Ques 7)
In one of our recent articles we put the question of ISP Signup Security to the test (http://www.ispreview.co.uk/articles/signup_security/), how does ClaraNet stand when it comes to protecting personal data being transferred over the Internet?

Our operations team works to the following agenda:

• 1. Security
• 2. Everything else

Customers need to be able to feel confident that the information they give us is 100% safe, so obviously protection of customer data is of paramount importance to us. As such a great deal of our efforts are devoted to maintaining the integrity of our network.

Ques 8)
To the people reading this, is there anything you'd like to say?

Without the input of the general public and the press we would never have got as far as we have in such a short space of time. We rely on your feedback to develop our services, so if anyone has any comments or suggestions, then please don't hesitate to drop us a line at marketing@clara.net.

ISPreview would like to take this opportunity to thank Nick for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk with us.

Conclusions

We haven't learned that much from this interview other than ClaraNet are very reserved and would prefer to be confident of something actually 'happening' before they go on the record as saying something that might not. ISPreview estimates that ClaraNets 'Freetime Unlimited' service will almost certainly come down in price, or be re-structured as well, sometime over the next two or three months.

We base our analysis on the fact that they would easily loose vast amounts of customers to packages like BT Surftime2 and numerous others if they do not. We also learned that ClaraNet are very close to announcing an ADSL service like others have. Another area worth pointing out in the Interview was how 'Nick' mentioned that almost all the FreeCall systems had been subjected to serious service and support problems.

ISPr agrees that we have yet to see a service offer such a system and NOT come under some serious stress. So perhaps ClaraNet taking longer to evaluate the situation is better than rushing something out and causing one of the UKs best ISPs to topple. However 'Nick' did fail to miss the point that half of those ISPs are now back on their feet and offering top quality services, thus are in direct competition.

To site a few examples, EzeSurf (formerly 08004u), Screaming Net and CallNet0800 (still waiting, but reasonable services) all started off badly and progressed into flourishing systems.

In conclusion, ClaraNet are working very hard towards the future but as yet remain tight-lipped about their plans. ISPr can only hope that they will extend the courtesy of informing us of them plans before others =).

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