How often do you switch ISPs?

I was just thinking - I signed-up to my first "home" ISP (dial-up in those days) in June 1997, and since then I've only actually switched provider three times, and have been with my current provider for 8 years.

Is that unusual? How long do others stay with their ISP?

Are you really on Home 500?

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Are you really on Home 500?

Yes, and I have no plans to upgrade.

I've been with the same ISP but under 3 names by takeover for 11 years.

For home use I started with dial up to virgin.net, even when we moved to our present home in 2002 I kept that going. In 2003, based on personal recommendation, I went broadband with Eclipse. And am still with them, although I've changed packages 2 or 3 times.

See no reason to change.

3 different ISP's in 10 years.
1st AOL (dial up) then upgraded to AOL BB
2nd at the same house O2 BB taking advantage of their O2 mobile customer offer and LLU service (was excellent)
3rd Moved house and no choice but BT for the last 3 years (still excellent but costs more than O2)
Will be staying with BT until something better is available but that might be when Hell freezes over where I live

In reply to a post by Trellis:

Yes, and I have no plans to upgrade.

Which probably explains why you don't move very often.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by Trellis:

Yes, and I have no plans to upgrade.

Which probably explains why you don't move very often.

So how many ISPs do you get through then?

Just two since I can't remember when. Pipex for many happy years until they fell prey to Tiscali, and Be since then. Pipex did me a great favour by becoming so awful.

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

For home use I started with dial up to virgin.net, even when we moved to our present home in 2002 I kept that going. In 2003, based on personal recommendation, I went broadband with Eclipse. And am still with them, although I've changed packages 2 or 3 times.

See no reason to change.

I started out on Virgin.net dial-up as well! It was really good in the early days when you had to pay about £12 a month for it, but when it went "free" I started having real problems just getting through, and would have to retry about 10 times to get a free line. Sometimes it was just busy all evening and I couldn't get on at all.

But sitting listening to the modem endlessly redialling for half an hour just to check your e-mails was part of the fun