Help needed for best telephone,tv and broadband

lionelflare

Hello All.

Im currently with telewest for telephone, tv and broadband (2mb) and am looking at changing the lot. My main concern though is that im realy not sure i can go through all the hassle of having to get a new email address. Is there any way that I can keep my blueyonder(telewest) email address if i change provider?

We are also looking at changing the tv to sky+ as the missus cant get on with telewest and always goes on at me that she finds sky easier to use. Do i need to have a BT telephone line to use Sky? I want to order Sky but need to know about the telephone line before i order.

If somebody could give me the best solution to get all 3 services It would be greatly appreciated.

terrymats

I'm not using BT. I'm using a bulldog line and sky works perfectly fine.

lionelflare

Thanks for the reply, do you know if telewest would be the same as bulldog? or does bulldog use BT lines and not cable like telewest? Im not realy very clued up on all this im afraid!!

terrymats

if you have a bt line, bulldog will simply take over that line and you pay line rental to bulldog. So there's no hassle of cable or extra wires. + you get 8 megs. And i've heard they are moving upto 24megs soon.

I pay some thing like £39 for 8 meg unlimited broadband, line rental + free national calls.

Cheers
Terry

lionelflare

how can i tell if i have a bt line? all i know is that at the moment the house has telewest. do all houses have a bt line as well, because thats all that was available many years ago? do i get charged for them to turn it on or whatever they do or can i keep telewest for the phone and internet and still use sky?

terrymats

u need a land line (e.g. bt) for sky. else they won't install sky. as a matter of fact, the line is not of any use if you are not going to buy pay-per-view movies. I always keep it disconnected as my son my purchase the interactive games by mistake and i may get charged for them. now, if you need sky, you need a line, that's the bottom line. i'm not sure if they will charge you for it. the last time i was in a rental place, it was equipped with telewest and bt quoted me £75.99 + vat for the line. but, it's always good to have a land line as technology is moving really fast now. as mentioned earlier, you will be able to get upto 24 megs on a land line, and that too for just about £22 per month excluding line rental. if bulldog are putting the line, you can haggle it off for free. good luck!

Terry

lionelflare

sorry for been realy dumb but does that mean that if i continue to use telewest for home calls then this is not classed as a land line and i would have to get a bt line as well? does this also mean that i have to pay line rental to telewest for my calls and another one to bt just so i can get sky????

once again forry for been a bit bumb on this!

terrymats

that's correct. i've never used telewest. hence cannot tell you which one is better. however, a landline (e.g. bt) will give you almost the same or probably better service than telewest. if i was in your shoes, i'd probably abondon telewest and move to a hard line at my place, view sky, surf at high speeds and use a unlimited national calls package from bulldog, which is what i'm doing at the moment.

lionelflare

that sounds like a good idea but im a bit worried about not been able to keep my telewest (blueyonder) email address as ive got so many things that im signed up to i cant imagine having to change the email address on them all!!

terrymats

i understand that perfectly. that's what happened when i moved from aol to bulldog last year. I now use a yahoo address, which means i won't have to change it the next time i move to another broadband company.

lionelflare

just looked on buldog website and it looks like i could get it. have you any idea how i know how much broadband usage i would need. i.e can i get the 1meg limit or would i be better getting unlimited. How do i find out how much i use??