A Guide To Cheap DSL

With such differing prices in DSL services you may be wondering if there are any there are any real benefits in the more expensive ones. I have had 3 different DSL service providers in the last 3 years and always keep my eye out for new deals. Having said that, now I have experience I don't necessarily just choose the cheap DSL option. I live in a small village so DSL has only been available in my area for 3 years. I can still only connect at around 2.5mbps and this is one factor that helps me choose my DSL provider. When DSL first became available in my area I had been waiting for so long that I signed up with the first company that could offer it. I was absolutely thrilled! Instead of waiting forever for each page to load, they were there almost instantly. I was still only connecting at 512kbps but compared to dial up, it was fantastic. As time progressed however, I found out that other people in my area were connecting at up to 2mbps. I contacted my DSL service provider and they gave some excuse that didn't really explain why. I later found out that regardless of the speed available on the line, my connection was capped at 512kbps. After becoming increasingly jealous of my neighbours I started to look for other service providers. When my current contract was about to expire, my telephone company contacted me to inform me that they were launching a very cheap DSL service and asked if I would be interested.

Well, duh! There was no capped connection, no download limit and it was half the price I was currently paying. I signed up as soon as I could. This was my first lesson in Cheap DSL. I am not trying to say that Cheap DSL is a bad idea, but this particular company was awful. First of all I had problems from day one. I kept getting disconnected, or was unable to connect at all for days at a time. To make things worse, when I tried to telephone them I would have to wait in a queue for 30-40 minutes only to speak to someone in India who spoke poor English. From here I would get transferred to another department, and another until I was asked to call back the following day. This went on for 3 months until I backed out of my contract. When you sign to a DSL service you are usually tied in for 12 months, but I took a chance and stopped paying them. I wrote them a letter stating why I refused to pay any more for their service and after a couple of red letters and heated phone calls they gave in.

By pure coincidence this was around the same time I was renewing my mobile phone contract. When I went in store I was asked if I would like to try their new cheap DSL service. It seemed to offer the same package as the one I had just backed out of and was around the same price. At first I was a little sceptical. Why so cheap? I wondered. Well it all sounded good but I wasn't about to make the same mistake twice. First of all I asked three very important questions.

1) Can I speak to some satisfied customers?

2) Does you telephone support have native English speaking employees?

- Please don't miss-understand me here. In some situations I have no objections to speaking to people in other countries but when you have a technical issue and the customer service operators speak hardly any English it is impossible to sort the situation.

3) What is your average monthly downtime?

As well as asking these questions, I did some research of my own. I spoke to some friends and looked at some reviews before finding out that this company did have a good reputation. Well I can say with confidence now that I'm very glad I joined. I never get disconnected, and my connection speed is faster than it has ever been. In fact I was so impressed I have even referred three friends and relatives to the same service. So if your looking for cheap DSL it does exist, but do your homework first.