Add Broadband to BT Line

My elderly (well 70s) uncle lives alone, some 2 hours from me, he has a BT phoneline/contract, paying about £20 pcm. I've suggested he gets broadband/a tablet to explore the internet/home order stuff, video call etc. Partly COVID/partly age driven.

Is there a cheap upgrade deal ? Fibre 1 for £28 pcm ?. Also tablet suggestions, Amazon Fire 10" seems to fit ? TIA

Won't change from BT, needs to be low hassle, low support input from me !!

Fibre Essential

Based around the VDSL/FTTC 40/10 service £19.99 setup and £24.99 for 2 years. Standard price is £32.99/m. This price includes line rental, so only like £5/m inititally.

Believe this price should be available to existing phone customers who do not have broadband yet. Signup is online so if they are happy you can signup them up online while they are on the phone to answer the questions double check stuff.

On tablets, the Amazon Fire are good for price, though if you are going to do support I'd suggest having the same tablet at your end for the questions you'll have at the beginning.

Remember if you have prime there is ability to add them to the household account and they get prime benefits i.e. e-books, films etc At which point a Fire TV might be an idea.

Remember also remember a case, the Amazon ones that fold to form a stand are useful as holding a tablet can be tiring after a while.

Does he really need fibre and is he on any means tested benefits (pension credit etc.) ?

If the answers are no and yes then BT basic + Broadband is the cheapest at slightly over £10 per month for line rental and ADSL-only broadband included.

The basic BT deals are fine. Mr S has shown a decent deal and go for a Fibre, don't bother with ADSL unless he really wants to save every last penny.

What I would suggest that you and he consider is getting you as a "nominated contact" on his account which will allow them to talk to you about it, order service, tech issues &c. It may be appropriate now, or it may be in the future.

+1

it maybe worth checking what they currently get for their £20 landline deal and what they need. some of BT's landline only tariffs ( e.g 'home phone saver ') include unlimited calls to landline as part of the deal and those plans are normally around the £20 / £21 a month price including line rental. so if they need unlimited landline calls or some form of inclusive calls this would be an additional cost on top of the £24.99 fibre deal that has already been posted.

call plan add ons are £5 per month for 500 anytime minutes ( covers landline and mobile ) or £15 for unlimited minutes

BT Basic is only available to those on some low income Government benefits.

The 15GB monthly allowance may be an issue if they start to consume video content a lot too. There is an assumption that BT Basic is currently enjoying unlimited usage due to the pandemic, but even if it is that way now it is not clear how that would last.

Only the social tariff BT Basic is cheaper now.

BT ADSL2+ and BT Fibre entry level speeds are the same price.

NOTE: If going via by hand to bt dot com you will see higher prices, i.e. the link I used was an affiliate deal which are often lower. So when signing up use that link. If you fall back to ordering over the phone they'll probably offer at £27.99/m but try to haggle them down to the £24.99 point.

Many thanks Mr Saffron and others. I'll try for the £24.99 deal.

No tablets in our household to be familiar with but likely I'll stick with the Amazon fire (plus stand) so he can share our Amazon account for films etc

I use Teamviewer to support my parents and M in L PC , can it work on an Amazon fire or other Tablet, get mixed results when I google.

Thanks for the tip about being named on the account for issue resolution

Mixed - to the point I'd suggest its no good.

Best bet for a tablet is owning one too and go through things over the phone. On my mothers fire only ever had to do the initial show how it works, but windows laptop still throws up odd and unexpected things e.g. mail broke, but she had actually unknowlngly just shrunk the size of the browser window so format had altered to hide message preview.