Need to save on my TV, Broadband, Home Phone and Mobile package

rollon65

Hello All,
I have been with Virgin Media and its predecessors for more than 20 years now, for TV, landline telephone, broadband and more lately mobile telephone.
The service from them has been good and other than their Asian call centres, I have little to complain about . . . except their prices.
Over the last 10 years or so, the cost of my “bundle” has gone up pretty much on an annual basis and as a pensioner I had had to reduce the size of my bundle in order to stay within budget.
I have now reached the point that the services that I buy is about as lean as it can get, but at slightly under £59 per month, I am looking to save some money.
Freeview TV is apparently not worth having where I live (just west of Brighton, on the south coast), as local reception is poor, so I am looking at what is involved in installing Freesat TV, which would appear to fare better.
I know that I shall have some initial setting up costs, but after that, our TV viewing is just a matter of the licence fee and the cost of the electricity involved.
I would however, appreciate hearing from anyone who has gone down the same route, about how to deal with the remaining services – landline telephone, broadband and mobile as a single package.
The conduit for all of these other services is the Virgin Media fibre optic cable and that is where I begin to get out of my knowledge depth.
I would, of course, no longer need the Virgin set-top box, so that’s not a problem. However, by preference, I do not have wi-fi in the house, nor do I want it, so if virgin were to take my cabled router away, who is going to provide me with a replacement nowadays?
Are there suppliers out there who offer a landline telephone, broadband and mobile package – without TV?
If there are, does anyone know of any that are both economical with regard to cost and offer a decent product/service?
The last time I changed my telephone line from BT, it was a complete pain trying to inform all possible contacts of the change – and that was back in the days when very little business was done on the internet, unlike now. I don’t imagine that Virgin would allow the transfer of one of their 88 prefix numbers to another supplier.
I am prompted to take a serious look at doing this in response to an e-mailed survey from Virgin, as my opinion as to what I thought would be a reasonable amount for their next price hike. There were three amounts, if I recall correctly – starting at £3-odd, going up to more than £6 per month. There was no response box provided to reply along the lines of “How about nothing!”
Any insights into this kind of situation would be very much appreciated.


Thank you.

JJ_Egan

<Are there suppliers out there who offer a landline telephone, broadband and mobile package – without TV?>>
Yes without thinking BT .

VM comes down their own cable everything else will be via BT cable .
New ISP supplies new router .

victor2

You can keep your landline number if you go to a new provider, but there will of course be the installation of a new telephone line, which may involve a cost.
Depending on your mobile usage, VM may not be the best buy. Do you need a contract, or would a PAYG deal suit you? Do you know which mobile networks give a good signal at your home?
I get broadband and phone only through VM. Broadband speed really is "what it says on the tin", phone is a bit more expensive than some, but worth keeping for their combined price. I do have to negotiate a "deal" every year. I just look at what offers other providers have on at the time, phone VM and say "I can get a similar deal with xxx for less" and they have always offered me a reduced rate to take another year with them. Paying the line rental a year in advance reduces that monthly element of the cost as well.

rollon65

[JJ Egan] Thanks for that JJ. I shall take a look at the BT deals website. I have an existing telephone wire from my earlier BT installation.
[victor2] Many thanks Victor. Keeping the landline number is good then. I don't imagine my existing telephone line is capable of carrying internet traffic? I do prefer to have a mobile contract, as it avoids the issue of unexpectedly running out of credit. I used to be with Vodafone and found their local coverage to be OK, but will check that out, however Vodafone wanted £10.95 for pretty much the same service as I now get for a flat £5 per month from Virgin. So - maybe I should at least check what Virgin would offer for landline phone, broadband (bearing in mind that I would like to keep my existing wired connection) and mobile? That route being the least disruptive. I have heard that wi-fi modems can be configured for a wired connection - don't know how true that is.

victor2

WiFi is just a feature of wired modems - all modems will come with at least one wired connection.
Check samknows to see what sort of speed you could expect over a landline instead of VM.

rollon65

Thanks once again Victor2,
Samknows checked and BT ADSL result is abysmal at 2Mbps maximum.
The links at samknows show plusnet as being the best priced supplier without TV included, but I see no mention of mobile phone provision and that as a stand-alone product is going to cost me £10 once again. I only use texting and phone calls really. My existing Virgin deal allows me 250Gb of data per month, but I rarely use any as internet usage on a smartphone with a 4 inch screen is not much fun.

JJ_Egan

Why not PAYG for mobile ??

rollon65

Hello again JJ,
As per my second post, I prefer the freedom of knowing that I shall not run out of credit. My wife has PAYG and from time to time gets caught out because of some additional unexpected activity on her phone. She is still with our old provider, Vodafone.
I feel that I want to cut the TV from my what is now my Virgin package and have little or no set-up cost with an alternative provider for these other items. Then I want to have Freesat installed for our TV service.

JJ_Egan

I have £30 on PAYG sim and in ten years i have never been caught out .

rollon65

Thanks for that JJ,
Who are you with? Do you use any data - or just calls and texts?
I assume you took a SIM from your provider and after that, the only cost is for actually using the service?

victor2

I use Giffgaff, but they've just increased their prices, so I'm seriously considering moving to Three once I've checked their coverage. You need a 3g phone to use Three, but my OH's "hand-me-down" mobile is that. Three's prices are 3p/min calls, 2p/min texts and 1p/MB data. Could get a bit expensive on data, but that's no problem if you switch mobile data off.