ISP Review investigates what we can expect from 2005

Sadly it would appear as if telephone support is now little more than a presence showing exercise, with such agents showing limited or no technical competence. We keep hearing that this isn’t the case from those employing their services, yet every single practical experience would appear to suggest otherwise.

Saving money, but not quality.

SPAM & Viruses

There’s no escaping the ever growing problem of junk e-mail and viruses, yet 2004 has seen many ISP’s wake up to it. The coming year will see this trend continue, with providers continuing their adoption of proper server-side anti-virus protection, which some may supply at additional cost.

Sadly SPAM is far harder to resolve, mainly due to the difficulty in developing filter technology that doesn’t remove legitimate messages as well. The SPF and Microsoft Sender ID (e-mail identification) technologies will go some way to improving the situation, yet tougher laws and punishment are still required.

We can only hope that all ISP’s wake up to the extreme importance of giving users the tools they need to combat this threat. The benefit is not just to consumers, ISP’s gain a cleaner network and better image.

Conclusion

By all accounts 2005 looks to be an exciting year, with many technological, content and market developments expected to shake things up.

It’s also hoped that BT will instigate a number of improvements to ADSL migration, especially between the IP Stream (BT) and Datastream (non-BT) platforms.

Finally we come to cable operators, with a massive NTL and Telewest merger in the offing. Will it finally happen next year? Many signs point to yes.

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