Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[feeutfo]

Had a call from me mum. Step Dad passed away a couple of weeks ago and she is going through bills and god knows what else up in Cumbria. Had a bit of a shock with the out goings by all accounts, he was not the most practical of blokes.

Seems they where paying a grand total of £150 a month  for a combination of sky tv £50, Bt phone and web almost £100.

Now me Mum doesn't watch much sky tv, but phone and web are important for work for her and son, probably fairly heavy use as he is in IT, she works web based from home a couple of days a week.

My first thought was drop bt and put all 3 services under sky as we did several years ago as we now get HD tv, land line, and web(on a minimum package) for 48 a month. But she won't need an HD sub so that's £38, less a smaller tv channel package would bring It down again.

But they will need a substantial broadband package I would think so I reckon  maybe do the lot for £50? If that's possible?thing is I'm not sure if business use is wise with sky...?

Now i know we all have our best ways of doing things and that suits us fine. But this is my/a Mum we're talking about. Keeping things simple and non technical is almost more important than the total bill, so i should mention that having one company deal with all 3 services is a big plus for them if possible.

Any advice great fully received. 

[millwall]

im with virgin on the vip package  £100 a month and its very good  had no problems  if you go on the virgin website you can build your own bundle  im on 20 meg broadband and its very stable and fast  they do faster broadband if needed

[TheBoy]

Does she need the sky package at all?  Most ISP packages are suited to most needs, unless you are heavily downloading.

If you want unfettled broadband, then Zen, but it ain't cheap.

BT Total Broadband with BT Vision is an option, 40G allowance IIRC, but do traffic shape. Plusnet may offer marginally better value, but shape badly.

If in a cable area, Virgin, but they are generally pretty good or woefully bad.


Personally, I use a combo of BT (with the freebie unlimited eve/weekend for signing up to another 12m) and VoIP for phone, and a combination of Zen and BT Business for broadband.  But my needs are different.

[Kevin Wood]

If you want unfettled broadband, then Zen, but it ain't cheap.

Agreed, but £100 a month would go a long way even with Zen.

I wouldn't (and don't) hesitate to use them for business use. I can't remember a time when I've EVER found our connection down save for a dicey few weeks of BT hassle after first activating the line and when my flaky hardware has gone for a Burton.

Kevin

[jyr001]

I ditched BT a few years back because I also found the internet/phone package very expensive. I put it all under Sky and reckon I saved about £50-60 per month. My other reason for changing at the time was because I had a problem with the internet and found the BT New Delhi helpline awe inspiringly crap I had to get a BT engineer out (twice) to prove it wasn't the line but the router. This they wanted me to pay £80 to replace. I switched to Sky with the whole package now costing me £88 including full Sky HD, unlimited internet and anytime calls. In the time I've been with them I've never lost internet once although the service is probably better supported where I live compared to Cumbria.

[TheBoy]

I ditched BT a few years back because I also found the internet/phone package very expensive. I put it all under Sky and reckon I saved about £50-60 per month. My other reason for changing at the time was because I had a problem with the internet and found the BT New Delhi helpline awe inspiringly crap I had to get a BT engineer out (twice) to prove it wasn't the line but the router. This they wanted me to pay £80 to replace. I switched to Sky with the whole package now costing me £88 including full Sky HD, unlimited internet and anytime calls. In the time I've been with them I've never lost internet once although the service is probably better supported where I live compared to Cumbria.

Remember, BT still provide the hardest part of that Internet connection

Sky's freebie internet isn't really suited for heavy use. Additionally, probably not available in outer Cumbria....

[feeutfo]

...just checked availability at thier address on the sky web site. Max speed 0.5Mb at that address.   

[aaronjb]

...just checked availability at thier address on the sky web site. Max speed 0.5Mb at that address.   

Speed will be the same as any other provider that uses the 'last mile' copper, so any DSL provider.. only cable will be any different if available.

'course those speed checkers can sometimes be either hopelessly pessimistic or hopelessly optimistic (since even BT don't know how long the copper really is, half the time).

What speed do they get now? It shouldn't change by any large amount.. although I did lose 0.5Mb going from Zen to O2 for no reason that I could ever figure out other than O2s DSLAM (assuming it was a different DSLAM I got moved to) was wired in badly.

[feeutfo]

...just checked availability at thier address on the sky web site. Max speed 0.5Mb at that address.   

Speed will be the same as any other provider that uses the 'last mile' copper, so any DSL provider.. only cable will be any different if available.

'course those speed checkers can sometimes be either hopelessly pessimistic or hopelessly optimistic (since even BT don't know how long the copper really is, half the time).

What speed do they get now? It shouldn't change by any large amount.. although I did lose 0.5Mb going from Zen to O2 for no reason that I could ever figure out other than O2s DSLAM (assuming it was a different DSLAM I got moved to) was wired in badly.

Agree in theory totally, but ime at our own address 02 have delivered consistently quicker and reliable service than BT themselves, orange who where totally hopeless, and sky have finally stopped flooding the line and are delivering 1.2 mb. The business line, comes in on the same bit of copper, gives 3.5mb from 02 as they have their own equipment in the exchange apparently  :-/ whatever that means. So one line ini'm told by 4 different BT engineers, 4 very different results :-/ odd.