The contract isn’t the problem. The lack of choice is.

I don’t think a broadband contract is automatically a bad thing. If someone understands the deal and wants to commit to it, fine. Twelve months? Fine. Twenty-four? Also fine.

But I want them to have a choice. A genuine one, including a 30-day option. Not a choice between two versions of the same long commitment.

My frustration is with what people are expected to accept once they’ve signed up. A bill that grows. A connection that disappoints. And the feeling that the provider’s commitment to delivering is rather more flexible than the customer’s commitment to paying.

Tell people what they’ll pay.

I want someone choosing broadband to be able to answer a simple question: what is this going to cost me over the agreement?

If a price will change, put that change where people actually make the decision. Alongside the starting price. Make the amount, timing and overall cost easy to understand. A lower number in a bigger font shouldn’t do all the talking.

My preference is a price you can rely on for the term you’ve chosen. Running a network costs money. That’s a reason to price the service properly, not a reason to make the customer’s budget harder to manage.

The bill isn’t the only obligation.

If you sell a service, delivering it is your side of the bargain. When it falls short, I expect the provider to investigate properly, explain what’s happening and take responsibility for the parts it controls.

That doesn’t mean pretending every problem has the same cause. The access line, the provider’s network, the router and the Wi-Fi inside a home are different things. Working out where the problem sits matters.

But that technical distinction should help get the problem fixed. It shouldn’t become a clever way of ending the conversation. Someone reporting a poor connection needs a useful next step, not a lesson in why it might be somebody else’s fault.

A customer shouldn’t need to become a network engineer to get a straight answer.

Thirty days. Twelve months. Twenty-four.

Those are the options I think people should have. Explain the prices and the trade-offs, then let them decide.

A person who wants flexibility may choose a rolling agreement. Someone who knows they’ll be staying put may be happy to commit for longer. Neither of them is wrong, and neither should have to defend that choice to a sales team.

I’m not arguing that every term has to cost the same. I’m arguing that the difference should be clear, and that flexibility should be a real option.

That’s the standard I want to see: an understandable price, a service that does what was promised, and a commitment the customer has actually chosen.

And yes, I run an ISP. That makes these questions my problem as well.

I’m the founder of Olilo. This is my personal view on how broadband should work, not a statement of current Olilo tariffs or contract availability.