How do I find a foreign ISP if I’m moving overseas?

If you’re looking for affordable UK broadband packages with a wide range of line speeds and optional extras, there’s no need to look any further than BroadbandDeals.co.uk.

But what if you’re looking for affordable broadband packages overseas?

Most consumers could rattle off the names of domestic ISPs, but few of us could name a single broadband provider in a randomly chosen country.

Even if you’re a regular overseas traveller, there’s a big difference between the mobile network your phone defaults to and the full fibre broadband found in residential dwellings.

Visitors to Germany will find their phones connecting to T-Mobile or Vodafone, yet Deutsche Telekom is the country’s biggest ISP.

Meanwhile, 1&1 has four million broadband customers across Germany, even though in the UK, it’s only really known as a web hosting company.

These are our tips on how to find a foreign ISP in a country you haven’t already spent plenty of time in…

Top tips to find a foreign ISP

Firstly, don’t assume that the biggest ISP is necessarily the best.

Deutsche Telekom is Germany’s equivalent of BT – a former monopoly holder now competing in an open market.

Like BT, it has plenty of residual loyalty and brand familiarity, but it’s not necessarily the fastest or most dependable ISP in every city, region and hamlet.

Similarly, residents of Italy are likely to recommend avoiding Telecom Italia (another former monopoly holder) if they’ve ever had to endure the interminable process of getting a new connection fitted.

The best ISPs are often newer companies who have less legacy hardware to cause reliability issues, more full fibre cabling and (in many cases) a desire to offer a more personal service.

This is where the biggest ISPs sometimes fall down, with myriad departments and teams potentially working at cross purposes, resulting in a perceived lack of customer care.

Start your research by conducting a web search to find a list of ISPs active in your destination country. For the purposes of this article, we’ll choose Norway.

Like the UK, Norway has historic copper phone lines alongside modern full fibre services, with satellite broadband an option in remote and rural areas.

Once again, market leaders include the former monopoly holder Telenor, as well as upstart rivals including Altibox, Telia Norway, GlobalConnect and NextGenTel.

Another similarity with the UK (and many other countries) is that ISPs often provide mobile networks as well as hardwired fibre broadband services.

Think Virgin and Vodafone in this country, or Telenor and Telia in Norway.

Do your research online

Long before you depart these shores, spend some time searching online to find details of leading ISPs in your destination country – and district.

Investigate smaller regional ISPs as well. There’s a higher likelihood of local contact centres and an appreciation of your future location’s challenges and limitations.

This is particularly true for line speeds. Someone moving to Stavanger is likely to have far slower home broadband than an Oslo resident, so don’t assume regional or national average speeds apply.

When it’s time to find a foreign ISP, customer reviews are an essential guide to expected service levels, even if you have to translate those reviews into English.

The same factors which apply domestically are just as pertinent abroad – value for money, network reliability, average line speeds or the ability to add other services like 4G/5G SIM cards.

Investigating these aspects should help you to identify the best foreign ISP and give you plenty of time to set up an account before moving.