These days most households have the Internet with most of them getting a DSL line or Broadband for their homes. Broadband suppliers are like electricity suppliers, over the years the range of competitors all vying for your business has grown massively. In a test with one postcode I was able to find seven different broadband suppliers in my area, all offering different packages and extras for different prices depending on however much I wanted to spend per month.

Broadband is provided under contracts similar to Mobile Phone contracts, they tend to be 12 month agreements after which you can carry on with your supplier or make the jump to another, a lot of the time with contracts like this people have an overwhelming feeling of apathy and stick with their current supplier to avoid any hassle, providers rely on this to retain your business and you could get better deals elsewhere if you looked around.

This guide is going to go through what to look for if you have had enough with your current supplier and want to explore pastures new, however if you're happy with your service then it is still worth reading on as you never know you may find an area where you could save money or get a bit extra from your provider.

How fast are we going?

First of all you should consider how fast your connection is at the moment, this can be done by using an online Broadband speed test, these websites get two figures: your upload speed and download speed, the latter normally being considerably larger than the former. It's the download speed which is normally referenced in the adverts and brochures of the speed you can expect when you sign up.

Now the number you get back may be vastly different from the advertised speed, say you signed up for a speedy 8MB speed connection it isn't uncommon for the download speed to actually be less than half of that number. Before you go complaining to your supplier there's no point, whilst they are not exactly clear if you look at the detail it says "up to" before the stated speeds, a nasty trick you'll probably think especially if you never actually get the full fat speed you pay for.

The reason for this is that the distance you are from the local telephone exchange affects the strength of your signal, as well as other factors such as the quality of the cabling in your area, the majority of internet cabling in the UK is still copper wiring which can lose signal strength over distance and time. The UK telecommunication companies such as Virgin Media are trying to get new Fibre-Optic cabling rolled out over the country to reduce the degradation in speed and allow for even faster broadband.

How much power is too much power?

As well as checking how fast your connection is, before you commit to a particular package you should consider how much speed you will actually need, whilst there are 50/month packages offering upwards of 10MB speeds you may find that for your household you won't actually need that much speed and could make a valuable saving by selecting a lower speed.

The majority of UK households only use the Internet to check emails, social networking sites and bid on EBay a little. An entry level connection of 2MB would be more than sufficient for this, it could even handle two or three computers through a wireless router as long as all three aren't being used for prolonged periods of time or for more bandwidth hungry services like file sharing or online gaming.

The higher end connections are more suited to so-called "power users" the type of people who download music and videos a lot as well as people who have lots of machines on their home networks. People who play online games like Internet Poker or World of Warcraft are more likely to need a speedy connection, as well as the growing number of games consoles that connect to the internet like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

By now you should have a good idea of how fast your current connection is (if you already have one) and have a better understanding of what speed you need, at this point you should know whether you need more or less speed and have your first criteria for when you want to look at the many suppliers on comparison sites or when looking at the broadband suppliers brochures. The next part of this guide will cover the actual usage of your Internet, the customer services for when/if your service drops and discuss cheap broadband package deals where you could save money by getting your telephone, TV and Broadband all from one supplier.

If you are looking for cheap broadband whether you have an existing provider or not then you can compare broadband deals online. Also if you are thinking about changing your supplier then check your connection using one of the various broadband speed test websites to see whether you are getting your money's worth.

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