Have you switched or would you consider switching to slower Broadband to save money?

brymbo76

My current Broadband & Phone package is BT Infinity 1 (52MB) & Weekend Calls.
This costs £23 a month for Broadband and either £44.49 for Monthly Line Rental or you can pay 12 months Line Rental upfront (Line rental saver) costing £205.08 for the year (working out as £17.09 a month) or pay monthly Line Rental saver costing £25.50 a month.
So altogether I would be paying for the one-off Line Rental saver plus 12 monthly payments of £23 for broadband a total of £205.08 + £276 = £481.08.
Does anyone still think this is way excessive for 12 months Line Rental and Broadband?
I hardly use my Landline but I do find it useful to keep it.

I only really use Broadband for general internet surfing but sometimes occasionally for Catch-Up TV and Internet Radio though not all at the same time which makes me think that a 17MB Broadband speed package should suffice.

Has anyone ever downgraded their Broadband for a slower speed to save some money?
If so, what was the outcome?
Was your speed sufficient?
Did you still get a good customer service from your new provider?
And who would you recommend?
I am considering TenTel, Origin, TalkTalk or SSE for one of their 17MB Unlimited Data packages.
Hope to hear some thoughts back from some of you.
Thanks.

brymbo76

I forgot to mention, I did get through to the retentions department when I was on the phone with them last night.
They did offer me a reduced rate of £18 a month for broadband but that's only a saving of £60 a year. Would you accept this offer or just go ahead and leave BT and switch to a slower broadband provider.
Please let me know your thoughts and opinions.
Thanks.

Scrounger

Why don't you move over to Plusnet Fibre 38Mb Unlimited - Equiv £20.42/month.

You can use your existing BT router (just update the login details).

It works for me.

Scrounger

[Deleted User]

I've never had fibre myself but my usage is similar to yours and it's more than quick enough. That said I'm near to the exchange so you'd have to check what your estimate would be first.

https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/postcode_checker/




£35.09 a month for BT fibre or £18.99 for Sky ADSL for new customers. Only you can decide

brymbo76

The only problem is going to be about leaving BT is that is that I would be having to set up a gmail email account because once I leave BT, I believe my BT Yahoo Mail account would eventually close unless I pay to keep just my email account open which I believe is £5 a month.

AndyPK

anything over £400 a year is excessive.

Should be targeting £350 a year or less if you want to move yearly

lee111s

Get mine for free so no need to move.

teddysmum

[QUOTE=brymbo76;72432542


I only really use Broadband for general internet surfing but sometimes occasionally for Catch-Up TV and Internet Radio though not all at the same time which makes me think that a 17MB Broadband speed package should suffice.

[/QUOTE]



As the up to 17 Mbps is an umbrella figure for anything from 2Mbps upwards, suitability would depend on what you actually get.


Since going from Sky to PlusNet our speed has dropped from 6+ to under 5 but it works fine for everyday use 9up to two laptops) and was ok for catchup when we used the Smart tv before going back to Sky tv.


A few months ago, I used my son's Sky fibre for the first time and, as I wasn't streaming, noticed little difference from our PlusNet ADSL speed.

phillw

brymbo76 wrote: »

I only really use Broadband for general internet surfing but sometimes occasionally for Catch-Up TV and Internet Radio though not all at the same time which makes me think that a 17MB Broadband speed package should suffice.

I did switch to a slower service to save money.

A couple of years ago I had 50mb/s virgin cable, which was pretty amazing speed wise. I switched back to adsl and got rid of my tv license. My TV+phone+broadband went from £50 a month to £5 a month. My up to 17mb/s gets around 2mb/s & if I try to watch catch up while doing anything online then it interrupts the programme.

The worst problem is when windows 10 decides it's going to start doing updates, as I have found nothing that will stop it using your entire bandwidth. It has bandwidth limits, but they are stupidly based on your wifi speed and not your broadband speed. I often end up putting laptops in flight mode or just turning them off. I was using the windows insider updates for a while and once a week it would download 4gb and it would take priority over any other network activity, it had an uncanny knack of knowing when I wanted to use the internet.

Things have slightly changed as legally I had to get a tv license for watching iplayer. So I am paying for that now & I'm watching most tv on a youview box that I bought from ebay, of course I need to setup series links for things before they are on to get the most benefit (I can't do scheduled watching of tv & watching live tv is mostly a waste of time).

After windows 10 creators update came out, I came off windows insider so no more 4gb downloads for a while.

This has solved most of the regular problems I had with a slow internet. If my adsl was 17mb/s then I wouldn't think about cable/fibre again, I keep an eye out but I don't think I could justify it unless it was less than £10 a month.

hollie.weimeraner

I moved from BT to Plusnet a couple of months ago. BT wouldn't move from charging me £45 per month for FTTC including phone line so I moved to Plusnet which meant a downgrade of speed from 52 to around 34 MBPS. As I am a light user I have not noticed any difference and now pay £34-14 including any time calls which also includes free mobile calls which BT's any time calls did not so my savings are about £15 per month.
The main thing you need to consider is the upload speed which has now dropped from 10 to 2MBPS.
The switch was really smooth, apart from BT messing up my final bill which has now been sorted and I am more than satisfied. (I also got £70 cashback from TCB).

jessicamiller75

I also moved away from a faster speed to Virgin basic only broadband + phone and started paying £32 as I don't really need or use 200MB. So I will be paying around £38 per year and saving more than £120 a year.