With BT now allowed by Ofcom to sell bundled deals, they have come to market
with a broadband and calls deal that matches their previous broadband only
price. In a ‘Spring Sale’ BT have released a £15.99 a month product (£7.99 for
the first 3 months) which offers unlimited UK phone calls and a 10GB monthly
download allowance on an ‘up-to’ 20Mbps broadband package (BT Total Broadband
Option 1). For those looking for more from their broadband, the unlimited
version (with BT Total Broadband Option 3) is available for £27.99 per month
(£19.99 for the first 3 months). In both cases, line rental does also apply at
£11.54 per month, and the deals are expected to run until 23rd of March.
“We wanted to give our customers a great seasonal sale and to promote our
all-in calls package.Over the last 12 months, 3.6 million of our customers have moved to calls
packages, where you don’t pay for every call.Offering a bundle of broadband and Anytime calls for this knockdown price
will launch us into the bundles market as an unrestricted competitor for the
first time. There will be many more bundled offers to come and customers can
only benefit.”John Petter, (Managing Director) BT Consumer division
BT are now able to compete on a fairer playing field, we should start to see
more interesting deals become available. It currently also offers triple play
packages which include the BT Vision television service which starts from
£21.99 a month. There is also potential for growth in BT Vision, and plans are
already under way which could see it offer a service to help it compete with
Virgin and Sky.
Project Canvas, of which BT is a partner, is developing a set-top box which
will bring the Internet to the television. The proposed solution will allow
on-demand television to be delivered over a common open standard which should
help increase the amount of content that is available.
Another development that will boost Vision is if Ofcom decide in their
favour to force
Sky to reduce wholesale costs of its premium channels such as Sky Sports
and Sky Movies. With this additional content available over BT Vision, and
potentially other providers such as TalkTalk, the television and therefore the
bundles market will open up to more competition which should breed more choice
and lower prices for the consumer.
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Those prices are low?, I for 1 don’t think so,£27.99 a mth +line rental no it’s not cheat at all, for a throttled/shaped service,It’s more like daylight robbery to me
I get tv +evening calls +20mbit broadband (will connect at 20meg) and line rental included for £36 of VM. BT’s £38 including line rental which is protocol shaped and max burst speed of 5-6mbit due to line length, ouch.
£40.76 for 50Mb + Skype unlimited landlines.
For once Carpetburn is right, BT are not giving the full information on the included calls. They are saying that there are unlimited calls to the geographic numbers that the term UK numbers refers to, and not saying that this includes calls to some non geographic numbers as well. Most other providers don’t include the calls to 0870 and 0845 that BT do.
Hmm… still expensive…
CB unlimited phone calls to any UK landline, what’s wrong with that (your wrong about local calls)? “Unlimited UK calls means calls of up to an hour to numbers beginning 01, 02 & 03, after which pence-per-minute rates apply.”
It’s the same deal VM offer, although you can call VM mobile for free. I’m sure if BT still had O2 you’d bitch that they we’re abusing their market position if they did the same!
Still much more expensive than I pay Plusnet – £27.53 against £22.24 for the same package including line rental!
from the VM unlimited phone calls page:
The Legal Stuff
Zero-rated tariff applies to the first hour of direct-dialled local and national geographic voice calls only (numbers beginning 01, 02 or 03) starting within the Weekend (all day Saturday and Sunday) period. Re-dial before 60 minutes to avoid call charges.
CB it’s exactly the same… get your facts right!!!
And if the story doesn’t tell it right, it’s not BT lying.. duh! It’s a poorly worded story! For the FACTS check the small print on both VM and BT websites. They both screw you if you go over the hour call!!!
BT Broadband is a lie unlimited is utterly nonsense.You pay for option 3 and if you reach more than 100 gb downloads which is so easy to reach those days with a household and 3 teenagers playing online games, they restrict your service to 1 mbs download speed and all you got is angry kids in the house.
BT is totally crap and lies through their teeth and you must speak indian if you wana get any help.
Do not get BT unless you got no other option !!!!!!!!!!
I have a real problem with BT. They keep on telling me that I can get “up to 20Mb” service where I live but they don’t seem to want to implement it on my BT line….
I don’t like BT, but they also include 0845 and 0870 numbers in the free calls.
Also unless you on 50mb package virgin throtles and packet shapes
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
Both virgin and BT suck.
BE is pretty good, and skys not bad if you on the unlimited service.
What we need is to change BT OpenReach into an independent not for profit infrastructure provider and allow the ISP to get on with providing what they want to the market.
After all when was the last time you went into a supermarket and they asked your for £5 just to use the store to shop because they just upgraded the store. This is what BT open reach basicly does, same with Southwest Water, National grid. We (the customers) pay for the imrpovments instead of it coming out of they profits.
@bighans
also playing online games does not consume much bandwith. Even with all the extra conent I download for the xbox and pc don’t consume much. What does is all the TV on demand and streaming music.
“Posted by damien001 about 16 hours ago
I don’t like BT, but they also include 0845 and 0870 numbers in the free calls.”
So do Plusnet!
@reserved,
Free calls, unlimited downloads & up to 20Mb inc. line rental for £22.24 / month?
Which Plusnet package is that?
Nearest I can find is their Plusnet Premium with Talk Anytime package – 80GB / month (yes, it does say GB as in gigabytes on the webpage) for £28.24 for the first 3 months – £32.24 thereafter (if you live in a ‘low cost’ area £36.24 otherwise)
Seriously, if you know of another one, I’d like to see if I can swap (I’m also on Plusnet)
Firstly Does this mean then that as i’m already on option 1 that my usage allowance has just doubled from 5 to 10gig or do i have to ring???
And secondly they are still very expensive for a shaped and throttled package!!
I’m extremely lucky…in my village the average speed is 512k to 1Mb and i’m receiving nearly 2!! this is cos i tried to upgrade any hardware or wires n filters for better quality ones. always a good place to start!!
@ greemble
I was comparing BT Talk & Surf Plus (10GB monthly usage)for £27.53pm against Plusnet Value Broadband (10GB monthly usage) + Talk Anytime for £22.24pm on a Market 3 exchange.
@reserved,
Blast…
Oh well
Several ISPs’ package do also include calls to 0870 etc numbers, but not necessarily during the day.
I’ve been with TalkTalk for four years on its AnyTime International package, which costs £21.50 a month and includes free Up to 8Mb broadband, free AnyTime UK calls and free AnyTime calls to 36 countries.
TalkTalk has just announced it is providing Up to 24Mb broadband to all new and existing customers on its LLU exchanges at no extra cost. It’s being phased in over the next four months, but already I’m seeing speeds of up to 16.5Mb (average 6.5Mb to 7.3Mb previously)…:-)
PS
See: http://tinyurl.com/ygyn433
@Mince1978
Try using DMT Tool, should get you at least an extra 1Mb.
@stuartli – ah thats good news. I was considering getting the speed increase add-on but that would have meant me losing the free broadband package – now I get both, free!