What is the most important factor you look for when selecting an ISP?

Onikage

I'm wondering what other people look for when they select an ISP. Any comments or suggestions for missing options are welcome.

Spear

You forgot options for lack of throttling/caps.

barnicles

Spear wrote: »

You forgot options for lack of throttling/caps.

I'm also need large cap.

lmimmfn

low pings and speed. I wouldnt mind a 20Gig cap if i had gaming pings of 40ms to uk servers and constant 300kbytes/sec download ANYTIME not just after 11pm etc.

PogMoThoin

I'm with Eircom because they don't enforce their cap, they are the most expensive tho.

Gonzo

lmimmfn wrote: »

low pings and speed. I wouldnt mind a 20Gig cap if i had gaming pings of 40ms to uk servers and constant 300kbytes/sec download ANYTIME not just after 11pm etc.

that's exactly what Eircom was like up untill the upgrades came along, unfortunately this has completely changed. Still get great speeds from them but crap pings now.

bk

I think most people are looking for a combination of the above.

High speed, low latency, reliable, no cap and for an affordable price.

No company manages to do all of these 100% of the time, but some are coming close. In particular UPC, Magnet and maybe Smart (a little steep on price) are getting close to perfect.

Really asking for all of these isn't too much to ask. In most other countries, most decent ISP's can deliver all of these.

BTW I think the last three options are not important.
- Mobility:
Mobile BB rarely delivers speed, low latency, no cap or reliability, it is really a completely different product. It should only be used for people who specifically need it, not because you can't get wired BB, like the case is for many people here in Ireland.

- Independence from Eircom:
Ideologically this is nice, but in my experience any company with a monopoly would do the same as Eircom. If Eircom offered 24m BB for €40, I'd have no problem in signing up with them.

- Bundle with voice/tv/other services:
I get my TV service from Smart over BB and to be honest I believe the dedicated TV providers like Sky and UPC do a better job at it and it is more expensive then UPC and Sky, so no advantage there.

UPC do a good job of bundling all three services as their TV service is good (but not great) and their bundles work out much cheaper then buying these services separately. But if your not saving at least €10 per month, then it isn't worth it.

Cabaal

I've added a usage cap/unlimited* option

*not actually truely unlimited, generally has FUP

Onikage

Cheers Cabaal Kicking myself for leaving out that one.

Marlow

Cabaal wrote: »

*not actually truely unlimited, generally has FUP

I offered somebody lately a free month, if he could find a FUP or AUP in our terms

/Martin

jesus_thats_gre

Forgot upload bandwidth too... Ping times are shot to **** if someone is browsing while you play whatever online game.

Onikage

Given that most connections are asymmetrical, it seems this would be a very small niche. I doubt many people would choose, say, IBB 2MB over UPC 20MB just for the sake of an extra 500K in upload.

I think I should have restricted the options a bit more. Maybe just speed, price, cap, ping and reliability with no multi-option.

CaraFawn

I personally need a good upload speed cause I am hosting stuffs from time to time, such as Exchange server, game server back in the time etc.
2 years ago Irish Broadband was the only one with a descent upload speed 4MB, reason why I chose them.

Today this is still the case anyway, some have increased upload speed such as NTL, you can get 1.5MB now.

jesus_thats_gre

Onikage wrote: »

Given that most connections are asymmetrical, it seems this would be a very small niche. I doubt many people would choose, say, IBB 2MB over UPC 20MB just for the sake of an extra 500K in upload.

I think I should have restricted the options a bit more. Maybe just speed, price, cap, ping and reliability with no multi-option.

No, not now..

But what about a 2mbps Eircom service with a 256kbps upload? Considering that that is what is available in 99% of the country, I think I have a valid point. No?

Anything forom a 1mb or whatever upload is grand as the upload is being choked by someone doing something as simple as browsing.

spurious

I'm with Smart because they're not eircom, are reliable and don't have a cap.

paulm17781

Should customer service be added?

MrVestek

CaraFawn wrote: »

I personally need a good upload speed cause I am hosting stuffs from time to time, such as Exchange server, game server back in the time etc.
2 years ago Irish Broadband was the only one with a descent upload speed 4MB, reason why I chose them.

