ISP for phone and broadband, for a light-light/moderate user

Helping to set a friend up with the internet.

As cheap as possible goes without saying. She will be a light to light/moderate user, and not into anything dodgy or gaming, but she will be surfing at peak times (including video streaming, i player etc) somewhat regurlarly. She wants cheap local landline calls primarily, but of course nationwide free aswell won't hurt.

Any suggestions?

I lean towards recommending O2 to her; I know they aren't the cheapest but i've always had good experience of them.

She will be getting a new phone line for this so need to take into account any installation charges aswell.

Monthly contract preferrable.

Thanks.

Edited by deleted (Tue 15-Nov-11 22:43:30)

PlusNet

As nredwood says, or perhaps the Post Office.

O2 is nowhere like it used to be now it has new packages. Very heavy traffic management, see this page.

Even Orange may be OK now it is contracted out to BT Wholesale. There are quite a few reports of it being better than when it was Orange themselves. Apart from some who were on good LLU speeds and been knocked down to 8Mbps on non-WBC exchanges.

In reply to a post by RiffRaff:

Helping to set a friend up with the internet.

As cheap as possible goes without saying. She will be a light to light/moderate user, and not into anything dodgy or gaming, but she will be surfing at peak times (including video streaming, i player etc) somewhat regurlarly. She wants cheap local landline calls primarily, but of course nationwide free aswell won't hurt.

Any suggestions?

I lean towards recommending O2 to her; I know they aren't the cheapest but i've always had good experience of them.

She will be getting a new phone line for this so need to take into account any installation charges aswell.

Monthly contract preferrable.

Thanks.

talktalk have an offer on at the moment for a free phone line install i just took it see here

there ok priced but remember its full LLU so may be harder to move away from if anything goes wrong mines a second line so if anything go's wrong then ive still got my first line to fall back on. Also some people dislike talktalk a lot some people like them a lot im sure someone with good experiances could tell you a little info if your friend were interested

ASh

If you post the exchange we can also give an idea of price, but so far, I echo Plusnet.

Another vote for Plusnet

PlusNet.
Providing she is a "light /moderate user" of the Internet.
For light users like me, the PlusNet 10GB allowance is fine.

I am also investigating this for someone else, but the household
has 3 users and use BBC iPlayer which make them a heavy user.
When using iPlayer or streaming video your download usage dramatically increases.

Edited by deleted (Wed 16-Nov-11 11:06:14)

I use plenty of Beeb content, although I'm not a heavy user by most standards. My monthly average tends to be around 20GB. Not a downloader though. Hence, Plusnet Extra is more than enough.

If willing to commit, also check out the pay up front for phone line rental offers.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If willing to commit, also check out the pay up front for phone line rental offers.

Plusnet do this: For a one off payment of £113.88 you'll get 12 months line rental - that's the equivalent of £9.49 a month, saving you £42 over a year

They were also doing a reduced price for line installation but not sure if that is still available.