UK ISP Metronet has won praise from experts following the success of its still largely unique pay-as-you-go (payg) broadband ADSL service, which is currently attracting up to 250 new customers each week:

Launched last April, the service offers users the option of paying between £10 and £23.99 a month for a standard 512 kilobits per second service. £10 buys users up to 200 megabytes of data with every megabyte thereafter charged at a quarter of a penny, with a maximum charge of £23.99.

Ian Fogg, an analyst with research firm Jupiter, thinks pay-as-you-go broadband services are the perfect solution for customers currently stuck with a dial-up connection.

"It helps consumers uncertain about committing to £20 or £30 a month for a broadband service," he said. "With this you are getting the best of both worlds. If you don't use the service much then you don't pay that much but if you do then you aren't writing a blank cheque," he added.

The BBC News Online item highlights how Metronet is still one of the only ISPs to offer such a product, although cable based rival NTL has something similar under trial.

Providing the service has a reasonable 'peak' pricing level, which allows for largely unrestricted (no-cap) downloading, then PAYG is a generally good idea.

We don't all downloaded masses of data and even those that do sometimes take a holiday; wouldn't it be nice to save a little money?