ADSL broadband/phone confusion

beardedwonder_2

Having lived in a Telewest area for years i've not kept up to date with ADSL broadband, and have seen a lot of conflicting and confusing information on broadband.

I'm moving into a flat which needs its phone line activating. So i was thinking about doing this through the Post Office, cancelling the phone and just using their broadband (£20.50/mo).

That started me thinking; Could i activate my line through the Post Office, get broadband with Tiscali and then cancel the phone line rental with the Post Office? A Tiscali sales adviser told me that i could do this (£14.99/mo).

I then rang O2 and they told me that i couldn't cancel the line once i'd switched on their broadband. Could someone please straighten this out for me?

PS: Then there's the possibility of 3s mobile broadband, i'm just not sure how this will cope with streaming iplayer.

iniltous

In the residential adsl area there is no such thing as 'naked adsl' so you need a phoneline (and pay rental on it) to host the adsl service, if you dont pay phone line rental eventually by default when the phone line is ceased ( for non payment ) then the adsl will also be ceased.
Cable are the only way of getting broadband without telephony, you could pick a service provider that bundles everything together then just not plug a phone in, then pretend you are only paying for broadband.
If you dont want to pay for a phoneline you could get mobile broadband (via a usb dongle) but they tend to be expensive if you download much,

beardedwonder_2

Thanks for clearing up some of the confusion. At the moment it looks like the best deal on a 12 month contract is: Activate the line with madasafish (£115) and line rental (£9.75) get O2 Home Broadband (£12.23) with first two months free. So the first year cost is £354. If i could switch my phone to O2 that'd be £305!