Us chaps finally have something to compare to childbirth - swapping our broadband providers. Just like the birth thing, it takes a long time to pluck up the courage, even longer to arrange, and we tend to push the pain of the whole exercise to the back of our minds in the immediate joy of the final success.

Basis for this doubtless controversial assertion? I’ve just made the jump, after two not-unhappy years with BT/Yahoo!, to HomeChoice. I was without broadband for almost 18 hours and, let me tell you, I was getting the shakes. So, just to remind myself of how stressful all this is, and to help others thinking of giving the unique delights of Homechoice a spin, I thought I’d offer a wee review of my experience thus far.

First, why go through all this? Well, HomeChoice is slightly more interesting than your regular broadband provider, because fast internet isn’t really their point. Y’see, they deliver TV down your phone line as well, via the same DSL you use for your net connection.

It was the telly bit that sold it to me, and not just because it’s clearly the damndest thing - I mean - TV down your phone line? I was on 56k-and-grateful five years ago. We were writing about this kind of single DSL pipe into the home thing then, but only in that slightly "Yea, in-the-Jetsons-world-o-the-future" style that tech journalists reserve for things they just can’t see happening.

But it wasn’t this wizardry that sold me. No - my motivation lay in England’s damned leasehold/freehold property laws, which give a freehold management company hell-bent on making life difficult the power to stop you erecting a Sky dish on the outside of the property you own.

Vitally, HomeChoice brings us the delights of Sky, specifically Sky Sports, and the whooshing, flashing, over-hyped and slightly distasteful orgy that is their football coverage, all without the need for a satellite dish.

Oh - and there’s SoccerAM, which is clearly the funniest show on telly.

So today was the day HomeChoice arrived chez Tosh. Installer was late, madly busy. Said he was doing five, six installations a day, as HomeChoice racks up the marketing around London. I was just delighted to see him - I was convinced he wouldn’t turn up, ever, and I’d have to beg BT to give me back broadband, after a two month wait.

Maybe my weird over-enthusiasm encouraged him to work quickly and get the hell out, but he was finished jolly quickly, and the TV bit of it pleasantly surprised me. I’d convinced myself TV was going to be like seeing everything through a 26k stream - how Real has made us cynical of the possibilities of streaming media - but actually everything’s crystal clear, maybe slightly better than the Freeview it replaces.

I’ve got video on demand, including films and programmes broadcast on the big channels earlier in the day, and - of course I checked this first - my full Sky Sports package. They’ve got hot Intertoto Cup action on later tonight.

The broadband was more of a headache. I could only get it by wiring my laptop up to the router, and it was dreadfully slow. It took the best part of two hours fiddling with settings, and three calls to the HomeChoice helpdesk, to sort out my Airport settings and the speed. Worse, I kept getting cut off, and in my increasingly fevered mind the helpdesk people were pressing The Button just because I had a tricky problem and they had some kind of fiendish call quota to get through before they could get home.

My Airport simply wouldn’t pick up the DHCP settings from HomeChoice, and it flummoxed the first two guys. They seemed to know their way around OSX but, even then, having a Mac remains a handicap in these situations. Helpdesk people immediately identify your machines as the culprit of any connection problem, despite every Apple I’ve ever owned being impeccably behaved when confronted with a new internet connection at home or away with work.

And as it turned out, again, it took the third helpdesk person - the least Mac savvy - to identify that it was actually a problem with the HomeChoice kit, and ask that I reset their box to make it all go. That done, it did, and the whole thing’s working now, flying along at something closer to the 2Mb I’m supposed to be getting.

And, already, I’m beginning to forget the pain of that installation. Hmm - Intertoto cup action tonight, you say? And never mind the pain, just feel the speed… and their set top box has just such a cute little blue light on the front…

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