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Backwards compatibility- I'm really not aware of older Linux programs failing to work on modern Linux.

That's because you obviously don't play games on Linux. I give you loki_compat.

Linux is vastly more backwards compatible than Windows- hell, it even supports programs written for stuff from prior decades BEFORE IT EXISTED

NO. It supports source code like that. It doesn't support executables like that, or at least, not well. Compatibility problems abound.

What Windows has is a big user base. That's the limit of its power. It can't even run fucking bash and it's 2015- every real OS has supported that for over a decade.

Wrong again, chuckles. I give you Cygwin, and also [the now discontinued] Services For Unix, under which it was possible to compile bash.

a shitty shell that tries to look like DOS and fails

No, Windows now has three shells. One that looks like dos and succeeds brilliantly (command.com), one that is the original shell for NT (CMD.EXE) and one that's object-oriented and lends itself to typing commands several lines long, Powershell. Powershell does numerous things Unix shells don't.

Linux runs MOST windows programs, and MANY windows games.

Nonsense. You certainly can't use the wine compatibility guide as evidence, because Wine is THE poster child for regressions. I have never had a Windows game of any complexity work through more than a couple of Wine updates. I get it working, under some version of Wine, then I update my system and it breaks again. That's why I finally just gave up and built two totally separate PCs, one for Windows and one for everything else. Wine is awesome, and it is also shit.

Windows can't run a single fucking Linux binary without a goddamned VM!

And Linux can't run a single Windows binary reliably without a VM, which basically boils down to the same thing; either way, you need an OS in a VM for back compatibility.

Windows and Linux both have back compat problems, and pretending they don't is just bullshit. I've had to tweak programs' code for changes in the Linux kernel before, or libc, so suggesting that it magically supports old source code is also bullshit.

You use loki_compat. But you're probably better off just installing an old Linux distribution in a virtual machine, because loki_compat is not what you'd call perfect since Linux is a moving target. SMAC is even more CRASHTACULAR with the libraries than it was originally, for example.

But they don't advertise the cap, do they?

It depends on your ISP. As I said, iff they are advertising the cap, instead of saying "unlimited" then I see no problem. And indeed, this is what _most_ of the ISPs do here in the UK (certainly the smaller ISPs pretty much never say "unlimited" and advertise a cap.) Some of the ISPs that fall into the "big, cheap and crap" category do still sell dirt cheap "unlimited" accounts with hidden caps, but this is increasingly uncommon.

And a cap that can be consumed in 1-2 days of moderate usage is a fraudulent advertisement when you claim multiple megabits of capacity.

No, no it isn't. If the advertisement says "unlimited" then I would agree that capping it is fraudulent (unfortunately the ASA disagrees on this point); but my ISP says "up to 24Mbps capped at 15GB/month during peak hours" (and defines those "peak hours"), and there is nothing fraudulent about that: I'm absolutely happy with that advertising because I bought the account knowing full well what the cap was and how much it would cost me to increase the cap if necessary. This is good for me - I'm not a heavy downloader, I don't use more than 15GB/month during those peak hours, I don't want to be subsidising the people who thing that they have some kind of a god given right to max out their connection 24 hours a day.

Not that my ISP has caps. Nor that I'd ever sign on with an ISP that has them.

But that's because I'm not interested in getting conned.

I don't see how you can claim an ISP capping people at the advertised limit a "con" - if you can't read the terms of the contract you're signing then that's your own stupid fault, not an attempt to con you. Now, if the ISP is genuinely misadvertising and not explaining the caps in their literature, then that would be a con, but since you said you'd never sign on with an ISP that had caps, you presumably mean you'd know about them _before_ signing, so no, it wouldn't be a con.

Now if the ISPs were to advertise something like "260GB per month at up to 5mbit speed", then they'd be producing fair ads. Ditto if they sold different cap tiering levels and bundles without requiring you to pony up for a higher speed to get a higher cap.

Oh look, that's exactly what they do.

