Uk Broadband Information & Deals
Tiscali are currently giving away a free wireless router to customers who sign up to their broadband “option 2″ this offer is only available until the 5th of March .option 2 comes with the following features
Unlimited 8Mb Broadband £8.49 for 1st three months then £14.99
for more information please visit Tiscali
BT Business total broadband are running a special offer until the 31st of march for all new customers including switchers who sign up to a 1 or 2 year contract with them - basically they are offering discounts on the monthly charge for the first 6 months of joining, the amount of discount depends on the length og the contract but it is betweem £5 and £11 a month of your bill ! not only that but they are also offering a £20 discount off the price of the wireless hub on option 1 when you agree a 2 year contract -
the details of the discounts are listed below1) Option 1 (2 year contract):
£5 monthly rental discount for first 6 months plus £20 reduction on the Wireless Hub
2) Option 1 (1 year contract):
£5 monthly rental discount for the first six months
3) Option 2 (2 year contract only):
£7 monthly rental discount for the first six months
4) Option 3 (2 year contract only):
£11 monthly rental discount for the first six months
to find out more please visit BT Business Total Broadband
When O2 broadband launched they announced that there would be a £5 per month discount for existing contract customers which was a great incentive and one that many customers took up . But that didn’t help loyal pay as you go customers who were left paying full price .
Well from tomorrow 22nd February they are extending their discount to all o2 customers and at the same £5 discount rate - the packages for existing customers now look like this
- Standard - £7.50 per month
- Premium - £10.00 per month
- Ultimate - £15.00 per month
the only condition on pre pay customers is that they will receive their discount as long as they spend a minimum of £10 on top ups every 3 months which shouldn’t be a problem for most users
to find out more please visit O2 broadband
back in September we reported on AOL’s Free Laptop offering , well now they are giving customers the choice of a free dell laptop or a free PS2 when they sign up to a 24 month contract on their Wireless Plus broadband package
Be broadband has surprised us all with an announcement today that it will be cutting the prices on its broadband packages from the 10th of October for new and exsisting customers, the price cuts are fairly hefty too heres how they look
Be Value (8Mbps unlimited) - remains unchanged
Be Unlimited (24 Mbps downstream and up to 1.3 upstream speeds)- will be cut from £24 to £18 per month
Be Pro (24 Mbps downstream and up to 2.5 upstream speeds)- will be cut from £40 a month to £22 !
also there will now be no charge for a static IP address .
This put be in a very strong position with the fastest speeds in the UK at some of the cheapest prices , i just they can cope with all the new sign ups they are bound to get after these latest cuts as up until now their customer service record has been excellent. keep up the good work be !
to find out more about the new prices visit the website be broadband
AOL have recently announced a raft of changes to its somewhat dated broadband offerings. The Isp has introduced 2 packages with up to 8Mb speeds and 10GB or 40gb limits options both coming with a free wireless router and weighing in at £14.99 and £19.99 per month respectively,
But the really exciting news is that for a limited period AOL are giving away a Free dell laptop to customers signing up to a 2 year contract on their £19.99 wireless plus option !
wheres the catch i hear you say , well there is a couple 
firstly you need to be in an AOL LLU enabled area otherwise there is a surcharge and the second catch is that you have to subscribe to one of AOL talk plans (AOL pay as you go talk plan is included free in the price) or you have to pay £29.99 a month instead of £19
Over all i would say this is a pretty good deal if you are happy to take out a 24 month contract and use AOL’s talk plan (which could save you money on phone calls)
see our AOL page for more offers
Broadband Providers are always coming up with new and interesting was of attracting customers in a crowded market , just look at Orange giving away Free Laptops for instance. But are these Deals as good a buy as they may look at first? you can in some cases end up paying more than you initially thought as there is few pitfalls and hidden costs to look out for
We have made a list of things to keep in mind when considering a broadband package.
Free Broadband
Just like most things that claim to be free , its not! broadband companies like Orange , Talk Talk , Sky have been offering “Free” broadband for a while now but to get Free broadband you have to subscribe to one or more of their other Services like (Sky TV or Talk Talk phone line). These bundle deals do represent great value for money if you already subscribe to a qualifying service but you need to be sure you couldnt get the service cheaper when taken separately elsewhere.
If you do decide to go for one of these bundles then the second thing to look out for is the download limit included on your free Broadband which can be as low as 2GB which could see you hit with extra bandwidth charges if you are anything more than an low user.
Broadband Speeds
It is fairly rare to get the exact Speed advertised by your Provider for example you will see providers offering up to 8Mb broadband , in reality in a recent survey of 300 “up to 8Mb” users the average speed was just 2.7Mbps and the worst was a mere 0.9Mbps (read more here) . The maximum download speed for your connection is determined by many factors , one of the main ones being your phone lines distance from the exchange - use our broadband postcode checker to find this out and for a rough estimate of the speeds you can expect.
At the end of the day you could be paying extra for faster speeds that you wont get !
If you want to test the speed of your current connection use our Broadband Speed Test
Download Limits
Pretty much all Broadband Packages have download limits even if they don’t make this abundantly clear when you sign up. While you may be getting Super Fast broadband for under a tenner, when it comes with a download limit of 2GB per month you would need to be careful of what you use the connection for as you could easily exceed this with very little effort for example if you download a few movies a month or play a lot of online games. A 2GB limit is ok for people checking email and web browsing downloading some music etc. but if you are medium to heavy user it would not be suitable and would result in extra bandwidth charges
Unlimited Broadband ( Fair Use Policy)
In our opinion this is one of the sneakiest things broadband providers advertise, “Unlimited Broadband” should be unlimited right? wrong! they are almost alway subject to a “Fair Use Policy” which if you search through the small print may mean that if they think you are using your “unlimited” connection excessively then your provider may take the appropriate a action which can range from issuing a warning, throttling your connection during peak times, putting you in a pool of other high users to fight it 0ut for the bandwidth or even worse terminate your contract .
Make sure you read the small print to see what exactly each providers deems excessive use and what the consequences might be
18 Month contracts
You may notice some providers offering special deals for signing up to a 18 month broadband contract while this may look appealing remember that you will be locked in to that provider during the 18 month term and you may have to pay penalties if you need to get out early (e.g if you move house). Also in an ever changing broadband market do you want to be tied in for that long with out being able to switch freely?
Line Rental
Most people forget that you need to factor this into the cost of broadband as they already pay for their phone, but you cant have ADSL broadband without a phone line and you are looking at about
Talk Talk are offering broadband customers a free Freeview box & two months free Setanta sports when customers sign an 18 month contract .
Setanta the new home of the Barclays Premier League will bring you 46 exclusively live games, all of which feature the top teams, not available on Sky Sports.
Please note that you have to pay for sentanta for the remaining 16 months , so i would only recommend this deal to someone looking to sign up to Setanta anyway as otherwise its not a great deal if you are only interested in the freeview box as they can be picked up pretty cheap these days
It seems PC World and Orange Broadband have teamed up to offer customers signing up in store a free laptop when they sign up for an 24 month contract on the entry level “Orange Starter” Package. The Laptop is a budget level system but you can trade up to a better laptop and receive a more advanced version- Not a bad deal if you can handle a 2 year contract
visit orange for more details