A survey of Internet service providers in Ireland shows that smaller companies offer considerable savings to private users in their own local telephone area. The survey, carried out last week by Computimes, asked ISPs what their charges were for personal accounts, and what customers got for their money (see table below).
The companies included three of the big four Irish ISPs: Ireland On-Line, Indigo, and Telecom Eireann's TInet (EUNET Ireland only offers company accounts). It also included smaller Irish ISPs and multinational ISPs with Irish dial-up facilities such as CompuServe and America Online (AOL).
Registration fees for new accounts varied greatly among the big three ISPs, while most of the rest didn't charge them at all. IOL was the most expensive, at £30. Connect Ireland was the cheapest: no registration fee and £85 annual charges.
TInet's regular charges are the most expensive of the large Irish ISPs, although like IOL and Indigo its annual rate offers savings over its monthly rate. The multinationals - AOL and CompuServe - have different plans depending on usage, and offer the cheapest alternative for very light use. The smaller companies have lower annual charges, although they offer local number dial-up to fewer areas. Telephone charges are a significant part of the cost of accessing the Internet, so it is important to have a local number to dial to access your ISP.
Only three companies offer local dial-up numbers over substantial areas. TInet offers local call access for all of Ireland, including Northern Ireland. Both IOL and Indigo cover most of the country, although Indigo has no local number access in Northern Ireland.
AOL and CompuServe offer local number access in Northern Ireland and Dublin, Cork and Shannon. CompuServe has no customer support base in Ireland, but its office in Britain thought there may be local call access in all of Ireland using EIRPAC, Telecom Eireann's packet switching network.
Access speeds vary too. Westport-based service provider ANU claims to be the only company to use 56.6 kbps modems, although EUNET Ireland offers this speed to its corporate customers too. Others are also upgrading to this higher speed, but it is worth remembering that two modems talk at the rate of the slower one - so if you've a 28.8 kbps modem it makes no difference whether your ISP has a 28.8, 33.6 or a 56.6 kbps modem.
Storage space for hosting your own Web pages used to be limited, but ISPs are increasingly offering more megabytes for less. Club Internet and MediaNet offer unlimited space for personal pages, while IOL charges £2 for every megabyte above the 5MB it offers for free. Indigo still only allows users one megabyte - not much if you want to adorn your pages with video or audio clips, or several high-resolution images.
Finally, you might want to register your own domain name and get an ISP to host this for you. This offers the advantage of not having the ISP's own domain name in your email and Web addresses - and if you switch ISP your address can come with you. However, besides the registration fee, some of the ISPs charge an extra fee to host your name for you, from £50 to £121 a year.