It's about my experience choosing high-speed internet access in Luxembourg and ends with a request for info about Alternet/Tiscali.

I recently arrived in Luxembourg and started looking for a good ISP. My discovery? It's incredibly hard to find out any quality of service info on an ISP. There is, for instance, no website that collects information and complaints about ISPs. I find this amazing because the contracts here are very restrictive, and if you don't like the service, there's nothing you can do but wait until the contract ends. I was used to being able to get out with 30 days notice.

Anyway, at first, I assumed I' go with DSL because I've always have. Then tried to persuade me to consider cable - cheaper, faster, and offering a telephone alternative to P&T. Coditel is the cable provider in my area. The cable fan I spoke to is in an Eltrona area.

Try as I might, I couldn't get any objective information on the Coditel service. What I did get was a lot of anecdotal evidence that Coditel was having serious tech problems with their telephone service, and their billing and customer support service was seriously lacking. I did hear that their internet service worked as advertised. But I also heard that the company's quality had gone downhill since it was acquired by a Belgian company. Since I'm not really interested in the local cable offerings for TV, I'd only have cable if it offered me a way to avoid paying for a P&T landline, as well. Based on what I could find out, I dropped the idea.

Next I returned to DSL. Having tracked the prices, I could see that competition was having a noticeable effect, reducing the cable price advantage. But again, I had limited information on quality of service.

So I devised an experiment. I have a DSL modem that I bought in Canada. I decided to ask all 11 DSL ISPs I knew whether my DSL modem ought to work here. I sent the message listing the technical specs of my modem (I had already ascertained with the manufacturer that it probably will work here) at 15:58 on Dec. 12. It's not 16:32 on Dec. 14, and so far, only 4 of the ISPs (2 of which turned out to be different names for the same outfit) have bothered to respond.

Based on this experiment and my interaction with the people who responded and their prices, I am considering signing up with Alternet/Tiscali (they responded right away with accurate, detailed information and had a deal on a level with the cheapest on the market. I wonder if I could trouble list members for any information that I should consider before committing myself.