Most recently some ISP’s have begun introducing “Traffic Management”, which may help or hinder your experience depending on how it’s used. Such systems are usually designed to restrict specific services (most frequently newsgroups and file sharing) at peak times so as to improve the performance of others (e.g. FTP and e-mail etc.). They can sometimes also be used to target individual customers that the provider may view as having “abused” its service through excessive downloading.

Suffice to say that making a correct and informed choice of provider is now more complex and difficult than ever before. Unfortunately we see no immediate end to this trend, yet bandwidth has a history of becoming cheaper, thus sooner or later customers should gain more for less as technology evolves. Beware those that promise all you can eat products (e.g. “unlimited”).

Migration (ADSL)

The ability to move between broadband ADSL ISP’s has also been another one of the year’s biggest talking points. Narrowband’s dialup generation had it easy, if you wanted to change provider then you did so and that was that. Sadly Ofcom’s disastrous non-compulsory migration code, which might as well not exist for all the trouble it’s caused, has allowed some providers/suppliers too much control.

Theoretically Ofcom’s policy allows a customer to change ISP by cancelling and requesting a migration code (MAC), this code is then supplied to the new provider for a swift re-connection. In practice it’s a different story, with some providers failing to support the policy, while others have imposed dubious “leaving” charges. There are also technical differences between unbundled networks and BT’s own that can cause problems or longer delays.

To cut a long story short, thousands of people have found themselves stuck in broadband limbo. Disputes between ISP’s and their supplier (Biscit/NetServices) often make it impossible to retrieve a MAC. In other cases the ISP can still be operating and yet lack enough support staff to respond, making it difficult to cancel if you have nobody to communicate with.

Typically the humble consumer often ends up with only one real “choice”, to wait a lengthy period of time for their line to be released (often two or more weeks). During this period the user would be without broadband, a fear that many ISP’s ominously like to dangle in-front of their customers.

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