What is Home Broadband?

Home broadband is the typical sort of broadband you would receive in your home. You will generally get your broadband connection through your phone line (ASDL), though unlike with dial up internet access you can use the one phone line to make calls and use the internet at the same time. You can also receive internet access via cable broadband. At the moment only Virgin Media offer this and it works by using fibre optic cables. Cable broadband is only really available in rural areas. It allows for much faster and more consistent download speeds to be accessed.

When you’ve got your home broadband connection into your house you can use a wireless router to be able to access your internet anywhere. This works by turning your internet connection into a radio signal.

What should I look for with home broadband?

It really depends how much you’re going to use your internet connection for what you want. There are a variety of factors to consider.

Price:

Broadband can start from as little as £5-10 a month for the actual connection, though you’ll want to take a look at any connection fees and hardware costs (such as the modem or wireless router). You should also be careful about introductory offers…many companies offer a very low price, but it will only be for the first 3 or so months at which point it rises.

Sometimes you may be better of paying a little bit more every month and getting a free wireless router and free connection - it can work out at around the same overall.

Contract Length:

The longer the contract, the more affordable ISPs can make the broadband. Typically you will be on a 12 month contract, though you can get 30 day contracts and longer ones. The advantage of a contract is you are more likely to get free connection and hardware. The main disadvantage is if your chosen ISP aren’t very good, you will be stuck with them until the end of the contract.

Speed:

There are many different download speeds on the market. Some ISPs will offer different download speeds with unlimited usage, others will offer one download speed with limits on how much you can download. Though faster may seem better, if you only use the internet for emails and some internet browsing, chances are you won’t need the fastest plan and a speed of around 8mb will do fine. The faster plans are suitable for heavy internet users who download a lot of large files, stream videos and so on.

Brand:

Try and buy from a reputable brand. There’s no point finding the cheapest deal to discover the internet is very slow or doesn’t even work. Find some reputable customer reviews before signing up to any service.

The Extras:

Check what extras you will recieve, do you get free support and is it 24/7? Do you get a free wireless router, any wi-fi or VoIP minutes, an email address or webspace, etc. TalkTalk’s idea of just giving you a base plan which you can extend is a nice one if you don’t actually need any of the extras (they may say free, but it’ll all be factored into your monthly price).

The main extra which is nice to have is a modem or router for free!

The extras you get with your home broadband plan can be what sets two identical plans apart (plans with the same connection speed or download capacities). Don’t be fooled into paying for a more expensive plan, just because of some free extras - make sure the extras you get from a plan will actually be used, otherwise you could be paying extra for a service you’re not going to use.

Who supplies Home Broadband?

We have a list of UK broadband suppliers on this page.