ASK almost any home PC user what they think of their broadband connection and the response will be swift and unanimous: too slow, too expensive.

Few stories we publish about internet connection – especially if it involves providers improving services – receive a more critical or cynical response from islanders.

The universal belief is that the Channel Islands are the poor relations when it comes to access, speed and price.

Indeed, a check this week on comparison website uswitch.com indicates that computer users in the UK can get unlimited downloads plus speeds of up to 20Mb for under a fiver a month.

Equivalent charges – Guernsey is around five times more – deliver deals such as a free Sky+ box and free off-peak telephone calls plus £100 in Marks & Spencer vouchers, things islanders can only dream of.

Does that mean, then, that Channel Islanders are being ripped off?

Only the local operators can answer that, but they are hugely sensitive to such allegations because they believe them unfair, not least because the markets here and in the UK are so different and so difficult to compare.

The announcement by the Channel Islands Regulatory and Competition Authorities that they have started a formal process aimed at providing alternatives for broadband customers is therefore welcome.

What the operators want is a level playing field so that true and fair competition can emerge, which would demonstrate that prices here, while higher, are indeed fair.

In that context it was telling that Sure welcomed the move so that the benefits of competition in the mobile market could be mirrored in the fixed-line market.

Cable & Wireless will be seen as the company with most to lose since it owns – and has the huge cost of maintaining and improving – the island’s fixed-wire infrastructure.

But it has a lot to gain through transparent competition demonstrating that the islands are separate markets that cannot hope to have costs as low as the UK’s with 60m. potential customers.

In the meantime, where the ISPs locally can be criticised is for failing to do enough to explain to customers why the set-up here is so different.