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Broadband is now an essential utility, yet it’s still tricky to buy. Although things have got a lot better in the past few years, there are a few price traps to watch out for.

There are three basic kinds of connection. Leased lines offer guaranteed performance, but start at several hundred pounds a month for relatively low bandwidth For individual users and smaller businesses, the choices are ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line), which works over the copper telephone network and accounts for the vast majority of connections, and cable broadband, operated in the UK only by Virgin Media.

There’s a good reason why ADSL adverts quote ‘up to³ a certain number of megabits per second (Mbit/sec): they rely on copper wires that were buried in the ground by Post Office workers around the time our parents got their first Trimphones. No matter how honest the supplier, nobody can tell you for sure what speed you’ll get until they try it.

Each ISP’s website should provide a line checker that estimates the speed that’s likely on your line. You should also be quoted this figure when you sign up. This is helpful, but by no means reliable. That’s not to say your ISP has no control over the speed you’ll see. Thanks to ‘unbundling’, companies can install their own equipment at local

exchanges for different levels of service. That’s why a specialist provider such as Be might offer higher speeds on your line.

It’s frustrating that ‘up to 8Mbit’ or ‘up to 20Mbit’ varies in practice between lines and between ISPs, but that’s the way it is. Ask your chosen supplier what they consider the minimum acceptable speed, and what they’ll do if it isn’t reached. Beyond that, you can only sign up, then check the speeds you’re actually getting over a week or two.

If you’re not happy, Ofcom’s code of practice, which is voluntary but adopted by most reputable ISPs, says they must ‘have a robust process for identifying’ if your slow throughput is due to a fault on their part, a problem with your own wiring, or a lower-than-expected ‘access line speed’, the maximum achievable between you and the exchange. Where line speed is the problem, you should be offered a lower tariff that better reflects the actual speed you can get

Although this remains a grey area, we think you should feel entitled to reject a lower speed even at a lower price; you may prefer to try another supplier or go for cable rather than ADSL. If you’re not satisfied with your speed, say so as early as you can, and put the supplier on notice that if it’s not resolved you reserve the right to cancel the contract.

Cable guys

Virgin Media’s UK cable network is the exception to almost every broadband rule. It’s based on relatively new, privately owned fibre-optic lines, so it’s faster and more consistent. Currently, Virgin users can opt for up to soMbit/sec, and iooMbit is due to roll out in the coming year. That’s four times faster than the best ADSL rates – even BT’s new Infinity network only offers 40Mbit.

While line speeds are much less fickle, there’s still one major issue that affects cable as well as ADSL users: contention. The amount of data you receive depends on how many other lines the ISP’s equipment is trying to squirt data into at the same time. BT’s standard wholesale deals used to be based on either 20:1 or 50:1 contention, but in practice an ADSL ISP controls how many users you’re really competing with for bandwidth, and talking about contention ratios has rather fallen out of fashion.

Nonetheless, it’s a fact that ISPs have to balance the number of customers they take on against the provisioning of their network, and this is true of cable, too. Still, a 50Mbit connection used regularly by MacUser typically performs in the high 30Mbit range, and hits 50Mbit often enough to reassure us that the line speed is up there.

If you can get cable in your street (don’t confuse it with Virgin’s alternative ADSL tariffs, which it calls National Broadband), it’s currently the best way to get really high speeds. However, it’s not cheap, and working out exactly what it’ll cost you is a lesson in purchasing. The 50Mbit ‘XXL’ tariff is advertised at Јi 2.50 per month, but this is just for the first six months; after that it rises to Ј25. You’re locked in for 18 months, so you’re committed to spending Ј375.

That’s not all. You can only get this tariff when you pay Ј12.99 per month for a Virgin phone line. That means you’re committing to a total of Ј609. (Some ADSL deals also depend on you switching your landline to the ISP and paying its line rental fees.) Virgin lets you opt out, but the 50Mbit tariff then goes up to Ј35 a month.

These particular offers were due to end as we went to press, so you’ll need to check what’s changed, but the message is clear: whichever ISP you’re considering, read the small print and work out the total costs before deciding. It’s important to get it right, because once you’ve agreed to a fixed-term contract, as you’ll usually have to, you won’t be able to switch until that contract is up.

This also applies when you renegotiate: to get the savings, you’ll be asked to take a new contract for at least a year. Be prepared for this when you haggle over your tariff and think it over before you say yes.

Ask for less

Once your contract is up, your negotiating position is strong. Don’t be a mug and sit on the deal you started with. In fact, there’s nothing to stop you renegotiating at any time, even if you’re still in contract The provider is under no obligation to improve the deal, but it can’t hurt to ask, especially after a good few months have passed.

If you’re in contract, any aspect of the service that’s changed since you started will give you extra leverage. For example, the small print may say traffic management policies may be varied, but if you’ve been affected by heavier traffic shaping, complain and ask for a price cut or a free upgrade. The same applies if you’ve seen speeds fall over time, which may reflect higher contention. Have your speed check figures ready.

