Cheapest online option...

tim_n

I'm about to move into a house which has a BT phone line. What's the cheapest option seeing as we don't need/want a phone line for internet access (we all have mobiles and generally use VOIP)

tim_n

Does signing up for talk talk mean I don't have to pay BT's bill? £19.99 and 40GB will do me fine (shame I won't get a static IP though!)

penrhyn

I pay BT for line rental I think its £11 a month for Option 1. BTW its much cheaper to make calls from a land line.
My view is that if you pay a third party like TT for your line rental and you get a fault, no-one will accept responsibility.(TT lack of customer service is legendary)
Have you thought of Sky BB.

tim_n

Sorry, perhaps I wasn't clear.

If I sign up via Talk Talk, so I still need to pay for BT's line rental as well as TT's £8.99 call options and £10 line rental?

Obviously if that is the case then I can go with eclipse but it'll still be £30 a month!

penrhyn

You can sign up to talk talk and pay them for line rental, you do not then have to pay BT.
My point was that this is not necessarily the best way to go.
You only pay one line rental.
Hope this helps.

tim_n

Ah good... I'm not too fussed about customer service. Things are fairly clear cut & I'm technical anyway. You should see the grief I had with Mr NTL. Over three years they refunded me the entire cost of their service (and some extra in between) as well as providing me with the full TV package, broadband and telephone (with 24/7 calls!)

Basically as long as I get connected that's fine. Any other issues I can generally sort myself and if I can't I communicate in writing. I can access the net via my 3G card anyway

vinylmusic

I know that for many people BT is the big evil of telecom since they tried to keep their market dominance and high prices but theres something I have learnt that warrants a rethink.

Most, if not all companies such as Talk talk dont own the lines. BT still owns them and if you report a faulty line your phone company has to send BT to sort it out.

As a BT customer, when you have a fault they will transfer all calls to your mobile number free of charge until the problem is sorted out.
If your not with BT there's no such service

My mother was with Onetel, (now Talk Talk) and she had a fault on her line.
Onetel could not offer any such call transfer service and she was left without any service for over a week.
For this reason I gave up my onetel account and so did my mother
The cost of line rental is only slightly higher with BT but when problems arise we dont get left in the lurch

I have a feeling that BT have a quicker response time for their own customers

You can still use call18185 so theres no more than line rental to pay for with BT