None of the companies you listed is a consumer-grade ISP. Your Entanet doesn't even advertise that they have residential services.

Entanet doesn't sell directly - you have to go through one of their many resellers, who *do* offer residential connections. For example, I use UKFSN - oh look, right there on their website it says "family broadband". If you buy a "family broadband" connection from UKFSN you'll get an Entanet account which can do IPv6, static IPv4 subnets, etc.

The front page of A&A advertises "Home::1 for the modern family" as a product. Again, you get IPv6, etc. with that.

I'll admit that Bogons is more aimed at business, but in what way are the two ISPs I just mentioned, which both advertise internet connections "for the family" not "consumer grade"?

The few "home" services I found from your recommended companies were also all much more expensive.

Much more expensive than what? Yes, you can certainly get much much cheaper services with quality to match, but the ISPs I mentioned aren't in any way outrageously priced - UKFSN, for example, starts at under £15/month.

Or are you saying that "consumer grade" equates to "cheap shit" and therefore if I point at any ISP that isn't right at the bottom of the barrel then that doesn't qualify?

And your static IP isn't really free if you're paying for a business-class service at a business-class price.

I had static IPs at no extra cost on the three non-business-class services I used before switching to a business account (when I started my business). The first one was Demon, second one was Plusnet, the third was a non-business UKFSN account. Of course, your tortalogical argument of "it isn't consumer grade if it isn't shit so there are no non-shit consumer grade accounts" argument somehow suggests that these consumer-grade accounts aren't actually consumer-grade.

FWIW I've never gotten the option of a "free" static IP with any of the ISPs I've been with.

Maybe you just didn't look?

But then again I don't shop for business-grade broadband for my home anyway.

How much do you pay for your service?

As mentioned above, whilst my current internet connection is a low cost business class ADSL (£22/month + VAT), my previous 3 internet connections were just plain home-user accounts. I can't recall the prices off the top of my head, but I think it was around £20 inc VAT for UKFSN around the 2007-2008 era, £20-or-so for Plusnet around the 2002-2007 era and probably a similar price for Demon in the pre-2002 era. None of these are outrageous prices.

Taek a look at the UK Free Software Network if you want a non-evil ISP.

I live in RBKC. I started with talktalk in March, and it's fine. I have only paid in advance for 1 year's phone line rental (£114), but the broadband is literally free for a year (they gave me a tesco voucher £25 and I used a cashback site which gave me £70 amazon voucher).

Compared to that, BT is really expensive, but then again they currently spend £20 every month sending snailmail spam to every flat in my building. On the other hand, Virgin spends £40 doing the same thing as they use A4 sized envelopes!

Games require fast access to 3D, audio and controls. Having dozens of distros all doing things their own way is a PITA.

No, it isn't. You target SDL, OpenAL, et cetera. They work fine on the popular distributions, i.e. the ones you have to care about.

And the last time I heard someone talk about X, he was saying it's two decades behind in terms of what games require.

He was either a liar or unqualified to comment... or it was two decades ago. We have OpenGL, we have SDL, we have OpenAL, we don't need anything else.

Like it or not, there has to be a single Linux distro with a single specific setup if you want companies to support Linux at all.

Games are being sold right now which run on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. But as anyone who has run all of these operating systems can attest, there are substantial compatibility problems between them. I have run software which will only run on all of these platforms. I have run software which runs on one or more but will not run on one or more other of them. And indeed, the Linux community will figure out how to run your software. That's how we got loki_compat. All that is needed is to support either Debian or Fedora and the community will work it out.

One thing to add, which you may not have realised if you're not a UK user, is that it is absolutely possible for people to vote with their wallets in this case. Unlike the situation as I understand it in the US, we have a fairly good choice of DSL ISPs.

If a person is using TalkTalk, it means they have a BT (physical) phone line, although it may not be currently connected to BT equipment at the exchange. Since BT has long been required to open up their government-provided-monopoly infrastructure to others, it means that there will be a wide choice of ISPs and switching is relatively straightforward.

