Updated Find the cheapest broadband discussion thread

cagney_2010

jem16 wrote: »

For a while I have considered leaving Virgin as I was paying £31pm for a 20Mb BB service that I was rarely getting the full speed from and a phone that I never used as I have a BT line.

However as I am quite a distance away from the BT exchange I could never get a decent speed via BT. However I started looking at O2 and as it's LLU I could get around 7Mb for only £7.50. It seemed daft to pay £31pm when I could pay £7.50.

So when the 2 months free came back to O2 plus the £75 cashback making it £0 for a whole year I decided to give O2 a go and see how it went. Everything seemed fine and I phoned up Virgin and cancelled both my phone and BB - cancellation was booked for 17th Feb.

Two days after that Virgin started phoning me to persuade me to stay with them. Eventually they offered 10MB BB with XL phone ( so anytime calls ) for £13.95pm with a £30 credit. That made it £11.45pm.

I therefore decided to keep it for a year to make sure everything was OK with my O2 BB, my BT phone line with BB attached as I have to have 2 Sky boxes attached to the phone line.

It might seem daft having 2 BB services but it does let me compare both thoroughly and I'm still saving almost £20pm from what I used to pay Virgin.

No; in fact, that sounds like a good idea (if it's not costing you too much financially).

Smick100

I have moved in to a property with an existing line. BT are to connect me on Friday. I was going to sign up to O2 but they won't take the instruction until the line is connected by BT. I notice today that in the past day or so O2 have dropped their Quidco on the medium package from £100 to £50:eek:

Does the Quidco level fluctuate from time to time or have I missed the boat?

gomeraman

If you live near an exchange that has not been unbundled by Plusnet, O2 and so on then you don't get the deals advertised and end up paying through the nose - both of these work out as more expensive than BT in this case. You may also get an incredibly slow BB speed of 1Mb or less because your house is too far from the exchange. aaagh the joys of country living!

harryhound

My better half has got herself a nice smart new laptop.
She has discovered that rather than plan ahead and record TV programmes when they are broadcast, she can simply watch on-demand anywhere in the house, using the lap top.

Can you explain which of the protocols listed above the major channel TV broadcasters use?
How many bytes there are in a typical hour of TV?.
How slow the router could run but still create a watch able TV programme?

I'm typically getting 4.x Mb as the speed on my BT 'phone line via my Netgear router at the moment but I don't think my current allowance of 5Gb per month will stand this sort of bashing.

(I'm on a category 3 exchange: O2, Car Phone, AOL & Sky as alternatives, there seems to be no pathway overloading but also no signed of 214CN (21st century network) improvements.)

potfish

DavidP24 wrote: »

Some things you should know about the Plusnet deal [...] for instance you can't use it for VPN's (which are used to connect to your work) Plusnet are very upfront about this, it is a basic product for entry level non demanding users.

David, please elaborate where they are "very upfront about this" - searching the Plusnet site for VPN finds only this: http://www.plus.net/support/security/vpn_overview.shtml which tells you how to set up VPN, as opposted to saying it can't be used.
Thanks

anon_ymous

I was thinking of having a look for cheap BB, but forgot that many require a BT line,except VM that have their own infrastructure and only will use the green box that BT provides. The rest is their own.

It costs £125 to add a BT line, so it may or may not be worth the money. Ill have to think about this in the future

anon_ymous

David, I do quite like my youtube and BBC iplayer, so Im not too sure what to get as Ive always been using BB on an "unlimited" basis. Im currently monitoring my own usage using netmeter-Ive set the it to notify me if I reach downloads of 15GB. I will then install this on another PC, notifying it if it goes over 15GB, leaving a 10GB safe margin for mobile phone users(though 2GB should be enough, and Im the main mobile user)

Im thinking of getting mobile broadband. This little idea seems good, though against O2's t's and c's

You can buy an iphone sim card for roughly £25-£35 and then top it up with £10 to activate it. You would also need a 3 Huwaei modem that would need unlocking first. You should then put your iphone sim in the modem and you get free bb lol

For me, I can take the modem out of the equation, saving me money as I have a netbook with a sim port built in for mobile BB

Once mobile BB kicks off and bandwidth increases, whilst cost decreases, I would probably cancel BB with my current supplier along with the landline and use mobile BB along with VOIP as the extra £11 for line rental seems a waste as our landline bills are normally £0+£11

Oh, and we dont have a BT line here at all, so its not just a case of reconnecting

anon_ymous

Hmmm... this is interesting

If I decide 40GB is enough for me, I may want to move to "talktalk", I COULD almost break even and pay a little bit extra(or not at all) for a BT line to be installed, as talktalk give £50 cashback, which makes the total cost for 18 months £282.64

VM costs would total £423 for the 18 month period
A bit of maths shows that I would be saving £140.36, which would pay for a BT line

If I paid for a premium, I wouldnt save as much, seeing as though the cashback isnt much

Ive also seen that orange sell broadband and a landline with a possible 20Mb speed for £20 a month. This makes them £3.50 cheaper a month than VM, whilst giving better speeds

After 18 months, the total of an orange broadband+landline deal would come to £360, whereas with VM it would come to a total of £423. This is before any cashback is used as a factor. Orange give £80 cashback if you move to them, making an 18 month contract cost £280

By moving to Orange from VM, you would save £143 over an 18 month period, which would easily pay for the BT line install-Its also a better option as there are no download limits!

Im saying this, but convincing parents is another thing altogether-and they dont trust cashback sites-as a lot of people have been scammed with mobile phone cashback shops

gunsilk

Been looking around but wondered what the best deal is regarding getting a new phone line put in and broadband. Best to split the deals or get a bundle? I download a lot but a 40gig limit for me is ok as long as I don't get penalised if my download goes over by accident. I liked Virgin because all it did was limit my downloads during the evening automatically if I topped 40gb.

Any thoughts on current deals?

Thanks in advance folks.

ChrisCox

I originally subscribed to a low-cost ISP for my first broadband connection and the reliability was dreadful failing every 4 - 6 weeks. The help line was to somewhere overseas and I every time I was told the fault was something I had done when the service had simply disappeared between morning log-in and afternoon log-in; every time it transpired that the ISP had changed something. Things came to a head after I had been without a connection for 6 weeks and my ISP and BT were blaming eachother for a problem in my local exchange. I was threatened with Debt Collectors for unpaid fees for a service I was no longer getting! I eventually subscribed to BT, and although more expensive than my cheap ISP, the service was restored within a day and BT have been 100% reliable for some two and a half years now.