broadband for £10 per month?

starving_artist

I'm desperate to get broadband but don't want to pay more than £10 per month. My phone line is with Telewest at the moment. I rang saying I was thinking of switching back to BT so that I can get a good price on broadband. I mentioned UK online and Bulldog both £9.99. CS was totally unimpressed and only offered me standard pricing: 512k (that's really slow isn't it?) broadband capped at 1gig for £9.99 or £14.99 for 2meg uncapped. She kept saying Bulldog are being investigated by OFT.
(Also TV, phone, broadband package for £30 but I could sign up to BT and get similar deal with Homechoice for £14.99 + £11.50 line rental. In any case I'm not bothered about TV).

Any suggestions? Also if I switch back to BT for line rental do I have to sign up for 12 months or could I go to PO for phone line when BT have reconnected me?

pennies2pounds_3

starving_artist wrote:

I'm desperate to get broadband but don't want to pay more than £10 per month. My phone line is with Telewest at the moment. I rang saying I was thinking of switching back to BT so that I can get a good price on broadband. I mentioned UK online and Bulldog both £9.99. CS was totally unimpressed and only offered me standard pricing: 512k (that's really slow isn't it?) broadband capped at 1gig for £9.99 or £14.99 for 2meg uncapped. She kept saying Bulldog are being investigated by OFT.
(Also TV, phone, broadband package for £30 but I could sign up to BT and get similar deal with Homechoice for £14.99 + £11.50 line rental. In any case I'm not bothered about TV).

Any suggestions? Also if I switch back to BT for line rental do I have to sign up for 12 months or could I go to PO for phone line when BT have reconnected me?

Did they say it was a 12 month minimum contract for the 3 for £30 ? and the £14.99 for 2 meg uncapped ?

starving_artist

She said the prices would apply for 12 months

codetown

artist, 512 kbit/s is not too slow if the connection is realiable.
Going for cheap broadband providers is a huge risk. People have spent 20 times the cost of a real decent provider just to try and get rid of broad-bandits like e7.
If you want to risk, the two cheapest companies offering broadband are e7even and euronet. But check on adslguide.org.uk for charts and recommendations before going for the price. Unfortunately with broadband is much more difficult to switch than you wouls imagine.

So if you are not prepared to fight in case things go wrong, you might end up with a locked phone line. I personally would go with the Telewest 9.99 offer if on a tight budget or the 14.99 otherwise (and still is cheap and good value).

Edinburghlass_2

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parkside_stroller

I used to have telewest and now with BT as I no longer live in TWest area.
Got a service now which is reasonable but used to have a brilliant service (apart from waiting ages on the odd occasion I had to call cust services).
I would go back in a minute if I could.

I used them for a few years and service was originally 512 but they increased speed /capacity twice I think, free of charge but also brought in cheap 512 service while keeping my charge at £28 or so.

512 is ok most of the time but depends what you are doing online I suppose and I think there is a download limit on it but somebody feel free to correct me.........

An engineer told me when installing broadband that it is the only thing they make any real money from as everything else is such a competitive market (phone) or in case of TV, they pay loads out to the companies that provide them with channels ........ you know who!!!!!!! Not too much surprise they wont cut price for you.

As you have realised, not necessarily the cheapest way of getting TV, particularly if you are not watching much or of phone service and there are posts on boards elsewhere on this site which deal with these in detail.

Look out for a free modem - some provide whilst others dont. You can buy quite cheap now though. If you are planning on buying any other pc equipment around same time BT Yahoo might be worth checking out as they offer deals on stuff like wireless modem/routers (you wont get service for less than a tenner though - I pay about £17 but they are less bothered about taking extra cash for exceeding download limit than before).

I suppose what you need to do is look at total cost over the year of any equip you need to buy plus monthly cost and any incentives you can bring in which save cash - eg by saving on other equipment (a shop bot such as kelkoo or pricerunner will give you an idea of the cost you would pay elsewhere).
Best of luck.

smcicr

@ artist - £14.99 is pretty good for the 2 meg. just to put it into context, i work for ntl / telewest and so get discounted rates and i'm paying £12 or so for my 2 meg bb

as said above - 512k isn't necessarily slow, it depends on what you want to do with it and i'd rather have a slower reliable service than a (potentially) fast service that may or may not be there when i want it (or for the length of the contract in some cases) if you definitely only want to spend a tenner then you have to accept certain compromises in what you can get / who you can get it from.

peter_the_piper

If you are ok with slightly more than £10.00 then Newnet are good. See http://www.newnet.co.uk/broadband/home_lite.php for price of £11.95
+vat for up to 8meg (if /when available) been using since Dec 2005 for a basic net connection. Speed good, E-mail replies within 24hours, No web allowance, 1 e-mail.

starving_artist

Thank you all very much for your responses. Sounds like I could live with 512k but still think I might be better off switching to BT and signing up with UKonline for 9.99 because it's uncapped whereas Telewest is capped at 1gig. Also changing to BT now might give me more flexibility in the long term to change providers in the future because most alternative service providers seem to require BT lines. I assume this is the case with Newnet?

peter_the_piper

Yes.
I would suggest that you look carefully at their terms and conditions, at £9.99 their is likely to be a fair usage condition hidden in the small print.

roses

Hi peter, the "fair usage" is about 20gb according to many users on the adslguide discussion forums. There are very few people who download more than that.

Also I just signed my parents up to ukonline. I did it over the phone and they offered me 2 months free and a free netgear wireless router which I have now received and it is the super 108g adsl 2+ router! They don't advertise this on their website so if you are thinking of using ukonline then call up to see if they can offer you this.