Also, on a purely personal note, this allows me a brilliant concrete example of why I advise people to pay a little more for a straightforward, unadulterated connection from Be or UKFSN's LLU service (no affiliation with either other than as a satisfied customer) and support those ISPs who don't pull crap like this.

Absolutely there is. They're called UKFSN and they're great.

Long ago I was a Demon customer (back in the early days when they were a really good ISP) but moved to UKFSN shortly after Demon were sold to Thus. As soon as Thus took over their, previously excellent, tech support started to go down the toilet with the final straw being when I was told I couldn't change my ADSL package without being disconnected and paying a new connection fee.

At this point I switched and have never looked back. Demon went from being one of the UKs best ISPs and have turned into yet another crappy clue free organisation with outsourced script reading, mindless call centre drones and no farking clue whatsoever.

Did I mention UKFSN were superior in every way ?

I truly hope Demon goes bust. Soon.

Absolutely there is. They're called UKFSN and they're great.

Long ago I was a Demon customer (back in the early days when they were a really good ISP) but moved to UKFSN shortly after Demon were sold to Thus. As soon as Thus took over their, previously excellent, tech support started to go down the toilet with the final straw being when I was told I couldn't change my ADSL package without being disconnected and paying a new connection fee.

At this point I switched and have never looked back. Demon went from being one of the UKs best ISPs and have turned into yet another crappy clue free organisation with outsourced script reading, mindless call centre drones and no farking clue whatsoever.

Did I mention UKFSN were superior in every way ?

I truly hope Demon goes bust. Soon.

Absolutely there is. They're called UKFSN and they're great.

Long ago I was a Demon customer (back in the early days when they were a really good ISP) but moved to UKFSN shortly after Demon were sold to Thus. As soon as Thus took over their, previously excellent, tech support started to go down the toilet with the final straw being when I was told I couldn't change my ADSL package without being disconnected and paying a new connection fee.

At this point I switched and have never looked back. Demon went from being one of the UKs best ISPs and have turned into yet another crappy clue free organisation with outsourced script reading, mindless call centre drones and no farking clue whatsoever.

Did I mention UKFSN were superior in every way ?

I truly hope Demon goes bust. Soon.

I moved away from Demon after the Internet Watch Foundation debacle last December to UK Free Software Network, and have no complaints about any aspect of their service.

A mobile broadband package with a 15GB cap only costs £15/month if you're willing to put up with a 24-month contract. You could get two of those and have a combined 30GB/month cap and still be paying less than the £42 you seem to think is normal.

...find an Entanet reseller (UKFSN, Freeola, Titan ADSL, Vivaciti, etc) or you're part of the problem... :)

It seems though, that you still need to drop an e-mail to Entanet's support line first to get them to allocate you an IPv6 block over PPPoE.

An alternative for UK surfers:

http://www.ukfsn.org/

I have no affiliation with them, but...

"all profits from UKFSN go to fund UK Free Software projects"

"Our policy is that the electronic communications of our customers are private. We do not intercept, censor, scan or otherwise interfer with our customers' internet service."

"UKFSN does not and will not have any dealings with Phorm, the company behind the Webwise system being deployed by some other ISPs to intercept customer internet traffic. We are firmly of the opinion that the Phorm Webwise system is illegal under UK and EU laws. We also believe it to be fundamentally unethical to intercept customer traffic in this manner. It will never happen here."

"There is some suggestion that the UK government would like to mandate some form of interception and possibly censorship. We would encourage all interested persons to make it clear to MPs and the government generally that this is not acceptable."

but you will still have to pay per minute for the phone call, just as you do with dial-up.
Depends what package you get. There are dialup packages with freephone numbers. They didn't charge per the minuite but they did often have an AUP which prevented being dialled in 24/7 (I think the BT package I was on said 10 hours per day in the AUP though I dunno if they enforced it) and they also made you redial every so often.

ukfsn ( http://www.ukfsn.org/home/internet/friaco.html ) have several packages using this system though they don't seem to have a true unmetered package. They also have dual channel ISDN packages (at about twice the price of single channel packages).

