra cash ostensibly charged for additional IP addresses, firewall and VPN options), you're the first one kicked off the connection if and when congestion problems occur.

This might seem fair enough to some, but if you pay for a basic service you expect to get it, especially if you're tied in to an annual contract. A bit like buying a season rail ticket, you don't mind a second class seat because the train still gets you there albeit without the comfort, but you'd be mightily upset if the train didn’t run at all.

At best this approach by certain ISPs smacks of a crude marketing ploy which plays on people's fears about reliability to browbeat them into buying a more expensive service. On the other hand, it shows a woeful lack of regard for customer service and is arguably an example of poor network planning.

BT famously offers no service level guarantees on Asymmetric DSL (ADSL) at all, and ISPs leasing the carrier's wholesale services have always been keen to point out that this hamstrings them to a certain extent.

Even so, a paying customer is a paying customer, whether or not they want bells and whistles, and should always know in advance exactly what they are paying for.

23 Nov 2006