O2 or BeThere or another broadband provider?

garybryan

Hello everyone,

I'm moving into a new flat soon and looking to set up broadband. There's no cable available, so ADSL is the only option, and hence we need a landline as well (we don't plan on using it for calls; just for broadband). I've been researching the options and O2 or Be seem to offer the best deals (and yes, I'm aware that O2 now owns Be).

I was with Be (the Value package) a few years ago and their service was great - very fast, and suitable for the heavy downloading that my flatmate did. She downloaded TV series and anim! all day and played online games, and performance was still just fine for the rest of us. In my current flat we have O2 and it's quite bad: slow in the last few months, and if one person's downloading a file or streaming video (even if it's on BitTorrent and they have the speed throttled right down) it becomes unusable for everyone else. I'm not sure why this is since they both use the same network; maybe we just have a bad exchange or bad line. The new flat is on the same exchange as the one where we had Be, although a kilometre further away from it.

I'm quite tech-savvy and I do a fair bit of streaming and downloading, so I'd like something without a low limit or traffic shaping.

The options seem to be:
Be: £23.78 for landline plus Value package
O2: £19.91 for The All Rounder including line rental + £10 top up every 3 months (we're not O2 customers, but my flatmate has an O2 SIM lying around which we could use) = £23.24 per month

So the prices are basically the same. O2 offers 20mbps rather than 12, but I realise that here in the real world speeds never go anywhere near even 12. More attractively, they offer a 30-day contract, which may be useful since we don't know for sure that we're staying in the flat for a year; Be only offer short-term contracts for their more expensive packages.

Are there any other, better value, options out there that I've missed? Or anything that I should be aware of concerning the choice of O2 versus Be?

Thanks,
Gary

MoneySavingUser

O2 and Be used to the same

but now O2 enforce traffic policies and throttling and who knows what else

so therefore Be is a much superior product

Maybe also consider Post Office for the landline part (1 month only contract)

another option is Sky broadband (don't have to be a tv customer anymore and unlimited data)

steveE2

If SKY LLU is avalable I think it would be a good choice,line install £10 'til 24 March.take the Evening weekend call package (free) get £5.00 off unlimited broadband.

Price:
Line rental £11.25
Broadband [STRIKE]£15.00[/STRIKE] £10.00 with talk discount
Total BB/Line rental £21.25 p/m
No Sky TV needed.

Also signup via http://www.topcashback.co.uk/sky-digital/ for £50.50

garybryan

Thanks for the advice. Sky LLU is indeed available, so that's a few quid cheaper than Be, and the cashback would sweeten the deal too. I've heard mixed opinions about Sky though, is their service as good as Be in terms of traffic policies and general performance?

cgk1

Basically - no.

Look at the ratings here in the Think Broadband 2011 awards, Be got 78% for reliability (which was the highest), Sky got 58%.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4592-customer-service-awards-2010.html

steveE2

cgk1 wrote: »

Basically - no.

Look at the ratings here in the Think Broadband 2011 awards, Be got 78% for reliability (which was the highest), Sky got 58%.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4592-customer-service-awards-2010.html

I disagree I think the SKY LLU deal is very good,the ratings are brought down by the SKY Connect package which I wouldnt recommend to anyone.
O2 should in theory be the same rating as BE as they use the same network but again is brought down by the Access package.
Also take the sample size into acount 5000 vote for BE@80% =4000 happy customers,17000 vote for SKY =8500 happy customers.

Both BE and SKY currently have no traffic shaping on LLU packages