Unfortunately, Super Awesome Broadband would be Super Slow Narrowband where I live - i.e. in a city, but unable to see the telephone exchange from my bedroom window.

After a year of struggling over the ethics of switching to a monopolistic, Phorm-supporting, bandwidth-throttling FTTC cable supplier instead of my morally superior DSL connection, I finally gave in. Goodbye 800Kbit/s, hello 20Mbit/s.

Now I do have trouble sleeping at night, but I can just stream HD video to wile away the time.

I'd second that regarding Entanet and the Wikipedia debacle.

And if you're going the Entanet route you could also try UKFSN who are not only an Entanet reseller but also contribute to the development of open source and have and anti Phorm policy.

As you may guess I'm a very satisfied customer. I've had over 2 years with them now, have not had a single problem and have had good, competent, technical support on the two occasions I've asked technical questions.

Try http://www.ukfsn.org/ - they use Entanet as their upstream provider (no filtering, as another commenter pointed out). Additionally, you are supporting free software by using them, and unlike pretty much every other they are customer friendly - e.g. if you want a MAC code, you can get one instantly from their web site, without them making you go through multiple phone calls where they try and persuade you not to leave.

Check out their statement of policy:

Statement of policy regarding censorship, Phorm/Webwise and other content interception

Our policy is that the electronic communications of our customers are private. We do not intercept, censor, scan or otherwise interfer with our customers' internet service.

UKFSN does not and will not have any dealings with Phorm, the company behind the Webwise system being deployed by some other ISPs to intercept customer internet traffic. We are firmly of the opinion that the Phorm Webwise system is illegal under UK and EU laws. We also believe it to be fundamentally unethical to intercept customer traffic in this manner. It will never happen here.

There is some suggestion that the UK government would like to mandate some form of interception and possibly censorship. We would encourage all interested persons to make it clear to MPs and the government generally that this is not acceptable.

Use UKFSN. Not only are they not censoring, but part of your subscription goes towards free software projects in the UK.

They also have an unlimited package. For all of the people saying 'I'm paying for unlimited bandwidth, I should be able to use it 24/7' you can take a look at how much it would cost if you really were.

FYI: First link fails (I mentioned this in my second post). Second link is fine.

I don't care about the image itself any more than any other Slashdotter, I don't consider it to be child pornography and I certainly don't get excited by it. But I am annoyed at the censorship, as poorly implemented as it is.

I'm examining UKFSN as a switch target as we speak (thanks to Pentagram's recommendation).

Now I am wondering which ISP to move to. Obviously anyone with Phorm is right out (BT, for instance), as is anyone with a strict download cap. Any suggestions?

How strict is strict?

I've found the UK Free Software Network, UKFSN, to be pretty good provided you can mostly sort your own techy problems out. Plus they're specifically anti-Phorm and all profits go towards funding Free Software, if you like that sort of thing.

Me too. I use http://www.ukfsn.org/ as my entanet reseller. All profits go to UK Free Software projects and I can view my usage at any time and I've never come close to the 30GB peak/300GB off-peak usage. I don't torrent, but I get_iplayer quite a lot and host a few personal sites on my link.

Just a happy customer.

I've got an enta.net account through UKFSN which is also truly unlimited. For the really unlimited part of this service, I pay extra - £30 / month - which is approximately twice what most users would pay for their limited service.

Also UKFSN donate some of their profits to free software projects, which is nice.

Rich.

I've got an enta.net account through UKFSN which is also truly unlimited. For the really unlimited part of this service, I pay extra - £30 / month - which is approximately twice what most users would pay for their limited service.

Also UKFSN donate some of their profits to free software projects, which is nice.

Rich.

Can I recommend UKFSN, an entanet reseller. All profits go to fund Free software, might be of interest to UK slashdotters.

