EDITOR, - According to Andrew Millman and colleagues, "accessing the Internet is very easy,"[i] but tales of woe in articles and correspondence in British magazines devoted to the Internet tell another story. Who is telling the truth?
My attempts to get dial up connection to the first Internet service provider I tried took several weeks because of an almost complete lack of advice, difficult access to a helpline, and overloading of the service provider (one of the major ones). The email software was cumbersome and almost unusable. When it proved impossible to log on, the automatic redialling facility was an advantage, but I abandoned this provider after several occasions on which over 500 attempts to log on failed.
A second service provider supplied an incorrect password, which prevented me from logging on, and a helpline was repeatedly engaged. There was no reply to two faxed requests for help, but I obtained a response after sending a letter by post. I abandoned this provider after repeated inability to log on and access the system.
A third service provider could not be contacted by telephone (it was repeatedly engaged) and failed to reply to fax or posted requests for information.
With a fourth service provider, for reasons that it could not explain, email was selectively undeliverable to Manchester University and there were frequent problems with logging on.
I am currently trying a fifth service provider; the early signs are promising. I have not counted the many hours spent in this exercise, but at present I would advise only serious computer enthusiasts with plenty of spare time to attempt to access the Internet from home. The truth is that access to the Internet is at present far from easy. The reasons include rapid expansion in the number of people wishing to access the Internet, which exceeds the ability of service providers to expand their services; user unfriendly software; and poor support
TJ DAVID Professor of child healthUniversity Department of Child Health Booth Hall Children's Hospital Manchester M9 7AA
i. Millman A, Lee N, Kealy K. The Internet. BMJ 1995;311:440-3. (12 August)
see also: Clinical encounters in Cyberspace