In that case it depends what additional features you want I guess. Will you be looking for email and webspace and all that sort of thing? I'd probably (and do myself) get those types of services from other places than my ISP, that way I could switch ISP's easily without the worry of getting to my mail (many ISP's are taking a harder line to people who use email but not the dialin). - Talk21.com and 2mogi.com provide free email, I used 2mogi to get an email address of [email protected]. It can also do things like [email protected] which is cool. One thing though, most free mail houses only support webmail. If you are into webspace you brobably know all about that side of things already brinkster.com is worthy of mention as they are the only MS database supporting free ISP I know (I wish I could integrate websites with databases).
On the dialin side, why don't you give to charity? oxfam do a pay as you go service which is cheap and cheerful. One nice feature is you don't have to register to use the service (but you do have to allow your Telephone number to be passed to the ISP. Although Oxfam is a small ISP it works by pooling its dial ports with other ISP's to create a single dial pool which rivals the top ten ISP's which means the platform is stable and you almost always get a connection.
I'd also recommend you sign up to a couple of ISP's if you are on PAYG. That way if one goes down you can redial using an alternative provider. This is where having an independant mail provider is really good.
There may be other services which could sway you towards the bigger ISP's such as support for Outlook (smtp mail) or parental controls. Most do PAYG (although they don't all like to sell it). In terms of the big boys, I think about them in terms of how intrusive they are, in that I don't want anybody recording what I do. On this subject I can only give an invormed guess as to those most likely to be over intrusive based on the technology deployed and the personality of the organisation. Strangely BT rates highly in that whilst at present some ISP's lack the technology needed to make snooping effective, only BT is a regulated body, and as such can be fully investigated at any time, you don't do anything too dodgy in such an environment! If you don't like BT Tiscali could be your cup of tea, the home sites a bit awkward but if you use outlook you need never go there.
What do you think?
