Broadband best deals
This week I look at the best broadband deals around just now. It seems extraordinary now that we used to put up with dialup internet connections. Disconnecting the phone everytime we wanted to go online and putting up with painfully slow connection and download rates. But broadband is no longer a luxury, with prices coming down all the time. What you get for your money, in terms of service, reliability and download speeds, varies dramatically too.
If you haven’t changed providers for a while, you could almost certainly save money. But first you need to figure out what you want from your internet connection. Remember, there’s very little point paying more for superfast download speeds if you only use the net to check your emails once a day. Similarly, there will be no point paying more for a larger download limit. If you’re a light user you should, with some reservations, go for one of the cheaper deals.
Conversely, if you’re a keen user, and love downloading movie clips or music, then it’s worth paying more for one of the mid range deals. And if you’re never off the net, and download loads of movies and music, then you don’t want to be worrying about your monthly bill. You also don’t want to be sitting there watching stuff download painfully slowly. So consider going for one of the unlimited download deals, and with a speed that allows you to download stuff as fast as you can.
Finally, check on the customer service from the various providers. It’s all very well boasting loads of features, but that’s no use to you if your connections down for most of the day. Talk Talk may have made a great success of telephone services, but they’ve found being an ISP a lot tougher. They’ve got some rotten reviews from users. They have a deal costing £3.25 a month, but I reckon it’s expensive at the price. In fact, beware the rock bottom deals out there. Tiscali are among the cheapest on the market at £4.49, Virgin have a deal offering free set up and unlimited use for £3.50. But you really do get what you pay for. It’s value for money you should go for, not simply saving the price of a couple of pints each month! So here are the deals we think you should go for.
One of the deals we really like at the moment comes from O2, which has managed to move from phones to computers with few apparent problems. They have three packages, for light, medium and heavy users, and have been getting good write ups for service and reliability. These packages are particularly good value for existing O2 customers. There are no usage or download limits or setup fees. The 8Mbit deal is £12.50 a month, or £7.50 for existing O2 customers. The 16Mbit deal is £15, or £10 for O2 users. The 20Mbit deal is £20 or £15 for O2 customers.
And you may not have heard of PlusNet but their customers seem to love them. Setup is free, download speeds are a standard 8Mbit, and you pay £9.99 for a monthly download limit of one gigabyte, £14.99 for 15 gigs, which should be something to keep everyone happy.
Tags: Broadband best deals, how to shop for broadband, best deals with broadband
