Broadband, Phone TV options

[Tan]

Hi

We are moving house next month and I am going to take the opportunity to rethink my Broadband, Phone and TV options.

At the moment we have it all with SKY and it has crept up to £36 a month, which whilst not extortionate by any means I wonder if there are better options available now, since the last time I looked was when we moved to our current house nearly 4 years ago.

I think Virgin used to do a BB only service, which required no phone line, does anyone know if this is available as I can't find the details on their website. This could work for us as I have a VoIP phone service that I could run via an ATA box and thus still have regular DECT phones around the house.

I am thinking of ditching SKY as the only thing I use it for is SKY Plus and most of the programs I record are available on iPlayer or ITV player and all of our TV's have freeview built into them. The only thing that will make me keep SKY is if I can get a very good deal.

If I do have to go down the BT line and BB route, what are the best deals in terms of customer service and reliability not solely cost. I have always heard good things about O2 but have not experienced them myself yet.

Thanks in advance for any recommendations, advice etc.

Tan

 

[flango]

FWIW I have just relooked at my packages for 2011, I am currently with Sky. BT offered a better deal but after reading some of the horror stories on here with BT I was wary, Plus Net looked good until I found out they are owned by BT, Virgin not an option due to remote location. Long story short I phoned Sky about the BT offer and they bettered it.

I have 2 x SKY + boxes (1 in lounge , one in daughters bedroom) on a multiroom package (no films or sport), unlimited anytime calls on landline, landline rental and their top package broadband now only £41 month all in. I'm more than happy with that and their after sales support whenever I have called them both for billing and tech support has been great so no complaints from me

 

[markjay]

My telephone is with BT.

Broadband with BE Internet

TV with Sky.

Could I get a better deal from an all-in-one provider? Probably...

 

[dinoy]

o2 do internet for £5 get payg sim card u get the discount, sky with sky, bt do 4.99 (3 months free) unlimited calls and if u pay line rental in advance for 1 year it drops to under 10 per quarter.

sky also do package with sat and phone (evening only) and broadband, and choice of either sport ort movies thrown in for around £20.

finally best going to virgin website and check if u plumbing in they are best if u r u get it all via fivre rather copper

 

[crockers]

I have Telephone and BB with BT. Haven't had any problems (compared to AOL) and everytime I call them they are fine. But not the cheapest.

One thing to bear in mind - if anything goes wrong and you need an engineer - most use BT and it can be a PITA to get that sorted whereas BT are straight there as there is no 3rd party liason.

I just wish we had cable here in the sticks........

 

[grober]

TECHNICALLY nothing can touch Virgin Cable if you can get access to that. They still do broadband only but like to sell you a bundled package if possible.
http://shop.virginmedia.com/broadband.html

 

[flango]

The above post just reminded me where are you moving to? As BT are currently trialling 100 meg broadband which make Virgin look slow. What you have to remember is that every operator ultimately has to cable back though BT's exchange and BT systems Virgin advertise 50 meg but very few people get it, from the 100 meg BT trials I have seen it is far superior to Virgin and is due to be rolled out next year if all goes well.But if you are like me in a remote location then 1.7 meg is good

 

[oldcro]

I'm with BT for the telephone and this year chugged to BT from Talk Talk for broadband. I checked many broadband providers who all offered the infamous "up to" pick a number Megs. Fact is all broadband from my local exchange is provided by BT Wholesale so the promises of faster speeds are nonsense, as they just lease the lines.

 

[oldcro]

Something else I forgot to mention. I was a Sky customer for over 18 years and was getting increasingly cheesed off with their regular price increases, so in the end cancelled Sky and used Freesat instead. Apart from the initial cost I am now £52 per month better off, admittedly with a smaller choice of programmes available to watch.

By getting a TV, phone and broadband package this allows them to increase prices by blaming any one of the three services. Also making it harder and more reluctant to change provider as all three services are affected at once.

 

[rizzer]

We were with ukonline for 7 years, no problems, but then Sky stepped in to take them over. Therefore we had to move to sky BB, we were a sky customer anyway so we thought this would be straightforward. How wrong we were, it was an absolute nightmare with sky customer service, in the end we cancelled our sky and moved our broadband to BE, so far so good. Our experience with sky customer service is not good, and we really dont miss the extra channels we were paying for, saving £42 per month.

