Getting online: Santa needs specific instructions to get best offer

Are all Internet service providers the same? Should Santa just sign up with whichever one he happens upon? Most people who are already online would say yes, but that's because they are already signed up somewhere, and it's probably too much trouble to change. In fact, there are some differences, and newcomers should consider these carefully before choosing.

If you live outside Dublin, the first issue to consider is whether or not there is a local access number. If there isn't, think again. Every minute you spend online will be billed as a trunk call, and this will prove very costly.

Of the six Internet service providers (ISPs) listed below, only one offers local call access everywhere; check through the others to see if your area is covered.

Although CompuServe has local access only in Dublin, Cork, Shannon and everywhere in Northern Ireland, it does score heavily for travellers. The ISP has local telephone numbers in cities all over the world, so that someone with a laptop in Paris, New York, Berlin or Rome has local-call access to the service.

Newcomers to the Internet will also want a decent level of customer service, especially for the first month or so. Again, the service here varies enormously.

Ireland On Line has been criticised on this score. Indigo appears to be more helpful, but suffers from mysterious blackout periods, when customers can only get engaged tones, or cannot log on to the main server.

TInet, the Internet arm of Telecom Eireann, is a relative newcomer to the market and there are few reports either way about its service; Club Internet and Connect Ireland are both Dublin-based but seem to have friendly and helpful crews.

For customer service, CompuServe rates poorly; any cries for help have to be made by calling Britain, where the staff seem to know very little about the service offered here.

In terms of what you get once online, most have pretty much the same deal. Customers have access to the Internet, newsgroups, and can open their own home page on the World Wide Web. CompuServe is better than the others here, also offering its own, dedicated database, with news, various online clubs, encyclopedias and more.

You may also want to check what software is provided for customers. CompuServe has its own, special software, as well as its own Internet browser. The programme can be tweaked so that customers can use any browser. Ireland On Line, Indigo, TInet and Club Internet all provide Microsoft's Explorer browser, which is free anyway. Connect Ireland is promoting a small but powerful browser, called Opera, a version of which will soon be available in Irish.

You can, of course, use any browser you like, including the ever-popular Netscape Navigator, with any of the ISPs.

If there is likely to be more than one user in a family, it could be useful to have more than one email address. Currently, all of the ISPs allow only one address, except for TInet, which allows three. Subscribers to Connect Ireland can get family membership for an extra £15 a year, and this allows three addresses, but they must be similar, such as murphy1, murphy2 and murphy3.

Speed of service is another issue worth examining, although there is often little an ISP can do about this.

All of the companies listed below offer speeds of at least 28.8 kbps, and some are at 33.6 kbps or even 56.6 kbps. But to benefit from the higher speeds, customers must have faster modems, and their telephone lines must be able to deliver data at the requisite rate. This is not always the case, and before spending money on a faster modem, it might be an idea to write to Telecom Eireann and ask specifically about the lines to your house.

Finally, there's the cost, and in some cases the "registration fee". The two big ISPs - Ireland On Line and Indigo - charge an identical annual fee at £121, but the start-up fee differs. Indigo comes in at £10, while IOL charges £30.25. TInet has a £12.50 registration fee, and charges £145.20 a year. Club Internet has no fee and costs £99 a year, but Connect Ireland comes in cheapest with no fee and £85 per year for access.

CompuServe has a strange fee structure, with two plans, based around $9.95 (around £7) for five hours a month, and $24.95 (about £17) for 20 hours a month. There is no registration fee. Obviously, this costs more than the others for anything other than very light use, but may be worth it if you would use CompuServe's own database as well as the Internet.