Customer service is a bit crap, but most of you should be OK with sorting things yourselves. Reliability, speed etc. is excellent.

If you're going to Entanet why not use UKFSN who are not only an Entanet reseller but donate all profits to fund UK Free Software profits (well that's what it says on the web site).

Personally I've been a happy customer of theirs for the last couple of years. Totally transparent bandwidth allowances, no port protocol blocking, run your own servers, decent web space, database etc. etc. etc.

And no I don't work for them or get commission !

I prefer UKFSN myself. Very open pricing structures, actually a resold Entanet product (hence reliable) and according to their website "Remember all profits from UKFSN go to fund UK Free Software projects.".

Been with them for over a year now, zero problems, zero downtime. The only thing I've not checked up on is which free software projects they're supporting but I've got no reason to doubt that they are.

I'll second enta.net (via UKFSN as with the parent).

I'm on the unlimited 2 Mbps[*] package and it costs me less than my mobile phone bill each month, but approximately twice as much as the throttled nonsense from other providers would.

It really is unlimited too, and believe me I've tested this extensively :-)

The only emails I'm getting from enta.net are to announce that they're lighting up yet more capacity on their central network. That's a nice sort of email to get from your ISP.

Rich.

[*] But my ADSL line syncs at around 6 Mbps and I can burst up to this.

I'm pleased overall with my Entanet DSL. All the resellers seem to offer the same price packages, so I use UKFSN (no association with them other than as a customer) who use all of their profits to fund UK free software projects. The business packages are reasonably priced and seem to be the closest thing you can get to a direct, neutral, non 'managed' connection these days. They also offer genuine unlimited packages, although the prices might be a bit of a shock to people used to the so-called unlimited offerings from other ISPs.

The one thing that I would fault them on is their data transfer allowance system. Basically the penalty fees for going a few GB over the limit will add about 50% to that month's bill.

If you are located in the UK, why not try out the UK Free Software Network ISP? All their profits go to open source software funding, they set well defined badnwidth limits and good speeds, and don't interfere with your network traffic like some ISPs do. I haven't used them before, but it looks awesome and I will definately be switching in the near future.

A year or so ago, NTL (now Virgin Media) was talking about eliminating price differentiation based on speed and moving entirely to a cap-based system. Every customer would have got 10Mb/s, and you'd just have paid more for larger download limits. I wouldn't be surprised if they started doing this soon. Some other ISPs already charge in this way (although not all of them use their profits to fund Free Software development).

https://www.ukfsn.org/business/internet/adsl/maxallowance.html

45Gb peak D/L, 300Gb Off Peak D/L up to 8mb, £25.00 + VAT = £29.35 ( $57.25 approx )

I'll be sticking with UKFSN. No throttling, no traffic shaping, no "fair use" - and no stream tampering for the foreseeable future, I'll bet.

I'd recommend them to anyone.

ISPs in the UK are starting to moan about having to carry traffic too, even going so far as to suggest the BBC should pay them.

The big ISPs are certainly complaining ("oops, we underpriced our product and are now making a loss - we'll demand that some random 3rd party bail us out of our mess"). Notably many of the smaller ISPs are now very explicit about their limits rather than selling everything as "unlimited". The smaller ISPs are showing that if you charge people appropriately and make it clear what they are paying for, even the high bandwidth users can be profitable customers.

Hopefully the end result will be that all ISPs will stop misleading their customers by selling limited accounts as "unlimited".

I don't think Europe is immune to profiteering by reducing the service standards so you can get by on a lesser investment.

Indeed not - underprovisioning the network and deprioritising bittorrent seems to be a reasonably common bad practice. However, by provisioning the network correctly and setting the pricing model appropriately, the high bandwidth users can pay for their own bandwidth rather than being subsidised by everyone else.

