Any UK ISP offer contract lengths under 18 months?

Do any UK ISPs offer contract lengths under 18 months?

My parents signed up to Plusnet a year ago and they only offered 18-month contracts. That's too long for me.

In reply to a post by kingmustard:

Do any UK ISPs offer contract lengths under 18 months?

Using this page to search for contract lengths under 6 months gives over 30 hits... some may be inaccurate (tbb rely on the ISP to inform them of changes) but the basic answer to your question is yes- loads of 'em.


eta- You won't find many (if any) under 12 months if you want FTTC, that's a limitation effectively imposed on the ISP by BT.

Edited by billford (Fri 09-Aug-13 08:05:29)

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by kingmustard:

Do any UK ISPs offer contract lengths under 18 months?

Using this page to search for contract lengths under 6 months gives over 30 hits... some may be inaccurate (tbb rely on the ISP to inform them of changes) but the basic answer to your question is yes- loads of 'em.

Excellent link, thank you 12 months is fine, but 18 months is not.

Now to discover which ISPs don't throttle speeds at any time!

In reply to a post by kingmustard:

Now to discover which ISPs don't throttle speeds at any time!

That's not so easy to answer, it can depend not only on the ISP but also the particular contract you choose. Also, an ISP may not actively throttle anything but congestion at peak times may be a problem if they've kept prices down by skimping on capacity.

But a broad guide is that the smaller ones don't, and the cheaper it is the more likely it is to suffer somewhere.

As in most areas of life- you get what you pay for

The best ISP I ever had was AAISP & they are still 30 days notice. If I was ever forced to use a telephone line again I wouldnt' even consider going anywhere else. Not cheap but worth every penny!

In reply to a post by armshead:

The best ISP I ever had was AAISP & they are still 30 days notice. If I was ever forced to use a telephone line again I wouldnt' even consider going anywhere else. Not cheap but worth every penny!

They don't offer unlimited and I definitely need (and use) that feature.

In reply to a post by kingmustard:

They don't offer unlimited and I definitely need (and use) that feature.

Unlimited on an 80/20 FTTC connection means (in theory) that the ISP has to price the contract for something like 25 Tera-Bytes/month... I think you need to bring your sights down a bit

"Unlimited" is just a word. Whatever it is you need AAISP can & will supply it within the limits of your connection. They are fair on limits, do not immediately clobber you if you go over any month & carry a proportion of unused forward to the next month.

In reply to a post by armshead:

"Unlimited" is just a word.

I wouldn't argue with that- my contract with IDNet includes 100GB/month download, if I go over that (even waay over it) then nothing will happen except that my bank account will suffer (to the tune of £1/GB) for the excess usage.

So in a very real sense it's an unlimited connection... but most people wouldn't class it as one.

The point I was trying to make is that downloading large amounts of data can get expensive.


eta- just found out that IDNet do an unlimited 80/20 contract- ~£120/month. Less than I expected.

Edited by billford (Fri 09-Aug-13 09:40:05)

In reply to a post by kingmustard:

Do any UK ISPs offer contract lengths under 18 months?

My parents signed up to Plusnet a year ago and they only offered 18-month contracts. That's too long for me.

It's also wrong, as Plusnet themselves do monthly contracts too.

Broadband without a 12 or 18 month contract: There's a £50 activation charge but we'll reduce this to £25 if you add one of our phone packages to your order. You can use your own router if it's compatible, or you can take our router (you'll just pay £5.99 P&P). Minimum term of 30 days.