Broad band and phone separate suppliers in Market1 exchange

I am connected to a Market 1 exchange SSTRY and my recent BT broadband deal has run out negotiated on the basis my line speed is sub 2Mbps. On expiry of the deal BT are now asking £23 a month for unlimited Broadband instead of £14 on the old deal. I am not in a good position to move being part way through a 12month phone rental pre-pay and very limited 3rd party provision on the exchange. My questions are twofold

Why on a Market 1 exchange is it not possible to have phone from one supplier and a broadband connection from someone else - appears very simple technically I'd have thought and help with competition

Secondly any suggestions for a new ISP

Comments appreciated - am new to this subject and any advice thoughts welcome

There has NEVER been an problem with having phone and broadband from different suppliers - I've never had them from the same supplier on two different market 1 exchanges.

What you will find if that ISPs will offer you cheaper broadband packages if you also take their phone package - that is purely for commercial reasons as they hide the true cost in more expensive line rental.

Plenty of ISPs will supply you with broadband with your line staying with BT. The problem is the cost on that exchange, given you say you want unlimited usage.

Is unlimited vital? How much do you actually download and upload per month, and could any of that be scheduled to run overnight rather than daytime?

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 30-Dec-15 09:16:20)

In addition to the other comments have you tried ringing BTs cancellation line to see if they will offer you a continued discount (assuming you may want to stay with them).

With BT phone rental there are a number of ISPs you can use for broadband so at least the broadband element you can move.

I have now managed to get all my BT contracts in line and range them yesterday as I am coming to the end of my special deal with them. Managed to get a reasonable discount off them with a 15 minute phone call - no arguing, just asked what they could do and they made me an offer that was good enough for me to not bother looking around.

Here's one example of unlimited: https://www.plus.net/home-broadband/broadband-only/ (not that I would recommend them at the moment - they are great when it works, but their support when it doesn't is getting pretty bad).

You have to know how to find this page as they try to hide it for the reason I gave in my previous post.

Edited by jelv (Wed 30-Dec-15 09:27:20)

I see for those folk not in a low cost area PN's "unlimited broadband" only is £19.99 a month with a 12 month contract.

Uh! Plus a £25 activation charge, which takes the effective price to over £22 for the first year, against the £23 from BT.

One reason I never moved. By the time you took into consideration the increase, when not a low cost area, prices tended to be about the same as BT. For my line, I looked at Sky and Talk Talk online, filled in the details and both came back that they couldn't/wouldn't do the business.

Strange to say though, as soon as the Fibre cabinet went live, I could (and did) get deals from all over the place for both/either broadband and phone. Presumably the fibre part knocks it away from being a mainly BTW preserve.

Presumably the fibre part knocks it away from being a mainly BTW preserve

I think it is the other way round. ADSL can be provided at a number of different levels and Sky/TalkTalk do full local loop unbundling. But, FTTC can't be unbundled to the same level so is much more similar across all suppliers (there are still some differences with the way Sky/TalkTalk take the FTTC service but less so than with ADSL).

With FTTC as the data is carried back to a larger exchange then backhaul options are available and providers are keener to do business since their cost per Mbps that you use at peak times is less.