You can keep the Brits: Who won the ISPAs?

While the rest of the country was looking at Kylie's bottom, Britain's broadband providers were getting down to some mutual backslapping...

While the Brit Awards avoided the congestion charging zone on Thursday night, the ISP community held its own annual prize-giving in the heart of London town. And while it may not have offered the glitz and glamour of the Brits, master of ceremonies and Robot Wars presenter Craig Charles, along with most of the audience, seemed happy with that fact. Not missing the chance to plug his own show, Charles said: "Like Robot Wars, your industry looks really geeky from the outside, but you get here and it's not geeky at all. I'm so glad I'm not at the Brits." Freeserve was the awards' Ms Dynamite (tee-hee), scooping as it did two gongs - for Best Consumer Application, for FreeServe Sitebuilder, and Best Unmetered ISP. Freeserve's representative took the opportunity to have a dig at rivals AOL and BT, saying he was "looking forward to the situation where we see AOL paying VAT and BT no longer cross-promoting its services". However, the most popular winner of the night was relative minnow West Dorset Internet, which scooped Best Broadband Supplier. Collecting his award, founder Tim Snape paid homage to BT, the only company to draw no applause when its name was mentioned. When Snape began to thank BT, he elicited a chorus of boos from the audience, though these quickly turned to laughter, when he clarified that he was thanking them for "spending money advertising broadband in locations they cannot supply it". The Best Consumer Broadband Provider award was won by Pipex, while One.Tel walked away with the Best National Consumer ISP award. Best Small Business ISP went to Fastnet, Best Business Broadband Provider went to Eclipse Internet, and Best National ISP went to Claranet. Best Hardware Supplier was Electronic Frontier, and the Best Carrier award went to Cable & Wireless. The Best Co-location Provider Award went to TeleCity, and Best Business Application went to JetSet from Community Internet. The Internet Watch Foundation Award for development in online safety, was given to Childnet for its Kidsmart initiative, which is designed to be a practical internet safety advice website resource for schools.