Site Status – UK ISP Listings Update and Line Rental Providers

ISPreview.co.uk has just completed a lengthy update sweep of all the Internet Service Providers in our UK ISP Listings database, which is performed every few months to ensure that all our prices and information are up-to-date. As requested by readers we have also added a simple list of Line Rental providers.

It’s important to note that the listings are constantly being updated but sadly many of the smaller ISPs don’t inform us about changes to their packages and thus we need to conduct a full sweep every few months in order to help ensure that our information is correct.

During this process we have removed five ISPs that had either closed down, vanished or failed to comply with our rules (e.g. not displaying public prices anymore, failing to display a legally required postal address etc.). Several other providers were also renamed due to recent mergers and acquisitions (e.g. ADSL24 has now become Coms).

In addition several readers recently asked if we could produce a comparison of line rental packages and prices. At present we do not have a separate category for telephone-only providers (ISPr is all about the Internets) and so we’ve constructed a list using just the line rental services offered by fixed line broadband ISPs, which still reflects most of the consumer market.

The new List of Phone Line Rental Providers is currently very basic and generally just shows the standard monthly cost, installation fee for those that need a new line (many ISPs still don’t make this clear or confuse it with ADSL activations and so the field is often left empty) and the discounted monthly equivalent cost for providers that offer pre-paid Line Rental Saver services (where this is not available the standard monthly cost will be repeated).

At present we have not included call costs or free call options as the variety of different approaches makes this difficult to reflect via a simple comparison. On top of that we were surprised to find that many providers still make it extremely tricky to find the costs for calling local, 0845 and other numbers (this should really be a basic consideration for all phone providers but some clearly need a good kick).

ISPreview.co.uk’s UK ISP Listings Page
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/list.shtml