Best value Broadband & Telephone?

[Anastasis]

We've been NTL (previously C&W, previously Nynex) customers for quite a few years now. When we originally joined they represented the best value TV / telephone / internet (then dial-up only) service around.

About 3 years ago we ditched NTL TV in favour of Sky Digital (as being better value in terms of price and quality/variety of service). Now I am wondering whether the value of their broadband and telephone service still stands up compared to others who seem to be offering better and better deals?

We use the (now) 300k broadband service at £17.99, but looking around I see Wanadoo now offer 512k for the same price. For telephone, we still subscribe to the standard 3-2-1 service but now route all the calls we can through Call18866 (½p per minute at all times). Last month's NTL telephone bill amounted to about £12 including the line rental.

Some telco's seem to offer combined broadband/telephone packages, but looking on the NTL website, I can only see a package offered for combined telephone & dial-up at around £30 per month. We recently received a letter from One-Tel offering 512k broadband & unlimited UK calls for £29.99 (although this still of course also requires paying a line rental to NTL or BT). Do NTL offer something similar that I haven't been able to find?

So does NTL still provide the best value service for broadband & telephone? If they no longer do, are they likely to cut prices or make further service upgrades to match?


Thanks for your thoughts and opinions on this.

[orangebird]

We've been NTL (previously C&W, previously Nynex) customers for quite a few years now. When we originally joined they represented the best value TV / telephone / internet (then dial-up only) service around.

About 3 years ago we ditched NTL TV in favour of Sky Digital (as being better value in terms of price and quality/variety of service). Now I am wondering whether the value of their broadband and telephone service still stands up compared to others who seem to be offering better and better deals?

We use the (now) 300k broadband service at £17.99, but looking around I see Wanadoo now offer 512k for the same price. For telephone, we still subscribe to the standard 3-2-1 service but now route all the calls we can through Call18866 (½p per minute at all times). Last month's NTL telephone bill amounted to about £12 including the line rental.

Some telco's seem to offer combined broadband/telephone packages, but looking on the NTL website, I can only see a package offered for combined telephone & dial-up at around £30 per month. We recently received a letter from One-Tel offering 512k broadband & unlimited UK calls for £29.99 (although this still of course also requires paying a line rental to NTL or BT). Do NTL offer something similar that I haven't been able to find?

So does NTL still provide the best value service for broadband & telephone? If they no longer do, are they likely to cut prices or make further service upgrades to match?


Thanks for your thoughts and opinions on this.

Just a quick comment about Wanadoos 512 - it has a MONTHLY d/l limit of 2gig.... compared to ntl's of a least 30gig a month (if you know how to use it properly.... You need to check out the t&c's before comparing just the price... :)

[Chris]

Just a quick comment about Wanadoos 512 - it has a MONTHLY d/l limit of 2gig.... compared to ntl's of a least 30gig a month (if you know how to use it properly.... You need to check out the t&c's before comparing just the price... :)

We all moaned about THE CAP when it came in (and it is, frankly, still a sore point), but it really is worth bearing in mind that NTL's is less severe than most, if not all, of the capped services. Don't forget that you can get uncapped BB (AOL, for instance, which you can even get via your NTL cable if you want).

The other advantage of cable services over ADSL is the ease with which they seem to be able to up the amount of downstream bandwidth they offer. I started out on NTL 512k, which then went to 600k and is now 750k. I download enough stuff for this to be a real bonus for me, but nowhere near enough to worry about the cap. So NTL suits me just fine.

One final thought, having used my mother-in-law's BT openwound ADSL service, is that I found it slightly irritating having to dial up to use it, even though dialing up to an ADSL service is a lot faster than dialing up to 56k.

[Anastasis]

Thanks for these thoughts. Yes, everything isn't just a plain comparison on price.

What does a 2Gb per month cap represent in real terms though? I'm not sure, but I would have thought I don't go anywhere near that limit. I use my 300k NTL Broadband service for email, surfing and sometimes downloading files for updates or software installs, most of which amount to around 10mb at most with the occasional one being more. I don't do any online gaming.

Are there any guidelines or online meters to test what my download average is daily & monthly?

[orangebird]

Thanks for these thoughts. Yes, everything isn't just a plain comparison on price.

What does a 2Gb per month cap represent in real terms though? I'm not sure, but I would have thought I don't go anywhere near that limit. I use my 300k NTL Broadband service for email, surfing and sometimes downloading files for updates or software installs, most of which amount to around 10mb at most with the occasional one being more. I don't do any online gaming.

Are there any guidelines or online meters to test what my download average is daily & monthly?
Have a look here (http://www.dumeter.com/) :)

[Anastasis]

Have a look here (http://www.dumeter.com/) :)Thanks - downloaded, installed and monitoring now. :tu:

[seaneeboy]

On the price thing, check how much you'll be paying in various installation fees etc as well - that can sometimes be a nasty sting in the tail that would take a couple of years before you're in "profit" on the deal :)

[bob_builder]

On the ADSL front there are a number of suppliers that have started pay-as-you-go broadband where you only pay for what you download on a per megabyte basis. If you are a light user this can work out significantly cheaper (e.g. if you do not use broadband for a month you pay nothing for that month).
There were rumours of NTL trialling a similar service so they may well introduce this in the future.