Haggling only works by phone – don’t bother by email or live chat If you’re out of contract, say explicitly that you’re planning to cancel and go to another supplier. This is the trigger for call centre staff to offer you bigger discounts to make you happy

If they can’t, and there’s a better deal elsewhere, switching isn’t too tricky To move from ADSL to cable or vice versa, just cancel the existing service, then arrange the new one, since they’re unrelated. To switch ADSL provider on the same line, you’ll need a MAC (migration authorisation code – nothing to do with Apple, or with the ‘media access control’ address of your network connection, confusingly) from your old supplier to pass on to your new Your ISP has five working days to give you this, once you’ve asked for it

Your new provider won’t necessarily be that quick in setting you up, although most are. It’s worth thinking about making alternative provision, such as 3 G tethering or mifi, to tide you over any gap.

Although ‘unlimited’ broadband services have no monthly cap, they’re almost always governed by ‘fair use’ limits and traffic management policies, which could mean you’re denied your full line speed because you use the service more than most.

For example, Virgin ‘moderates’ the speeds of cable customers who download or upload large amounts of data during peak periods. 50Mbit customers aren’t affected, but as network improvements bring upload speeds up to 5Mbit, that benefit will be taken away again for users who upload heavily, with speeds throttled back to 1.75Mbit.

How much is too much? Users on the 20Mbit tariff can only download 3.5GB during peak hours before having their speed cut for the rest of the period. Virgin says this is enough for five movies; it means streamed movies, at relatively low quality. Downloaded iTunes movies range from around 1.2 to 2 GB each. Many creative pros will also need to download and, more challengingly, upload projects bigger than this.

More worryingly still for some users, Virgin admits that it selectively slows down traffic to and from file sharing services such as BitTorrent, Limeware and Gnutella at peak times, regardless of how much you’re personally using them. This is contrary to the principle of net neutrality, but many ISPs have similar policies on their ADSL tariffs.

O2 throttles both video streaming and file sharing (via specific websites). On its ‘All Rounder’ tariff, peer-to-peer file sharing is limited to a glacial 0.25 Mbit, falling to just 0.1Mbit at ‘busy times’. Video is limited to 8 Mbit, out of a maximum of 24Mbit. Even ‘The Works’, which generally doesn’t limit usage at all, applies the 0.25Mbit throttle to P2P at busy times. Meanwhile, Virgin’s peak hours are 4pm to 9 pm on weekdays, Cte’s ‘busy times’ are 4pm to midnight plus 12pm to midnight at weekends – more than a third of the whole time.

The Ofcom code of practice says ISPs must make information about traffic management ‘prominently’ available on their websites. In practice, it can be hard to find and poorly explained. ISPs are also supposed to email you to tell you if your service is being throttled due to excessive use. Few appear to have a policy of doing so. You can find out more about the Ofcom code of practice atbitly.

It’s a topic most people have a view on: does watching violent films make teenagers more aggressive? To find out, neuroscientists showed violent films to a group of 14- to17-year- old boys while scanning their brains. As the teens viewed more, the areas of their brains involved with emotions became less active. The scientists at the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Maryland say this kind of acceptance is what could lead to violence in the real world.

It disrupted air travel for a week, but geologists now think they’ve got to the bottom of why the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull proved to be so troublesome. Using data from satellites and seismometers, the scientists have been able to get a deeper understanding of the volcano’s internal plumbing and exactly what went on in April 2010.

Airspace was closed over much of Europe, resulting in thousands of flights being grounded and passengers stranded when a cloud of volcanic ash was thrown kilometres into the air, spreading far and wide. It all started with an intrusion of magma below the mountain which was spotted back in 2009 as a subtle change in the volcano’s shape. This prompted scientists at the University of Iceland to deploy instruments tracking what the mountain was up to. These included the German TerraSAR-X satellite, which took repeated images of Eyjafjallajokull.

An experimental system being developed by NASA could provide a worldwide safeguard against power cuts caused by super-sized solar storms.

When the Sun is particularly active, it can spew out a billion tonnes of charged particles across space towards Earth in one burst. And when one of these ‘coronal mass ejections’ hits the magnetic field that surrounds Earth, it makes it shake. These magnetic vibrations produce electrical currents, which is bad news for power grids. The currents can overload circuits and melt transformers that regulate power flow. That’s exactly what happened in 1989, when the whole of Quebec was without power for more than nine hours.

But, by studying data from satellites, NASA says it will be able to predict where and when these ‘geomagnetically induced currents’, or GICs, are likely to be produced. Then the solution is simple: switch off the power grid in the vulnerable area until the storm passes.

“It’s good to know beforehand if something is going to hit you,” says Solar Shield project leader Antti Pulkkinen. “The system takes satellite observations of solar weather and generates large-scale 3D simulations of the incoming storm at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. As the storm travels through space, we have 24-48 hours to calculate GICs for different areas. Power grid engineers can use these forecasts to protect vulnerable parts of the network by disconnecting them.”

But we’ll only know whether Solar Shield actually works when there’s another super solar storm. “We’re waiting for a major space weather event to test the true capability of the predictions,” says Pulkkinen.