P1Fanatic

Im currently with Pipex (Tiscali) £20pm + BT line rental (£13ish). Ive stayed with this setup a) cos Im lazy b) my work used to pay my broadband whilst oncall but Ive recently stopped oncall and c) Ive never really had any issues and always think better the devil you know.

BT are now offering Broadband + Anytime calls for £16pm with first 3 months free + line rental at £10pm if you pay upfront. So over the first year that is a saving of about £150 over my current Tiscali setup (admittedly Tiscali is unlimited download but long gone are they days when I download films etc so is just email, browsing and PS3 gaming).

They also offer free access to their Wifi hotspots which is handy for my iphone whilst out & about.

So is there anything I should be aware of with BT. Do you have to use their HomeHub setup or is it straightforward enough to plug in your own DSL router?

And Im out in the greenbelt so max 8mb for now so no point recommending me Virgin or BT Fibre.

Cheers
Simon

hodgy0_2

A friend moved his business from pipex to BT -- and he did have problems

large emails would get stuck in his outbound queue -- and then max out the bandwidth on his WAN link whilst in constant retry

nearly bought his business to its knees, I looked at his exchange setup and setup smtp logging etc

I pretty quickly came to the conclusion it was a low level networking issue -- but BT were useless

in the end I told him to replace his Netgear router with a BT supplied one -- problem solved

the moral of the story - use the BT supplied kit

DonNedly

iTrader: (10)

Be aware that the advertised rate with bt is only if you take out an 18month contract and pay for all of it upfront. Its more for 12 month contract and even more if you pay monthly.

Also you only get 40Gb a month and they add your download and upload together to get to that figure. They then charge £5 for every 5Gb over rounded up to the nearest 5Gb.

Last thing i will say about bt is that if you decide you want to change your package (like increase your download limit or change call plan) you have to take out a new 18 month contract. You can't just change your existing contract and pay more.

As you might tell i don't get on with bt. I was with virgin until i moved to the middle of nowhere and paid £30 for unlimited 10Gb broadband and Cable TV. My last bill from bt was £103 and i'm getting 1.5Gb with a 40Gb limit and no Cable TV.

LostUser

BT will throttle the connection massively during the evening period. Either that or the contention ratios are so high that the network can't handle the speeds. So if your connection is around 4-5Mbit, you will only get around 1Mbit in the evening period. That was my experience.

I can recommend Be (www.bethere.co.uk)

Dougmy06wrx

iTrader: (4)

I changes from by to talk talk, don't I've to pay by anything now. Most of the companies like sky, talk talk and the post office can manage without you having a bt line which means no charges from bt.

Bt are robbing ba$***** anyway.

Doug

scoobyverysoon

iTrader: (1)

I had a letter off bethere putting my special package im on from £7 to £14 they have offered me half price for 6 month meaning it comes down to £10 per month

but its a great service - ahhh to change or not im in the same boat as you

GazTheHat

I recently took Talk Talk up on their deal. I pay £6.50 p/m for unlimited BB and use their line rental too and it's £19 p/m (Total). I regulary get 12Mb/s, even though it's supposed to be upto 8Mb/s and i regulary go over the 40GB limit and neither my speed is throttled nor charged more.

To be honest i couldn't be happier for the money. I've had the internet drop out twice in about a year for only minutes at a time.

BlkKnight

The only situation I'd go with BT is if it's in Infinity.

Failing that I'd go with:

Virgin Cable if available
BE if unbundled
Demon if not.

J

P1Fanatic

Thanks for the replies chaps. Glad I asked now lol.

O2 seem to do quite a good deal at £26.04 a month unlimited inc line rental. And as far as Im aware O2 own & use BE's nextwork anyway dont they?

bonerp

I have moved to infinity recently and can;t see the difference really. Except I cant connect some of my wireless stuff now. Also they screwed me when I moved to new house and set me up on wrong tariff. Took an age to get the bill down.

Was with talktalk previously who were cheaper, but a nightmare when you need to contact their indian callcentre.

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

Customer service with bt is a joke unfortunately. I have been having trouble with going over my limit recently even though I know I have used nowhere near 40gb. I did enquire about upgrading but decided against it, a few days later a home hub turns up so another 67 minutes on the BT call centre merry go round Apparently I verbally agreed to a new contract.

Sy5

iTrader: (6)

We joined BT Broadband in Feb this year and so far all's well. We will be getting Infinity when it's available here. No noticable problems gaming in the evenings either. We have the 10gb limit and have not gone over that. £13.49 a month.

P1Fanatic

I can only find the 12 month upfront line rental option:

Things you should know about Line Rental Saver:

-You must sign up to BT.com online billing (view your bill online and receive no paper bill)
-You must set up Direct Debit to cover any call changes made throughout the year
-At least two BT calls must be made per month to avoid a £1.50 monthly charge
-Line Rental Saver is non-refundable
-At the end of the 12 month period you will automatically revert back to monthly line rental unless you tell us otherwise
-BT's previous paper-free discount no longer applies

The paper-free discount is £1.25 a month so what they give with one hand they take away with another.

And the fact you have to make two calls per month otherwise incur a £1.50 per month charge. Wtf. Ok that shouldnt be hard even for someone like me who rarely uses home phone other than to call parents and 0800/0845 type numbers. But still annoying that they stick all these other clauses in and makes me wonder what else they would hit you with.

P1Fanatic

Update for anyone else looking for a better deal. I ended up staying with PIPEX who offered me same unlimited Broadband + BT line rental and free evening & w/end calls (not inc 0845 & 0871) for £23.98 pm but 1 month free for taking a 12mth contract so in effect its costing me £22 per month.

Not bad considering the limited deal options when not on an unbundled exchange. I was previously paying £20.40 pm for just ADSL plus £12pm BT line rental.

PIPEX free calls are 6pm-6am which is better than BT's 7pm and 90min free call period (BT is 60 mins).

michaelro

Decent deal

Not sure I'd be bothered about the free call period though - not much of a hardship to re-dial earlier..

P1Fanatic

Its not a hard ship but Im sure people forget every now and again. Its not a deal breaker but if I get longer by default Im certainly not going to complain. Chances of me having a call longer than an hour are slim to none. As for the mrs