BT Halo 1

Croft12

@poppas

At least get them to throw in an upgrade for the same price they are doing that without much effort atm.

Flowboy

 We have somehow avoided getting any Halo 1 or 2 promo's. I hate BT's confusing website. Having written this I checked & BT say on one page that we have Halo 1 & on another page that we have Fibre 1 but with Halo 1 offered as an upgrade...   I don't recall signing up for it unless BT have done it "automatically".  I don't know how legal such a contract would be. They seem quite common now, a "fait accompli"; if you don't respond to a letter or email to say "no thanks", you are automatically signed up.  Like car insurance renewals.
We still have Fibre 1 broadband & 2 "family" Sims at 2gb data each, reduced from 8gb at last renewal as 8gb was costing a lot & we didn't even use 1gb each then.
As far as I can see the only benefit of BT Halo1 is it offers a doubling of mobile data "at no extra cost" which would be useful as our data use has increased. However, I suspect it might be cheaper to simply increase your mobile data & avoid signing up to Halo 1 & any later price rises that it might lock you into.  I can't see any other advantage to it. Download speeds here (inner-city) are OK-ish, streaming films is poor during lockdown as everyone in the street is at it. Lack of bandwidth. Halo 1 doesn't offer any improvement I can see.
BT's almost incomprehensible pricing practices mean it's hard to know how much any "upgrade" is likely to cost. Going by previous posts here there are so many plans possible that everyone's package is different. I can't even work out how to look at our whole "package" as if I open our account & click on mobile it takes me to a page that assumes I don't have BT mobile. It only shows a few (bigger) data options but in fact if you search the site there are many other data options you can sign up to. 
As for their web chat "help", don't make me laugh. In attempting to change something on our account as a "manager", I spent an hour with their advisors who at the end told me they couldn't help me as I wasn't the named account holder. Something they could have told me at the start with the info I gave them! After 10 mins they asked for all our account details, which I gave & then after 40 mins they asked for them all again! Maybe they thought I had been taken over by aliens or something :-)

kit344

I know this is an old topic, but hopefully I can add something useful.
We have Halo 1, and it is great when the main landline broadband goes down, as BT turn on network through a little Cellular Router when you report the fault, until they can fix your line.
We currently have an outage affecting a 2 or 3 mile area, also had one yesterday with our local exchange.
Many nearby BT customers have no BT broadband if they don't have the Halo service.

HaroldWren5

[Deleted User] said:

poppasmurf_bewdley wrote: »

I don't know if anybody else is suffering a bombardment from BT about this Halo 1 they are offering.

It seems that for an extra £3 a month, BT promise to look after me better than they do whilst I'm only paying £31.99 for my fibre broadband.

I've been inundated over the past few weeks by BT by post and email trying their best to get me to sign up, when I haven't the slightest interest in paying extra for nothing extra really. Two emails today alone, and a really expensive looking mailshot earlier this week!

To me, BT sound really desperate to offload this not very good deal.

I had a quick Google and while I don't know if they're correct the 3rd reply sounds entirely possible:-

dimspace
Aspiring Contributor
on ‎11-12-2019 22h32

79 Views
Message 4 of 4
Re: Introducing BT Halo
Going to be honest, I am VERY suspicious of this new Halo package and it looks like BT might be trying to pull a fast one.



As youve no doubt read in the media, phone companies are going to have to offer existing customers deals equivalent to those offered to new customers. So if a new customer is being offered fibre for £36.00 a month, then an existing customer on the same package will at renewal need to be offered the same deal. My gut feeling is that Halo is being marketed to get around this change.

look at the BT prices for new customers

Regular Fibre 2 - 39.99

Halo Fibre 2 - 57.99!!!!!!!!!

What is the difference between these two packages? Some tech support and a stay connected promise.



But, if you are on "Halo" and it comes to the end of your contract, they only have to match what a new customer is being charged £57.99

Whereas regular fibre 2, they will be obliged to let you have it for £39.99

Looks very much to me like BT are trying to get existing customers onto a plan that will have an artificially high "new customer" deal to get round the change in the law. Personally I am getting about 3 emails a week as well as countless bits in the post trying to get me to switch.

This nails it. From the BT Community Forum, someone has basically outlined what this Halo is all about when it comes to pricing on renewal (i.e. not a benefit). The only benefit as mentioned by kit344 is if you have EE network coverage and get a 4G backup included for if the broadband line goes down. 

poppasmurf_bewdley

kit344 said:

I know this is an old topic, but hopefully I can add something useful.
We have Halo 1, and it is great when the main landline broadband goes down, as BT turn on network through a little Cellular Router when you report the fault, until they can fix your line.
We currently have an outage affecting a 2 or 3 mile area, also had one yesterday with our local exchange.
Many nearby BT customers have no BT broadband if they don't have the Halo service.

So basically, BT are expecting customers to pay extra for providing a service for when BT lets them down. 

HaroldWren5

poppasmurf_bewdley said:

kit344 said:

I know this is an old topic, but hopefully I can add something useful.
We have Halo 1, and it is great when the main landline broadband goes down, as BT turn on network through a little Cellular Router when you report the fault, until they can fix your line.
We currently have an outage affecting a 2 or 3 mile area, also had one yesterday with our local exchange.
Many nearby BT customers have no BT broadband if they don't have the Halo service.

So basically, BT are expecting customers to pay extra for providing a service for when BT lets them down. 

Spot on! And by the looks of it, when it comes to actual renewal, the renewal price is higher than what a new customer pays for broadband. Because now the price is benchmarked to the new price of a different product - the Halo product - instead of the other broadband product which usually has offers for less. 

littleboo

Not spot on at all. Home Broadband will go wrong, its doesnt have SLA's. For people who poppasmurf_bewdley said:

kit344 said:

I know this is an old topic, but hopefully I can add something useful.
We have Halo 1, and it is great when the main landline broadband goes down, as BT turn on network through a little Cellular Router when you report the fault, until they can fix your line.
We currently have an outage affecting a 2 or 3 mile area, also had one yesterday with our local exchange.
Many nearby BT customers have no BT broadband if they don't have the Halo service.

So basically, BT are expecting customers to pay extra for providing a service for when BT lets them down. 

Not really no. BT, nor any other domestic ISP, have not promised that you will never have an outage. With that in mind, you have the option to 1) do nothing and accept the risk, 2) do you own thing as a backup, 3) opt in to something like Halo

poppasmurf_bewdley

As l stated, pay for a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service, but pay us a big wedge extra to get what you paid for if we don’t give you what you paid for. 

littleboo

If you want to live with the mistaken belief that your broadband service is guaranteed to be available 24x7x365 year on year, then crack on.

flaneurs_lobster

Compensation for loss of (domestic) BT broadband service would be covered by the automatic OFCOM scheme, after 2 days it's 8 quid a day. Seems a reasonable level of payment but if you need/want a backup service to kick in immediately then you will have to pay for it as @littleboo outlines above. 

Broadband services with a guaranteed 24x7x365 service are available but will cost you many times what your domestic service does. A previous employer had such an arrangement and it involved a large generator truck and satellite dishes.