What if BitTorrent consumes 40% of Comcast's bandwidth, but BitTorrent is used by only 5% of Comcast's customers (i.e., accounts for only 5% of Comcast's ISP revenue). Wouldn't the loss of that 5% of their ISP customer revenue be worthwhile from an accounting viewpoint, if it indeed frees up an extra 40% of bandwidth

Not necessarilly. It only makes sense if the cost price of that 40% of their bandwidth is higher than that 5% revenue.

You can always find a bunch of people using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth - once you've got rid of the bittorrent traffic the "average bandwidth used" across the network is going to be reduced. Then you might find that people who play games use a greater than the average amount of bandwidth used. So you kick off all the gamers, the average will drop again and then you can select a new group who's using more than average - eventually you're going to be left with an ISP that refuses to cator for anyone who is doing anything more than SSH.

The solution, which a lot of UK ISPs are now moving towards (especially the smaller ones, who aren't goverened by moronic marketting people quite as much as the big ones) is to stop selling "unlimited" accounts - sell several different grades of account with clearly defined bandwidth limits. The people who use a lot of bandwidth therefore have to pay more than those who are just doing a bit of light web surfing and so the high bandwidth users cover their own costs rather than being subsidised by everyone else.

Take a look at UKFSN's prices for example. If you're a low usage user, you get their basic package which allows 3GB a month in the "peak" hours and 30GB a month at all other times. If you want to run BitTorrent 24/7 you can pay more and get 150GB peak, 420GB off-peak (and various packages in between). The limits are clearly defined and what happens when you exceed them is also explicitly defined (you get bumped up to the next price band for a month and get a 5ukp charge on top).

Sadly a lot of ISPs seem to consider BitTorrent to be an easy target for cost savings. I'm a big fan of traffic shaping - it keeps my SSH and VoIP stuff usable while someone's hammering away with BitTorrent. However, IMHO traffic shaping should only come into effect in exceptionaly situations - if I've been sold an 8Mbps connection with a 30GB/month cap, I damned well should be able to get close to 8MBps most of the time if I haven't gone anywhere near my usage cap no matter what protocol I use. If my traffic has to be throttled by the ISP most of the time then they have underprovisioned their network and that needs fixing.

The ISPs have brought this problem on themselves to a large extent by not being open about the limits. If an ISP says "8Mbps unlimited broadband" should they be at all surprised when people want to be able to do 8Mbps 24/7? They should be making it clear what you're getting much like datacentres do. e.g. Burst speed of 8Mbps, average speed 2Mbps, monthly cap 30GB.

The bottom line is that Comcast needs to make room for more HD TV channels on their cable, and the easiest, most cost-effective way to do that is to kill off the unprofitable BitTorrent traffic.

Or just charge the high bandwidth users more which would pay for the network capacity to be increased. There's no need to single out specific protocols here - if someone's using a large amount of bandwidth for *anything* make them pay more.

Damn right.

I recently had problems where my old ISP (Demon Internet) wouldn't answer my emailed questions. Even worse their only response was to email me back "copy & pasted" extracts from their FAQs. So I duly emailed them back explaining that they hadn't answered my questions, their FAQ didn't answer my questions and if they did the same thing again I would immediately move to another ISP.

Needless to say they once again pasted the same useless FAQ page so I immediately moved to UKFSN. Now I couldn't be happier. Great service, great tech support and profits go towards supporting free software.

Sadly Demon used to provide excellent tech support (I was a customer for 12 years) but once they got taken over by Thus their tech support got outsourced. So now it's utterly, utterly shite.

Demons crappy customer support lost them my custom. Not only my custom but I also no longer recommend them to friends. UKFSN now get these recommendtation too.

Crappy customer support = lost customers.

Damn right.

I recently had problems where my old ISP (Demon Internet) wouldn't answer my emailed questions. Even worse their only response was to email me back "copy & pasted" extracts from their FAQs. So I duly emailed them back explaining that they hadn't answered my questions, their FAQ didn't answer my questions and if they did the same thing again I would immediately move to another ISP.

