Consumers should not concentrate solely on price but keep their specificonline requirements in mind when deciding which service to opt for, writes Laura Slattery

Sitting at a computer desk watching a blue line slowly crawl along your screen while you wait for your chosen application to finish downloading is a painfully boring experience, enough to test even the most laid-back person's love affair with the internet.

Broadband promises to cut out the time wasting. Emails, photographs, digital video, music, games and applications can all be downloaded up to 50 times faster through broadband internet access than a regular dial-up modem.

After a hesitant start, telecoms companies are queueing up to offer various broadband packages to businesses and consumers, luring them in with special introductory offers.

So how can consumers decide which residential broadband service provides the best value for money?

Preliminary "need to knows" include the fact that homes and offices can connect to broadband through their existing telephone or cable line, but also using fixed wireless or satellite signals.

Broadband is an "always-on" internet connection, meaning there is no need to dial up to the internet or log off once you're done.

Apart from possible connection or installation fees, the only cost to the consumer should be a flat monthly line rental charge.

The table shows that these monthly charges vary from €29.99 to €54.45, with prices generally depending on the maximum speed and the amount of gigabytes (GBs) a user is allowed to download and upload each month.

For example, Eircom, the market leader, offers two products to residential customers. Broadband Home Starter, which costs €39.99 a month, gives customers a four GB download capacity and a one GB upload capacity, while the more expensive Broadband Home Plus package has an eight GB download limit and unlimited upload.

Meanwhile, Eircom competitors, such as Esat BT and UTV Internet, boast that they offer twice the download capacity on products with either similar or cheaper prices.

But for the average home user who just wants to be able to efficiently download photographs of their toddler grandchildren, ideally before they reach puberty, what does all this mean?

According to the Government's broadband website - www.broadband.gov.ie - sending and receiving text emails and browsing text-based internet pages uses 0.02 to 0.05 megabytes (MB), while sending or receiving still images can use up to 0.25 MBs per picture.

Downloading a piece of music, however, could use about four MBs, while a five-minute video (with sound) could be expected to use about 30 MB.

For most home users converting to broadband to escape the awkwardness of a dial-up internet connection, four GBs a month is "plenty", according to Mr Rory Ardagh, director of Leap Broadband, a telecoms company that provides broadband to businesses.

"The only people who ever go near 16 GB are people who are doing file sharing, when they are downloading movies or MP3 music files," he says.

In most residential broadband services, the upload speed is usually slower than the download speed. In the products examined, only two - both provided by Irish Broadband - offer "symmetrical" upload and download speeds.

In France, speeds start at one MB (1,000 kilobyte per second) for broadband services that cost just €14.99 per month, according to Mr Ardagh.

"The speeds you get abroad are faster for less money," he says. "You don't buy gigabytes, you buy time. It's pay-as-you-go broadband. So you might buy a broadband line for €14 a month that will give you 20 hours."

Pay-as-you-go is popular in Italy, France and the UK, Mr Ardagh says, but it is not available here, despite the fact that many residential users only use the internet for half an hour to an hour a day.

"In Ireland, even the cheapest package can cost you €60 a month. If you don't have a land line and use your mobile for calls, they oblige you to get a line, so it's €30 a month for that and another €30 on top of that for the DSL [digital subscriber line] rental."

Mr Ardagh believes that many people with an existing basic internet connection won't upgrade to broadband unless the cost reduces to around €20 a month.

Eircom, which has about 50,000 broadband customers, aims to reach 100,000 people.

A spokeswoman for the company says it has had "a huge response" to its "summer surf" promotion, which offers free line rental on Broadband Home Starter until September 30th.

However, customers are required to sign a 12-month contract in order to avail of this introductory offer.

UTV Internet and Esat BT are both offering a three-month free trial, with an extra month thrown in if the customer then commits to a 12-month contract. At this point, a connection charge of €80-€99 must be paid.

Other preconditions also apply. For example, UTV Internet customers are also required to use their CPS (carrier pre-selection) service for normal phone calls. This means the customer keeps their Eircom land line, paying the line rental charge, but is billed by UTV Internet for calls.

Esat BT broadband can be purchased on its own, but the provider also offers "talk and surf" bundles that give its phone customers slightly reduced prices on broadband.

For NTL's broadband service, users must also be customers of its television package.

Once they have signed up, the quality of the broadband is "the issue consumers need to be tracking", according to Mr Darragh Stokes, managing director of consultancy Hardiman Telecommunications.

"The contention ratio tells you how many subscribers are sharing a fixed amount of bandwidth," Mr Stokes says. "At the moment, all the providers are still trying to build up market share. The broadband market is very young," he explains.

The big question is, will providers try to save on costs by adding customers but not adding capacity?

This could mean increasing amounts of internet traffic clogging up a supposedly speedy system.

Users should also consider what time of day they are likely to be online, Mr Stokes adds.

Home office workers will be competing with large businesses for bandwidth, so it might make sense for them to opt for a provider that mostly targets the residential market, as their peak times for traffic will be in the evening.

But some home workers may face higher broadband charges.

"People who do telework or remote work one or two days a week probably only do it because they don't have to commute a long distance to the office. But if that is the case, they may well be outside the range of DSL," he says. "People who are outside urban areas may only be able to get satellite broadband, where there is a huge jump in the installation charges. Otherwise, they may be stuck with low-quality, expensive ISDN."

If your employer is supplying broadband to your home as part of the business package the company has signed up for, it is worth ensuring that the provider hasn't skimped on promises outlined in the negotiated service level agreement.

"People are going home and continuing to work in the evening. They're sending crucial emails outside of working hours when they don't have the IT department to fall back upon," Mr Stokes says.

"Murphy's Law applies - it will go down when you need it. When you have no choice but to get that document to Cannes, then saving €10 a month hardly matters, not if you've just lost everything."'

Broadband Tips