I first signed onto then Cable London, then Telewest and now Virgin several years ago just for the telephone services; however it was with Telewest that I actually signed up to their cable & internet services because I was constantly hogging the telephone line with dial-up internet.
When Telewest first installed my wireless internet services the installer said that I could only use their internet & e-mail services, which made me laugh because I though the whole idea of internet was freedom to roam - freedom of choice. As soon as he left his router with PC card that only allowed one person to use the internet at a time, I jumped on my bicycle (literally) and brought my own cable-router and plugged it in and continued using AOL along with my brother, three of us now share this connection. Wireless took off so fast in the US because it allowed more than one person at a time to share the broadband.
A word of warning: obviously most of my neighbours had also signed up for similar services and like myself also brought their own router, but at one time I could access at least five different unsecured networks (and log onto them when mine went down) – So make sure you
secure your network with some basic encryption and also secure your router to use only specified mac addresses – this would stop any paedophile accessing child porn through your network. Another added layer of security is once I have set up the network I switch off my
SSID broadcast so the network becomes invisible, but still works perfectly.
I personally use
Netgear equipment but check
WHICH, also available in most libraries, which is best for your own use.