Needless to say they once again pasted the same useless FAQ page so I immediately moved to UKFSN. Now I couldn't be happier. Great service, great tech support and profits go towards supporting free software.

Sadly Demon used to provide excellent tech support (I was a customer for 12 years) but once they got taken over by Thus their tech support got outsourced. So now it's utterly, utterly shite.

Demons crappy customer support lost them my custom. Not only my custom but I also no longer recommend them to friends. UKFSN now get these recommendtation too.

Crappy customer support = lost customers.

Not sure who they are - but this might interest you: UKFSN's home offerings.

Demon customer service stinks so bad it's not even funny.

I'd thoroughly recommend that you switch to a real ISP instead. UKFSN are good and they're totally transparent about the limits you have (30gb on peak, 300 Gb off peak on their Home Max 30, £19.20 a month account) Plus 50Gb webspace on which you can run php/cgi and a database to boot. Much, much better than Demon.

Oh and all profits go back to support free software.

Why yes I am an ex Demon cusomter.

PIPEX are looking to be bought out. Maybe by tiscali.

Get a real ISP, like Black Cat Networks or Andrews and Arnold Ltd. Alternatively, UKFSN (an Enta.net reseller) are pretty good, if you're tighter around the pocket.

[Captcha: protests]

the UK ISP UKFSN has a student sponsorship program.
http://www.ukfsn.org/profits.html

they seem to currently only have one student http://andrewprice.me.uk/weblog/entry/free-softwar e-paying-my-bills

I have already looked at this from the moon, using the truly quite excellent Celestia.
Eclipse shown from the moon (225Kb)

The UK also has some initiatives such as the UK Free Software Network (UKFSN) which seem to be doing really well. It's a zero-support ISP which donates profits to open source projects.

Right. However I've heard from discussion with an Free-Software-supporting ADSL ISP founder / operator (Jason Clifford, UK Free Software Network, they rock, he practically runs it as a charity) that backbone bandwidth in of itself isn't really expensive. The expensive part is when you have it absolutely guaranteed by SLAs and running on top-grade, distributed, DDoS resistant hosting. If they're prepared to compromise a bit on both of those that would bring their costs down a lot.

Happened to the uklinux Guy:

http://www.jasonclifford.com/uklinux.html

BTW, if you are in UK stop using UKLINUX, use http://www.ukfsn.org/ which is what Jason started after the take over of his first ISP.

...So, I had to leave Tiscali and they wanted one months notice, which they got and after a month, my broadband stopped working. It then took many calls to Tiscali chasing them up to get BT to cease the line...

Sadly, that's my experience too (though with fairadsl, not Tiscali). I'll never go with an ISP who (a) is cheap-as-chips, and (b) isn't part of the MAC system. The whole MAC thing annoyed me; basically OFCOM (OFTEL?) don't really seem to regulate the non-MAC ISPs, which mean that the ISPs have you over a barrel. Some advice I was given at the time was: call BT and claim you want to switch broadband provider to BT, but you can't do it online "because there's a problem". Let BT sort out the problem (ie. put a rocket up the backside of your old ISP), then walk away - and to your chosen ISP. Worked for me ;-)

I'm now with http://www.demon.net/ who I'm very happy with...

Equally happy! Though if that ever changes I'll give Demon a try.

Use UK Free Software Network instead. They fund Free Software with their profits.

Use UK Free Software Network instead. They fund Free Software with their profits.

In the UK we have a completely different approach to telephony and the concept of special rate numbers enables us to run "local rate" ISPs wherein the ISP receives a portion of the call termination fee from the telco.

This is a major income stream for most ISPs - eg an ISP with 5000 active dialup users can expect between £5,000 and £10,000 in dialup revenue per month. This is for not much work on the ISPs part and the Telco typically terminates the calls directly onto the Internet.

I've set up a number of ISPs based upon this model.

The most recent of them is the UK Free Software Network (http://www.ukfsn.org/) which gives all the profits to fund Free Software projects in the UK. It also publishes it's accounts each month on the website.