Want phone + BB connected this week. Who should I go with?

Lieutenant_Thrift

Found out today from BT that I have a 'stopped' line in my house meaning there will be no connection fee if I go with them. They told me line rental would be £12.50 a month and not £11.25 as it says on their website for some reason.

My needs are a landline with preferably free weekend and evening calls (I'm willing to consider lesser options as myself and my partner have mobiles with lots of free minutes) with broadband at least 8mbps and unlimited downloads.

Spoke to TalkTalk/Tiscali, was adamantly told that they are cheaper than BT however they will charge at least £30 for connection. We're aiming to keep the cost as low as possible but think £15-£17 a month is reasonable. We're only planning to stay in the house for about a year so a 12 month contract would be preferable to an 18 month unless it's easy to break on the grounds of moving away.

I'd quite like to get connected quickly (in next week or so) so need to make my mind up soon. Any clear advice would be most appreciated, fellow money savers!

Thanks, LT

spike7451

O2.
My line was active on the Monday,Registered on the ADSL database Wednesday,ordered that afternoon,Router box arrived Thursday afternoon & active & online the next Tuesday!
Not had a single problem.
Cant get better than that,plus I get discount as a O2 phone customer.
Some good Quidco deals about as well.

KimYeovil

If O2 is available it is cheap - £75 cashback plus three months free means for your first year it is "free" (if you can use £3.33 of mobile topups each month.) Only £7.50 per month after (£12.50 if not an O2 mobile customer).

The BT line should work out to be £11.25 if you choose paper-free billing and pay by direct debit.

macman

You won't get 'at least 8Mbps' unless you can get Virgin Media cable service or an ADSL2+ service. Totally depends on what is available on your exchange and how far you are from it.
www.samknows.com
Check your potential line speeed on:
http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome
BT line is £11.25 with DD and paper free billing rental, requires 12m line rental.
You won't get both services on this week though.

Lieutenant_Thrift

Thanks for everyone's advice. So, £11.25 BT and o2 is the best you think? My partner has an o2 phone so we could just add the broadband to her tariff. But then again, how would we get the cash back?

From my reading of the article, I was going to go with TalkTalk/Tiscali Or are they not worth it?

Thanks, LT

macman

Yes, go with O2 if you can get it LLU (but not the Access service, which is non-LLU). samknows will tell you which service you can get on your exchange. You will get the cashback if you sign up via Quidco- you don't join it to an existing O2 tariff, just use that no. when you sign up to get the mobile discount.
You are too late for the 3 months free offer, but it may be reinstated in the next few days.
You can read all about CPW service standards all over this board!

TalkTalk

Hi Lieutenant Thrift,

As per your other thread on a simular topic TalkTalk have a 24 month contract term on new line instalations/line restarts. There is also a fee of £59.99 to activate and set up the service if you are not migrating from another provider rather than the standard £29.99 connection fee.

Cheers
Emma x

Le73Uq86Uv

Deleted post

KimYeovil

The cashback is available by going through a site such as topcashback.co.uk or quidco.com. You register an account there and once you have decided to purchase something you click on the link from there to the seller's site. Quidco costs £5 per year and topcashback has no subscription charge. (Other sites are yadda yavailable).

With O2 cashback varies between £75 and £125 - depends on which level of broadband you take. I would just stick with the cheapest up to 8Mbps option. Unless you have a special reason for paying more.

But the cashback is a secondary consideration - the primary criteria for choosing O2 are that their LLU circuits are still* uncapped and untrafficshaped. Check samknows as mentioned by macman.

* ...

Lieutenant_Thrift

Thanks for everyone's advice. The BT landline went live last Friday however I can't sign up for o2 online at the moment due to their website being down. It gives me time to contemplate this situation:

My partner has an o2 mobile with which we'll get the discount on the broadband. I'm currently with '3' and my contract expires next month. We've long thought it would be better if we were on the same network as we call each other so much. However, when making that decision next month, we might decide not to go with o2 and would lose the o2 customer discount. There's also the possibility we might want mobile broadband.

Would we still be getting the best deal if we were both on o2, with home and mobile broadband? If not, what are the alternatives?