Combined Braodband and telephone - HELP advice needed

[900triple]

Hello,

I have AOL bradband and BT phone. AOL costs me £26 per month and BT phone costs approx £30 per month.

Any advice on what is the best deal for combining phone with broadband connection? Is the BT total Broadbandone a good deal? Are there other possibilities.

Please give me real world advice - i am not computer literate really...

Thanks

 

[Fanum]

Advice???

Ditch AOL....it's shyte of the first order, both as a corporation and as an ISP.

Do you run Norton as well???


I'll come back to this thread when I'm fully sober tomorrow

 

[Bigtwin]

My take after couple of years of agony.

Almost everyone has to use BT's equipment to get you the service. So they are reliant on them to make that equipment work.

BT are a bloody awful company when you are a customer; when you are not they are beyond the criminal - they will simply do nothing at all for months and months. With me, they even rendered false invoices for vistis that never happend to the broadband provider.

I have been with 5 of them now. They are all shocking. Any element of service required to collect your money are you are totally stuffed. It's a pisspoor indrustry with no effective regulation (been down the Oftel route - total waste of time and effort).

So basically, you may as well pay for the cheapest and hope for the best - if you have a problem, you are stuffed whoever you use.

 

[Iain Hogg]

As a guide, costs for the phone lin are basicallt fixed at £11/month for the BT line. After that there are any number of combined phone and broadband deals (including all UK landline calls) for well under £30/month.

Have a look at this

 

[Simert]

I don't have combined phone and broadband but it's quite cheap.

BT together option 1, about £11 a month. (basically for line rental).

Then use primus for phone calls. Basically free evening and weekend calls to land lines, which is all I need - for free! 90mins per call, which is more than the BT 60mins (with BT option 2) too.. and BT will charge a monthly fee for this option 2 as well!

I use ukonline.net for broadband. £10 a month for 1Mb download speed unlimited downloads.

All in all £21 a month. I think ukonline coverage is limited though...

 

[wessie]

I have had trouble with ISPs and non-BT telephone providers before. I have no choice but to use services provided using BT hardware: there is no cable option and no unbundled service in my telephone exchange.

Currently I pay line rental to BT, so about £11 a month. I can use the BT phone service if I want: most of the calls are incoming. I have a Vodafone mobile which is used for most outgoing calls as my contract (one of those 100% line rental rebate jobs from Coolnewmobile, so no cost after 12 months) gives 500 mins a month across networks. My ISP is Virgin and I pay the lowest broadband rate of £14.99 a month. This gives me (sometimes) a connection speed of 2Mb/s which is the best I'm going to get on this semi-rural exchange.

So, net cost, after mobile phone rebates, is £26 a month for both phone & broadband.

After many years of experience, I prefer to keep telephony & ISP providers separate. Inevitably there will be problems with one or the other, usually over billing and I can ditch my ISP or mobile contract and still stay in touch with the world via the BT landline.

The only time I would consider having an ISP/telephone bundle is if I moved back to Cardiff where I had an NTL cable package: the bundled rates for TV/broadband and phone are pretty good - especially as they are willing to negotiate once you have been a customer for a while.

 

[GS_BOTT]

I've been with 'Homecall' (now Pipex I believe) for a few years, not had any problems at all, Think its half meg unlimited downloads and free calls (not mobiles). Trawl the internet and you will find horror stories and bad reports for anyone you are thinking of subscribing to, just got to bite the bullet and decide, there should be better deals than this around, but we pay £26/month, have you looked on Moneysavingexpert.com?

Paul

 

[Davey B]

Just moved to Pipex. After 16 mths of false BT promises of 'going to upgrade your speed' carp, i was still on 512kb. The day after I am on 2.3meg with Pipex. Pay £23 a month for unlimited BB and free local and national calls at any time....hardly use the phone anyway but its a half price deal and far better BB

 

[900triple]

Thanks for the advice you all!!!!!!!!!!

 

[(RIP) Jamie]

I've been with 'Homecall' (now Pipex I believe) for a few years, not had any problems at all, Think its half meg unlimited downloads and free calls (not mobiles). Trawl the internet and you will find horror stories and bad reports for anyone you are thinking of subscribing to, just got to bite the bullet and decide, there should be better deals than this around, but we pay £26/month, have you looked on Moneysavingexpert.com?

Paul

Just moved to Pipex. After 16 mths of false BT promises of 'going to upgrade your speed' carp, i was still on 512kb. The day after I am on 2.3meg with Pipex. Pay £23 a month for unlimited BB and free local and national calls at any time....hardly use the phone anyway but its a half price deal and far better BB

I'm with Pipex, have been for a while - just "upgraded" to Mini+Anytime, basically up to 8mb broadband, with free national calls anytime, and I have line rental with them, works out at £29.99 per month, and I'm told I have no download limits - see what you think http://www.pipex.co.uk/products/mini/

Aftercare is good as well, wtach out for BT if you change line rental though