Broadband. Who's the Cheapest? Article Discussion Area

mrJ_5

my advice is to avoid Tiscali!

Jo4

mrJ wrote:

my advice is to avoid Tiscali!

Can I ask why?

espresso

Jo4 wrote:

Can I ask why?

Because they are consistently the most complained about ISP. Just google!

:rolleyes:

Jo4

espresso wrote:

Because they are consistently the most complained about ISP. Just google!

:rolleyes:

Guess that makes my option easy.

4_Pete's_Sake

bassetjb wrote:

If I got the £19.99 per month option that comes with a USB modem, would I be able to buy a wireless router myself and use this instead?

UW's £19.99 package + £1.76 membership charge,(Total £21.75), which is called Broadcall features Free Connection, No minimum contract term (but beware - a £50 disconnection fee must be paid in the event of the service being terminated within the first 12 months), up to 8 mbps speed, 40gb download limit, free modem, (again beware - these must be returned in good condition if you terminate the service,otherwise you will be charged for them), line rental, free weekend calls and free calls to other UW customer at any time.

They do a "Broadcallplus", which gives you a free wireless router but this costs £24.99 (with LLU) + the £1.76 and gives unlimited downloads, plus an additional charge of £1 for each wireless adapter. I cannot find any information about whether you could use a wireless route of your own with their modem. You could always check this by e-mailing their customer services. You might be able to buy your own wireless modem instead of using their one but you may be on the phone to their technical helpline for a long time while you set it up. Call charges are 75p a minute. (Rip-Off). Again check this with their customer services.

You can find out if you have UW's LLU at http://www.utilitywarehouse.co.uk/bbcheck/index.taf

To be honest, if you do have their LLU, (few have) it is fairly competitive.

It is certainly not worth taking their gas and electricity in order to get all your phone calls free as their energy prices are horrendous. You would be better of making your phone calls via 1899's 0808 number at 1p a minute.

If you are a Sky TV customer a better option would be as follows:

Keep your line rental with BT - £11.00, take Skytalk for unlimited phone calls - £5.00 and take Sky's 8mbps broadband £5.00. Total £21.00. Once again you would need Sky's LLU for these prices. You also get a free wireless modem.

Would I go for it? After my previous experiences of UW and the way they operate, it would be a definite NO.

bassetjb

Thanks, no Sky so I think I'm going to go with madasafish.

4_Pete's_Sake

Madasafish is good value at £11.99, but this is just for the first 6 months then its £17.99. Tiscali's £12.99, which included free weekend phone calls is perhaps the best value. I know that many folk have criticised Tiscali on this forum but the Tiscali customers that I know personally have never had any problems.

Tiscali would CPS your line but during the week you could still use 1899 and 18185 for calls. With the Free weekend calls this would effectively reduce the cost of you Broadband to less than £12.00 a month.

My brother has just signed up for this deal and is expecting to receive his modem etc in the next few days.

Madasafish_Customer_Care

If you do sign up for Madasafish, please use the promotion code CHEAPER on the first page of sign ups - this will get you £1 off a month for the first year of service on the Max product. So it would be £10.99 a month for the first six months followed by £16.99 a month for the remaining six months (This is the equivelent of paying £13.99 a month).

Quentin

Before signing up with madasafish have a read through the concerns about their parent company's financial problems.

Their share price has dropped like a stone (from about £5 a couple of years ago to 15p last week)

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=174289&page=23

bassetjb

Hmm... this is harder than I thought.

I basically want an up to 8 meg package with around 5gb usage, and I want a wireless setup (doesn't necessarily have to come as part of the broadband package though, I guess it's not too hard to pick up a cheapish wireless router?).

Any suggestions anyone? Preferably companies without too many complaints, that don't require that I'm with sky or orange, and who aren't likely to go bust in the next year.