ISP contracts catch buyers in speed trap

Businesses advised to read small print before inking ISP contracts

Businesses must pay more attention to the small print in contracts when choosing their internet service provider (ISP) to avoid being misled about broadband speeds, contention ratios and support, according to Tim Davies, co-founder of specialist ISP and web design firm IDNet.

Davies said that many service providers gloss over the fact that variables such as distance from the exchange and the quality of cabling and routers can affect download and upload speeds.

“[Some ISPs] don’t tell companies they could be sharing with hundreds of other users, so that ‘24Mbit/s ADSL’ half a mile from the exchange [could] leave you crawling down to dial-up speeds,” he said. Davies’ brother Simon, with whom he founded IDNet, argued that much of the call centre support provided by large ISPs is disappointing, [and] the “opportunity to get that next level of support is not there”.

Gary Stocker of manufacturing company Technoturn, an IDNet customer, agreed, pointing to frequent downtime and “diabolical” customer service from his company’s previous ISP.

“The [support staff] were useless, it was like they were reading off a script,” said Stocker. “Often I couldn’t understand them either, their accents were so broad. Don’t go by the salesman’s pitch [when looking for a new ISP] because it’s often not backed up enough by service quality.”

Stocker added that his previous service’s stated contention ratio of 20:1 was also considered questionable: “I tested it and it [proved to] be extremely slow, but it’s difficult to prove that [to the ISP] – our business could have stumbled because of [problems like these].”