Pay as you go (payg) internet is basically the same offering as payg broadband – you are paying as you use a service, in this case access to the internet.

The main difference between pay as you go internet and pay as you go broadband is in the the speed of access connection to the internet.

Broadband – by definition – requires high speed access to the internet (In the UK an internet connection is only broadband if it has speeds in excess of 2mb).

Pay as you go internet is more encompassing. It includes pay as you go broadband, pay as you go mobile broadband, pay as you go 3g internet, and standard pay as you go dial-up broadband.

Dial-up broadband connections offer the cheapest way of accessing the broadband internet in the UK but the connection speeds are both slow (remember the old dial-up days of 56k modems) and do not work out as cost effective in terms of £ per MB of data downloaded.

Mobile broadband is not too different from the old dial-up broadband in that the connection speeds to the internet are relatively slow and you pay for the data as you download it – true pay as you go stuff- “you get what you pay for”.

So be careful – both pay as you go mobile broadband and pay as you go internet dial-ups can be expensive if you plan to use the internet frequently.

The prices of pay as you go mobile internet plans are coming down, so if you can afford it, chose a pay as you go mobile broadband plan over a standard pay as you go dial-up internet connection.

For more information, visit the internet dongle page, the mobile broadband page or the mobile broadband provider page.