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Strange BT broadband pricing

My latest BT bill shows broadband and line rental charged at £35.99 after many years of separate line rental and bband charges and various discount, all of which have now vanished.

They have been nagging me with free infinity activation for ages so out of interest I had a look at what their so-called offers are :-

cost type speed limit cloud

35.99 (now) adsl2+ ~20Mb (*) 15GB not sure

29.99 (42.99) adsl2+ ~20Mb none 200GB

34.99 (??) inf ~38Mb 30GB 10GB +£50 activation 36.99 (49.99) inf ~52Mb none 200GB 40.99 (56.49) inf ~76Mb none 1000GB

Figures in backets are presumably what will be charged in 18 months time after contract expiry.

In other words, I could double my monthly allowance, and get a small speed increase while paying £1 a month less than I pay now for Option 1 normal broadband. Odd for BT to give anything away !.

Does anyone know any hidden catches ?. I notice that there is no mention of an 18 month contract for their offer for Infinity 'Lite' as they call it, though they do charge a £50 activation fee.

(*) Although they claim 'up to 17 Mb' I actually get about 20Mb download where I live.

I don't use WifI, so all the claims about the performance of their Smart Hub are pointless.

Reply to
Andrew
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Any particular reason for using BT (BT Sport or BT mobile as well perhaps)? Otherwise this is at least twice as expensive as it should be for a 20MBps deal, probably more.

I am with Plusnet (owned by BT) - customer service very good in the odd ocassion when I needed them (very little), based in the North of England (is BT's still in India?), £18/month for a line (that we never use), and unlimited 20MBps broadband.

Reply to
JoeJoe

I suggest you feed your postcode into uSwitch and see what Black Friday deals they have on there. It looks like if you insist on BT then

29.99 pcm 18 month contract will get you fibre 50Gbps with the optional sports package free for a while if you want it (extra setup charge).

Plusnet is considerably cheaper and works better IME.

Wifi is now perfectly reliable and secure. It was not always true.

Reply to
Martin Brown

The catch is that it is BT.

Try a sensible supplier ...

Reply to
Graham J

You're trying to understand a BT bill? Save yourself the time and kill yourself now ...

Reply to
Andy Burns

And lose my main email address that everyone knows ....

Reply to
Andrew

It's much easier now than it used to be, and as far as I am concerned they are reliable. The only wobbly period was sorted out.

Reply to
Andrew

It was only last month that they announced a vulnerability in the WPA2 protocol that almost everybody uses, so definitely not perfectly secure.

It's not stopping me using it though - too many hand-held devices in this household and too much convenience when using the laptop. Although we do use a wired network for (almost) all the non-mobile stuff.

If I can find the enthusiasm to run another couple of cables in under the floors, only the mobile stuff will remain on wi-fi.

Hopefully patches for the router and devices will become available soon.

SteveW

Reply to
Steve Walker

Cheap enough to get your own domain name which you can take with you if/when you change supplier. Tell 'everyone' to use it and run both in parallel until they've all got the message.

Reply to
F

Who knows but there are not very well guarded secrets about packet prioritisation coming if the US go this way after the vote as isps over there want to be able to charge more for access to streaming video for example. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

Start moving folks off it now, the next year you can move freely...

Dave

Reply to
David Wade

Very much +1.

I have a .net domain which costs me ?65 for 5 years with all e-mail forwarding included.

Reply to
Woody

Their weird way of charging for a price increase (it resembled the three-card trick) was one of the things that persuaded me to move to Zen. That and the fact that Zen were cheaper for the same service.

Reply to
Davey

Registering and hosting co.uk domain that can be used to forward all your emails is £1/month (could be much less if you sign for a longer than one year deal). Using your figures I make it that you effectively pay around £18/month to keep your email address.

Reply to
JoeJoe

I have an 18 month contract for 38 Mbps Vodafone FTTC and phone at £25pm. Look at the offers on

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Reply to
Michael Chare

Must live in a cardboard house. Have a place with proper walls (14" to 18" random stone) and WiFi just doesn't get through them. To get reasonable coverage I need 3 (well placed) APs

Secure? Long standing bug has recently been uncovered, though to exploit it isn't that easy and you need to be within range of the target system.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Yes, I got a .me.uk domain some years ago, which costs me £12 every two years. I have changed ISP three times since then and all I have to do is change the redirection of mail to me and point my home system at the new ISP. No need to inform anyone of a change, because everything stays the same to them. Because I also have my own mailserver, all my emails (including the odd one from 12 years ago) remain too.

SteveW

Reply to
Steve Walker

In message , Michael Chare writes

And then remember their performance with Demon Internet (R.I.P.).

Reply to
Bill

I have some walls 3' thick in places - there are some dead spots. My Wifi is upstairs and the wooden floors don't put up much resistance. My WiFi will reach about 300m in free air with the right high gain antenna at the other end.

Increasingly it is modern homes with foil backed wall insulation that present the most difficulties for WiFi coverage.

I recommend the WiFi dongles with detachable antenna and a high gain flat panel for difficult to reach garden sheds etc.

All things are relative. The risk isn't that great on WPA2 even with the new vulnerability. I won't be going back to WEP any time soon!

Reply to
Martin Brown

If you can get a supplier who will give you multiple email addresses/mail boxes [ eg snipped-for-privacy@mydomain.co.uk, snipped-for-privacy@mydomain.co.uk, myownname@.., mywifesname@..., etc] you can have separate folders for the last two and sweep all others into a catchall folder.

This has the added advantage that a spam email from 'Paypal' will stand out like a sore thumb if it supposedly comes from HSBC.

Also it is sometimes easier to identify emails from companies which use mailshot.

Reply to
Flop

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