It had to happen. Just when you thought it was safe to boast about your shiny new high-speed connection, along comes another wave of digital dragsters that make basic broadband feel like driving an overpriced old banger.

Doors has always viewed 512kbps as a starting speed for broadband — being “always on” and 10 times faster than old dial-up, it really reveals the beauty of the internet. However, this summer those boy-racer connections are in the slow lane compared with the latest 1Mbps and 2Mbps services, which pull music and images from the web in a trice. In enabled areas, you might well be able to sign up for a tyre-burning 8Mbps service.

Such turbocharged offerings once carried sports-car price tags, but 1Mbps and 2Mbps services now routinely cost the same as 512kbps, and the writing is on the wall.

AOL, for example, charges £18 per month for an unlimited 512kbps connection, whereas NewNet puts you online at four times that speed for £12, albeit with limitations. Higher speeds are important because they mean less thumb-twiddling: a typical 4MB music file takes two minutes to download on a 512kbps connection, but only 30 seconds at 2Mbps. You have to watch out for restrictions, though. “There’s a change of emphasis, away from speed and price to a more complicated set of purchasing criteria,” says Ian Fogg, senior broadband analyst with Jupiter Research. “You will often see 512kbps and 1Mbps connections at the same price, but the faster one will have a restrictive download limit, while the basic service is all-inclusive.”

It is important to choose a service that suits your surfing habits. NewNet’s cheap-as-chips 2Mbps bundle limits traffic to 1GB per month, enough for routine surfing and online banking, but no good for downloading large media files. If you want to harvest the net’s video and music treasures, avoid download caps. Timewarp’s unlimited 1Mbps service is just the ticket for importing the complete works of David Bowie overnight.

Understanding restrictions is critical as the computer becomes a gateway to web entertainment, and in a recent survey by the ISP Association, one in five surfers rated “no usage restrictions” above both price and speed as the most important factor when choosing a provider.

Where available, new packages from Bulldog and UK Online take broadband up to Michael Schumacher speeds, which are ideal if you live in a house where several people might download music or play online games at the same time. Upgrades will always depend on the distance to your telephone exchange, but given the option, you would have to be madder than Max not to rev up to the fastest connection that suits your net needs.

The examples in this chart offer good value from ISPs that are highly rated by the broadband watchdog www.adslguide.org.uk. Prices include Vat.

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