BT, O2 or other provider?

I live in Caerphilly, South Wales. Currently using Plusnet, and have been for years. The service to date has been good but I have noticed a marked slowdown in the evenings.

I currently get just under 3mb, but various sites have suggested possible speeds of between 4 and 6.5 mb should be possible. My phone line was recently rewired by an offduty BT engineer and the master socket is now less than 1m away from my router/modem.

This coupled with the relatively high cost of the unlimited service has prompted me to lok at moving my service to either a broadband only or possibly a bb & phone package.

I have to say that I'm finding it difficult to work out what is the best option, and am hoping for a few pointers. So far it loks like it could be O2 or Be for broadband only.
BT have suggested a pretty god package which is much cheaper as it would include line rental and phone within their price.

As we foster, there can be as many as 7 people in our house, so service levels are more imprtant to me than price since kids these days think they are deprived if they dont get net access!

Sny help will be gratefully received.

Have I not seen this question before?

P S Have you not heard off the "off" switch and told the children to go and play outside!

Meldrew

The off switch is frequently used. But the kids we have with us sometimes are either far away from their siblings or their circumstances limits unsupervised physical contact, and so social networking sites are an important tool for them to keep in touch and try to retain a degree of normality in their lives.

Apologies if this question is a repetition of any asked before.

If O2 offer you the O2 Standard LLU product then that is by far the most suitable broadband solution, at a price of £12.23 or £7.34pm depending on if you have or have access to an O2 mobile phone. The phone doesn't need to be in your name or at your address, just the owner lets you associate it with your broadband account so you get the discount.

This is truly unlimited whereas the BT offering has a rigidly enforced FUP of 100GB per month and is severely throttled or congested at busy times of the day in any case. O2 Standard gives a consistently high throughput, barring faults of course.

As I understand it Plusnet do not allow other ISPs on their lines (though they used to). Quite what would happen if you just asked for a MAC and migrated away I don't know.

The normal method would be to ask BT to do a Return To Donor on it as I understand that is free, though it locks you into a 12-month phone contract.

The trouble with RTD is that you would be without broadband for a few days as presumably the Plusnet broadband would cease immediately and you wouldn't be able to order..... thinks....

The ideal thing would be if you had a MAC from Plusnet and then do a RTD with BT, and hope the Plusnet broadband continues. Then use the MAC to migrate to O2. That also avoids a possible £20 broadband Cease fee from Plusnet. The people to ask in the first instance are BT not Plusnet. (On the grounds that the likely response from Plusnet would be an automatic no).

The complication is the bundled deal with Plusnet. It is certainly possible with an O2 service already on BT rental to move your rental to the Post Office or Sky and therefore presumably back without losing the O2 broadband. You are looking at a move back to BT and the technical aspect is no different.

Note that at the moment O2 signups get 2 months free and cashback is available for online signups through Quidco (£45 if it is your first deal in a 12-month period).

Edit - Avoid the O2 Access product if that is all they offer! And re the three options in the subject see this comparison.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 12-Aug-09 11:43:10)

Hi there,

Have you investigated the slowdown with us? I'd be happy to look into this if you'd like? Same goes for the pricing issues, feel free to PM me a username and I can see what I can do.

Regarding what RobertoS says, if you have Home Phone with us you can choose to keep this and go to a different BB provider (be that BT Wholesale based or shared LLU), or you could transfer your line to any other provider and not interrupt your broadband service. BT will traditionally do you a better deal if you take broadband and phone, as will most providers.

02/Be don't do phone services as far as I am aware.

We'd obviously prefer to keep you if we can though.

Sounds like you have a possible solution there Mand .

He can get something sorted from you, or at worst migrates and you keep the phone business as a consolation.