Broadband. Who's the Cheapest? Article Discussion Area

Former_MSE_Archna

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Broadband, who's the cheapest?

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MPwannasavemoney

The article says "Often broadband providers try to make you change phone provider too, yet usually the phone package is pants. Best practice is two unlinked services, so you’re free to shift providers as prices change. "

It is always worth checking. I started broadband as a newcomer with Tiscali in July 2005 - they had a special offer of 1MB speed with a 2G cap per month and free land line phone calls all day/night (using their CPS) for £19.50 per month - definitely a bargain at the time. The 2G cap per month was lifted in Sep or so. There may be better deals now so it is worth checking out but it depends on each households use of phone and internet so very difficult to compare in an article - I think the article underplays the potential value of bundled services though.

steven21_2

I use a company called Zazizam, they charge £17.99 per month and have no download limits. They might not be 100% reliable, but who is.

They are overall a pretty good broadband provider in my opinion

londondulwich

Do not go near UK Online. The term 'service provider' does not describe this company's aim or function. For more information visit this site:

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/dosearch.php

The other cheaper broadband companies, whilst they do provide a service, will ask that the customer signs a two to five year contract and/or ask for 1 or 2 years fees up front and/or charge a setup fee.

Namesco is by far the best. Costs for a 256k connection are £10.95 a month, as long as you do not download more than 2GB per month. You will need your own ADSL modem. There is a one year contract and they do not provide an e-mail address. So you need to know that you will be using broadband for at least a year and have an e-mail account with lycos/demon/wanadoo/hotmail/yahoo etc... You can configure outlook express to recieve e-mails, but not to send them. The connection is reliable and the customer service, although using an 0845 number, is prompt. For more details visit their website:

http://www.names.co.uk/home_broadband.html

hope this helps

geebeeone

Madasafish might seem cheap for small users but if you want unlimited downloads with great reliability and service then Pipex is very hard to beat, and cheaper than Madasafish with no extra charges.
O.K. Madasafish does provide up to 8mb, but that is only if your exchange supplies it.

hhobba

To all thinking of getting broadband or changing provider...

It is vitally important that the ISP you choose are well known and reliable. Without a robust ISP your broadband experience will simply be bad.

I recently was a customer of PlusNet who charge £21.99 for a highly restricted broadband service. The monthly usage limit is, technically, 100gb, however if a user downloads more than 20gb of data from P2P, FTP or File Sharing applications (these would be things such as videos, music, software etc.) then he or she will be severely limited by having their broadband speed throttled to as little as 64kb/s.

I am not a ridiculousely heavy user but I download a lot of music (legally!!) and PlusNet were limiting my speeds far too much for my liking. So I switched.

Zen Broadband (http://www.zenbroadband.co.uk) are, by far, the UK's best provider (claming the highest ratings by far on https://www.adslguide.com and many awards including PC Pro Magazine's "Best ISP"). The price is a bit steeper - £5.00 more than AOL and £10.00 more than UKOnline, however I ask you this: do you want your service to be interrupted as you are downloading that crucially important file? Or do you want to be restricted and throttled because you've downloaded too much? I thought not.

Unbenknown to most, UKOnline's service (as well as Tiscali) are NOT unlimited. UKOnline do have a usage limit stated in their T&C's although this is admittedly a high one. Tiscali's limit is a joke (30gb?). And their service quality speaks for itself.

As for others such as Bulldog and AOL, don't go near them. And certainly don't touch PlusNet - far, far too many policy changes are being made without notifying the end users and so you might wake up one day to find your connection has drastically changed itself (as I did).

My advice, as a professional user, is choose Zen. £34.99 a month for 2.2mb/s truly, categorically UNlimited broadband with a quality and service record that speaks for itself. They really are the UK's best ISP.

Regarding MadAsAFish's 8mb offer -- 5GB of data transfer is a pittance. It would take only 1.5 hours (rougly) to download your full month's usage limit of 5GB if your connection was running at 8mb/s and you were downloading constantly. Although this is highly unlikely, you see my point.

Need proof? Check this link out:
http://www.adslguide.org/isps/compare.asp?aol=ON&bulldog=ON&plusnet=ON&tiscali=ON&ukonline=ON&zen=ON&cmp_action=Compare

Martin, if you read this, I would urge you to include the more expensive providers who offer *truly* unlimited service in your Newsletter because people deserve to know about these, otherwise they'll end up like me: frustrated and angry at having their connections unexpectedly changed.

The bottom line is this: with broadband, you get what you pay for.

georgiasmum

I'm currently paying £25 per month unlimited download with Telewest broadband and have had it for years. I don't really understand all this enough to know who is a better deal to change to. Can anyone help??

MSE_Martin

georgiasmum, please read the article linked to from the first post, it should help

hhobba, this is 'Money Saving Expert.com' - it is about saving money not about using more expensive providers. High contention ratio providers are great for some, but most people aren't using it the way you are. It's the reason I deliberately link to adslguide in the article allowing people the choice - that's what they do - its not what I do.

UKonline is noted as a poor provider. Madasafish has had good feedback and offers a hugely competitive package. I note in the article the difficulty in writing a broadband article for exactly the reasons above.

However that's why this discussion thread is here, so people can give their own opinions (unlike most sites with articles) directly after reading. Do remember though folks your usage patterns aren't the same as others. Just less than 50% of the UK is still happy with dial-up - price is very important and what MSE is about (though in the case of UK online the poor service levels are noted)

Martin

cougar_3

Martin, Madasafish are oowned by this company: http://www.brightview.com/our_isps/index.html some of their other brands are cheaper than madasafish...

IC24 is currently £9.99 for 6 months then £16.99 the next 6 months for an identical service. http://www.ic24.net/services/broadband/

The prices and offers seem to change quite a lot though.

Gooner71_2

georgiasmum wrote:

I'm currently paying £25 per month unlimited download with Telewest broadband and have had it for years. I don't really understand all this enough to know who is a better deal to change to. Can anyone help??

Telewest yesterday offered me 2mb unlimited broadband with Home Phone and free calls at weekends for £25 per month.

Given bt line rental alone is £11 approx that's £14 for 2mb unlimited which seems quite good. I'll then look at the cost of calls.

You might give Telewest a call and see if they'll switch you over to the new deal..

p.s. I'm currently on the Telewest 1mb service with talk unlimited but its about £40 per month hence the reason I'm switching...

Gooner71_2

OK - Something to watch out for - Telewest hide their call costs behind this calculator:

http://www.telewest.co.uk/html/telephone/callcosts.htm