Today this is still the case anyway, some have increased upload speed such as NTL, you can get 1.5MB now.

Erm... most ISPs don't permit you to run a public server on their network unless it's for a business connection. And yes folks, that includes torrenting as you ARE acting as a server for other users despite what you believe.

barnicles

Cap/speed/price

Marlow

Achilles wrote: »

Erm... most ISPs don't permit you to run a public server on their network unless it's for a business connection. And yes folks, that includes torrenting as you ARE acting as a server for other users despite what you believe.

First of all, any of those limitations are nonsense, either the provider sells you internet or he doesn't. The providers just have to learn that

But matter of fact, a lot of people that are hosting need the upload, because they are uploading content to their server, updates, etc.

For decent VPN symmetric speeds are needed.

There are loads of applications that need good upload and do not violate any AUP.

/Martin

bk

Decent upload speed is going to become increasingly important and the ISPs just need to learn to live with it.

A good upload speed is needed for VPN and VNC by people who work from home.

There are also many new consumer applications being used. Slingbox is a great example, it basically takes your TV signal and streams it to a PC or mobile phone anywhere in the world over your BB connection.

Another great app that I got yesterday for my iphone allows your to stream your entire music collection on your PC to your iphone over the internet. It is called simplifymedia.

watty

512k is reasonable minimum upload. 128k upload is only 2 ch ISDN after all. 512K allows decent VPN with remote Internet gateway or Slingbox/PS3 playtv/Orb/MS MediaEncoder/Archos home video /tv to you mobile or remote viewing location.

Above 1Mbps download the ping time is more important than speed. A low latency connection at 512k works better than 2Mbps HSDPA for browsing.

SeanW

Onikage wrote: »

Given that most connections are asymmetrical, it seems this would be a very small niche. I doubt many people would choose, say, IBB 2MB over UPC 20MB just for the sake of an extra 500K in upload.

I would, in a cold minute. I do a lot of torrenting (downloading and seeding), online gaming etc and if I ever decided to do VOIP or video conferening of any sort, more high end games and whatnot, it would be very handy to have more than 400k outbound capacity to kick around.
By contrast I rarely ever get to use my full download speed except when downloading large files from a good http server, which is very rarely.
Would I trade 4MB down 400k up for 2MB synchronous? In a heartbeat.
Provided of course I could get decent pings to the UK with the new package.

I can't get IBB Breeze, as they have no masts my area. In their absence, I use BT because it's the most cost-effective option and the lack of an official cap on the high end package is handy when I'm feeling nuts.
Don't watch much TV so that's not a concern, having a land line is handy so BT BB and Talk is good there and the pings are acceptable for now.

Indpendence from Eircom is a non-issue. We all (or most of us) need phone lines and in 99% of cases that means Eircom. If a 100% non-Eircom BB option presents itself and is better, so be it. If not, no biggie.

babaloushka

paulm17781 wrote: »

Should customer service be added?

This would be important to me too - mainly because I don't feel I have good service from UTV and therefore I NOTICE it in its absence. But I suppose if the speed and reliability are a given, you don't need the customer service :pac:
It's interesting to note that 'Price' is 5th on the list at present - money isn't everything if you don't feel you've got good value.

Wcool

Slightly off topic:

Are more 'sophisticated' polls possible? With this type of polling, I need to put all my eggs in one basket. It would be nice if there was a poll where the choices could be ordered to the voters importance. Out of the choices, not merely one is important but a couple...

Same applies to the Broadband Providers poll. Are you happy, yes/no is not enough choice. It would be nice if you could rate Customer Service, reliability, price, cap, etc.

SeanW

Polls are meant to add summary information to a debate: they're not supposed to tell the whole story, that's why we write posts.

Onikage

Wcool wrote: »

Are more 'sophisticated' polls possible? With this type of polling, I need to put all my eggs in one basket. It would be nice if there was a poll where the choices could be ordered to the voters importance. Out of the choices, not merely one is important but a couple

Unfortunately not. You can have single option or multi option. The only reason this is a multi option poll is to accommodate people who find two factors equally important.

Edser

What's up with that poll? The percentage values add up to 256% ??