From BT to ?

I'm checking for a friend so info is a bit vague, but he is very much a novice at anything technical so I said I'd help.

He currently is with BT and pays about £16.00 a month. Service has been reasonable but with periods where he has actually had to go the complaints route because of very poor speeds and general slowness of connection. He's been with them for years and has been reluctant to switch due to 'complicatedness of the process'. He is a bit clueless.

His contract is up and he's asked me to advise on options. He is onn the http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/LSBEU and is approx 1500 metres from the exchange. If I remember rightly his curent attenuation is about 28 down and 15 up.

He is a very light user I would say. Emails, browsing, bit of iplayer but nothing much. I'd say 10 gig absolute max per month. Decent speeds but not worried about it much as long as its reliable and the general kind of 8 meg ish. Anything extra would be icing on the cake I guess. Think his main deciding factor will be cost.

I'm thinking Plusnet for cheapness and keeping his speeds much the same or o2/Be perhaps. He doesn';t have o2 mobile so no saving there.

I've been out of the loop for a while so appreciate a bit of expert advice I can pass on to him for decision making.

Thanks.

The best services on that exchange would be from Sky or BE (neither of whom seem to apply any cap on the amount of downloaded data).
Having said that if he really only downloads 10GB a month he could also go with O2 (the same network as BE, but one where they apply quite tight download limits on their cheaper products).

With a 28dB attenuation he'll likely connect well above 10-12Mbps.

I'd say BE Value would be suitable @ £14.08 a month, download speed up to 12Mbps upload speed up to 1.3Mbps (and he'll probably be able to get these maximums). This product has unlimited download allowance.
Only problem is BE don't do e-mail, so he'd have to get this elsewhere (typically around £1 a month plus maybe £3 a year for his own .co.uk domain name (to go with the e-mail).

O2 'basics' @ £13.28 a month is essentially the same product, but with a 20Mbps maximum download speed but a 20GB a month cap on data usage.

With Sky, BE and O2 he will also be able to have his voice line rental and calls package moved across to his new ISP (all are cheaper than BT - unless you pay BT upfront for 12 or 18 months of calls).

In reply to a post by Fens:

He currently is with BT and pays about £16.00 a month.

With or without a phone Call Plan? Makes a diff to price comparison.

Thanks for answers. He is not interested in packages etc. The 16.00ish is for phone only. The decider is going to be cost, speed is less important as long as it's decent and reliable - I'm thinking he won't switch if the saving isn't significant, as I said he is really untechnical.

Thanks

In reply to a post by Fens:

The 16.00ish is for phone only.

& here I was thinking we were talking about BB!

Sorry broadeband only, apologies.

Be Value is without doubt streets ahead of BT. In particular it does not slow down at different times of day. Show him this comparison.

Also it may help ease his worries about the "complicated procedure" if you show him this page.

Don't forget also that if you can talk him through the complicated bit of signing up to TopCashBack he can get a potential £40 in his bank account.

You may not realise that once he has a MAC, you could do all the rest for him from your own machine. A friend of mine, with no internet connection at all, not even dialup, came to my house and we signed him up to O2 through Quidco. (Quidco are very similar to TopCashBack but take the first £5 per year of a customer's total cashbacks).

However! There is a very big But!

We really should see his line stats if you can possibly get them next time you are there. He could possibly have a line fault or home wiring problem. You also need to check that everything that is connected to the phone line is filtered, like Sky boxes and phone-connected burglar alarms.

It would be worth checking out Plusnet Value if indeed he's not bothered about traffic priority and will be 10GB max. He's on market 3 so it'll be £6.49 p.m.

Based on the exchange details, it's 21CN, and the attenuation should mean around 14MB speeds (based on a checker I used, so there's no guarantees).

See Plusnet's traffic for their various packages:

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/tr...

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/do... ("Ideal for web surfing and email. It's not suitable for frequent gaming, binary USENET, Peer-to-Peer, VPN, FTP or lots of music and video downloads.")

The trouble with Plusnet Value is that if he goes over the 10GB then it costs £5 per 5GB block, and no carry-over of what is unused to the next month.

Thanks for these last two responses. I think they present the two best options for him in my own opinion and the pages you link to Roberto are really useful. o2 is another option for him I think. I imagine I will be doing a lot of it remotely one way or another to be honest ...

Will let you know how I get on and will try to get some line stats. Are o2 still doing their Quidco cash back thing?

Many thanks.

Edited by deleted (Sun 16-Jan-11 17:04:13)