Could you advise if it is possible for a home user to buy a reliable broadband connection? I use the internet as a key part of my work from home and I'm anxious about the increasingly poor quality of my broadband from Tiscali. User feedback at broadbandchoices.co.uk suggests that none of the main ADSL providers seems capable of supplying the advertised download speeds or the backup necessary to fix things when they go wrong. Dr William Donaldson
It's possible, but you can increase your chances of success by researching the market and by being willing to pay the price. It's not easy because of the enormous mess created by this year's influx of "free" services, by LLU (Local Loop Unbundling), and by the consolidation of suppliers through takeovers. The few companies that have managed to retain much of a reputation have tended to be the smaller and more specialised ones such as Zen Internet, Merula and Wizards, rather than your main ADSL providers. However, BT Business Broadband is worth considering if you work from home.
The price of a decent service will probably be £20 to £30 a month, though you can get a slightly cheaper service from Zen, if it is limited to one PC and heavily capped. But be careful to compare like with like. Wizards, for example, is expensive at £35 a month for a 2Mb ADSL service, but that includes domain hosting, web space, POP3 email, no usage limits and knowledgeable support staff. It all depends what you need.
In theory, a large number of ISPs should all offer the same levels of reliability and performance, since they all get their ADSL services from BT Wholesale. Clearly they don't, so you will need to guess which ones actually provide a decent service by browsing the forums at ISP Review and Broadband Reports.