 

[tali]

I had bundle with Virgin av £39 for 18month contract -but they removed talk unlimited(wanted £4.50 extra)-so i cancelled and am back to my previous package(£34) - but that bundle is now ....£4.50 cheaper - sales rep says computer was fixing me on half price deal.And then with TV XL which i cancelled i could have again ...for the £39 with the unlimited included-

Something else I forgot to mention. I was a Sky customer for over 18 years and was getting increasingly cheesed off with their regular price increases, so in the end cancelled Sky and used Freesat instead. Apart from the initial cost I am now £52 per month better off, admittedly with a smaller choice of programmes available to watch.

By getting a TV, phone and broadband package this allows them to increase prices by blaming any one of the three services. Also making it harder and more reluctant to change provider as all three services are affected at once.

True - customers are forced into bundles -because they make standalone services v uncompetitive
Sky do their own Freesat box - and i am wondering whether this is good option? -or any other box with lots of channels as long as no dish is required?

 

[oldcro]

True - customers are forced into bundles -because they make standalone services v uncompetitive
Sky do their own Freesat box - and i am wondering whether this is good option? -or any other box with lots of channels as long as no dish is required?

Not sure if this still applies, but when I dropped Sky the option to use the Sky+ box involved paying £10 per month if you wanted to use the recording facility.

After Talk Talk took over Tiscali (my ISP) they offered broadband and their telephone service at the same price I was paying for just broadband i.e. £14.99 per month. If I did not take their telephone service the cost of just broadband increased to £18.99 per month. I do not like being held to ransom by any company, and that example of how Talk Talk do business was the final straw which made me change to BT broadband. Dumping Talk Talk was another nightmare of lies and incompetence as expected from a company of such low morals.

 

[ucr]

Please use this for Mercedes-Benz bits only !!! - Want to talk about sky get on a sky forum ?

 

[oldcro]

Please use this for Mercedes-Benz bits only !!! - Want to talk about sky get on a sky forum ?

Check which sub-forum this thread is posted under before making such stupid comments. Oh! And an apology would not go amiss.

 

[twosnowmen]

TECHNICALLY nothing can touch Virgin Cable if you can get access to that. They still do broadband only but like to sell you a bundled package if possible.http://shop.virginmedia.com/broadband.html

Couldn't agree more, took me ages to ask them for broadband and nothing more. Currently with SKY for everthing else.

 

[MercFanUk]

If you can get Virgin, I'd recommend it - I have V+ HD, extra box, 50mb cable (That runs at 50mb, as do my friends who have it), and unlimited national rate calls, rarely get any issues whatsoever. TV has all the sky movie channels and sports, all in HD. It's wonderful

Virgin have also started to upgrade to 100mb (With 10mb upload), and you can see the rollout plans here if you are in a cable area - I have to wait till March

http://shop.virginmedia.com/content/dam/allyours/pdf/100Mb-rollout-7-12-10.pdf

 

[Deleted member 37751]

Please use this for Mercedes-Benz bits only !!! - Want to talk about sky get on a sky forum ?

You cannot be serious, man!

 

[crockers]

Please use this for Mercedes-Benz bits only !!! - Want to talk about sky get on a sky forum ?

Check which sub-forum this thread is posted under before making such stupid comments. Oh! And an apology would not go amiss.

I can only assume UCR's comment was made because he's new and hasn't read the forum headings. Even so not the politest one.

 

[markjay]

I'm with BT for the telephone and this year chugged to BT from Talk Talk for broadband. I checked many broadband providers who all offered the infamous "up to" pick a number Megs. Fact is all broadband from my local exchange is provided by BT Wholesale so the promises of faster speeds are nonsense, as they just lease the lines.

This is correct in general, but:

Some providers have LLU (Local loop Unbundling), which means they only lease from BT the physical copper wire from the Exchange to the premises. These ISPs will have their own kit in BT's Exchange so can offer different speeds than BT do - up to the limit of the physical wire obviously.

Also, even for those who do resell the service they buy from BT Wholesale, there can be differences in speed depending on how the ISP kit upstream is busy.

So in a nutshell they all depend on BT to some extent - because BT owns the local loop - but you could still see some diversity in performance between different providers for the same premises.

 

[gunning]

Get an iphone, job done lol