[andrewb]

See this is a quarrel I have. I think privatisation was a good idea, introducing competition is better for the customer, it lowers prices, normally due to efficency rather than lower quality product/service as competition means companies have to provide good quality products/services.

However, take the broadband/phone market. It is so confusing. Does anyone actually know who the cheapest supplier is? For example you have BT offering tons of different "packages" which have face values, but then as Jambutty says they're adding a £4.50 charge, now thats quite an additional amount.

The average user has no idea how many Gigabytes he/she needs, has no idea what speed will be adequate, certainly has no idea what "contention" means on adsl lines. So how is a user supposed to pick which package and price bracket he/she needs, and what supplier is the cheapest with the best product? To make things more confusing "Unlimited" generally doesn't mean unlimited, it means "You can download as much as you want, until we think you're downloading too much, then we'll start charging you or disconnect you"

Sigh..