Internet Access

Free is a funny word. In the world of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) it rarely actually means no cost. While superfast broadband is slowly taking over, many homes still use dial-up phone access, but are paying much more than is necessary.

While this article is about cutting the cost of dial-up, these days broadband is very cheap – or even free in some cases and well worth investigating. Read Cheapest Broadband article.

• What to watch for
• The UKs cheapest ISPs
• Accelerate your connection
• The Size of the Savings
• Other Articles/Discuss

Trash expensive dial-up

What to watch for

• Connection and reliability. The ‘contention ratio' is a useful but not infallible guide, as it monitors the number of users allocated per line. The average is 10-20:1, though at best go up to 5:1.


• Dump-ability. Big operators are usually reliable, but over-expensive; while smaller players are hotly priced but unknown quantities. Hence the ability to immediately dump an ISP, if it's service becomes pants, is crucial. Ensure you're not contractually locked in.


• Avoid e-mail lock in. Paying ISPs often allocate you their e-mail addresses. It mightn't sound bad, but means to switch ISP means switching e-mail, which is such hassle it substantially disincentivises moving. Using a universal address like G-mail, Hotmail or Yahoo solves this.


• Content and Support. Many big ISPs boast about unique content, but similar stuff is available free elsewhere on the net, as is child protection software.


• Technical Support. For newcomers especially, evaluating technical support phone line costs is important, as a £1/min charge soon eats any other savings.

The UK's Cheapest ISPs

There are two ways to pay. Unmetered means you can use the net as much as you like. The cost is a fixed monthly fee and the access call should be via a freephone number.

The alternative is ‘pay-as-you-go' (PAYG) where there's no fee but the access calls cost and the provider gets a cut of the call revenue. As a rough rule of thumb, use the web more than five hours a week, and unmetered wins. Having compared over 40, the following are the cheapest providers.

PAYG providers for low to mid use

Don't be fooled into thinking they're all the same. Access call charges vary radically. Most ‘free' internet access dials via a Lo-call rate 0845 call; but Lo-call rate is not local rate, it's much more expensive.

An hour long local call on evenings and weekends costs 5.5p on BT's basic tariff, whereas Lo-call is 60p (1p/min). Worse still, Lo-call is 4p/min during the day, and is almost never included in free calls packages.

Unmetered for heavy use

Heavy users should consider switching to broadband; after all, unlimited dial-up access from AOL is £19.99 a month, while it's Broadband starts at £14.99 and lots of other providers are much cheaper! (see Cheapest Broadband Provider article).

The cheapest unmetered ISP is Zaggle at £5.99 for 60 hours a month (approx 2 a day) or it's just a little more for unlimited useage with Fast4.net at £7.99.

Accelerate your connection

OnSpeed* is a heavily advertised service for dial-up users to use on top of their ISP that claims to make your connection work at broadband speeds for £25 a year. Technically what it does, rather than speeding up your connection is decrease the amount of info you need to download. This does mean that you receive the data using compression software. While this doesn't come close to broadband speeds, most dial-up users say it does speed things up somewhat.

How to try it without paying the £25

Tiscali has its own version of the Onspeed service, which uses the same 'Slipstream technology' called Tiscali.accelerator. This service is free to Tiscali customers. Yet it's possible to access Tiscali on a Pay-As-You-Go basis, so you could use Tiscali as your dial up provider for an hour or so (do it off-peak so it's cheaper) to see if it works for you. If it does and you want to use the cheapest ISP detailed below, you can then do so and sign up to OnSpeed for the speed.

STOP PRESS. Tiscali shares suspended from Italian Stock Exchange. 10 March 09. The Italian parent company of the broadband and phone provider is in trouble, and its shares have been suspended from the Italian stock exchange (see Google News latest). Rumours are its negotiating to sell its UK business to Sky. While customers are currently unaffected, its worth being wary about signing up for it. All updates in the free weekly email.

Find out what existing users think of OnSpeed: Read feedback and discuss savings

Someone using 3 hours a week on a normal ‘free' ISP would pay around £30 a month, £360 a year. Opt for the cheapest unmetered package, Fast4net at £7.99 per month save yourself around £260 a year.