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Cheap pensioner broadband

Our Broadband Expert says...

Hi Geoff, there are a number of different options that you could take to help cut down your monthly bills.

The different broadband bundle options depend on a number of factors, such as whether or not you want to keep your landline, and whether you live in a Virgin Media (www.VirginMedia.com) cable area.

BT Broadband

Seeing as you’re already with BT for your landline, you could also add BT Broadband (www.BT.com) and BT Vision to cover both your internet use and your digital TV options.

BT Broadband starts at £15.65 a month for BT Total Broadband Option 1, which is perfect for light users and comes with an up to 8Mb download speed and a monthly download allowance of 10GB.

All BT Total Broadband customers can also add BT Vision for free - it’s essentially Freeview with the option of adding on-demand movies and other TV packages on a month-by-month basis.

This would give you a total monthly cost of £27.15 once you include your BT line rental - a saving of £11.10 a month on what you’re currently paying.

Virgin Media

If you’re not attached to your landline, and live in a Virgin Media cable area, you could ditch your phone line all together, immediately saving you £11.25 a month on your BT bill. This is because you don’t need a phone line for cable broadband like you do for a standard ADSL connection.

Even if you do want to keep your landline, Virgin Media still offers a number of competitive broadband and phone deals that come with free digital TV - basically Freeview with some added extras such as on-demand TV and movies.

Virgin Media’s cheapest broadband and phone package with digital TV costs just £14 a month for up to 10Mb broadband with “unlimited” downloads, subject to a fair usage policy, unlimited weekend UK landline calls and access to over 45 digital TV channels. Add this to Virgin Media’s £11 line rental and you have a monthly total of £25 - a saving of £13.50 on your current bills.

If you’re unsure whether or not you’re a Virgin Media cable or national customer, run a Postcode search to see if cable broadband is available where you live.

Other options - Plusnet Broadband

If you’re happy to get a cheap Freeview box for your TV needs - which start from around only £15 now - then you would have even more broadband and phone options available to you.

Plusnet Broadband (www.Plus.net) is an award winning broadband provider that currently offers the UK’s cheapest standalone broadband. However, the ISP also offers broadband bundles.

The Plusnet Value package, which comes with up to 8Mb broadband, a 10GB monthly download allowance, and a free wireless router can be combined with Plusnet’s Home Phone Evenings and Weekends plan - which includes line rental - for a monthly total from just £15.74.

You can upgrade to Anytime calls or “unlimited” broadband for an added cost, but taking Plusnet’s cheapest broadband bundle, for a total of £15.74 a month including line rental would save you a massive £22.51 a month.

Post Office Broadband

Post Office Broadband (www.PostOffice.co.uk) is another option. Like Plusnet, the Post Office also offers broadband bundles that include line rental as well as broadband and home phone.

Up to 8Mb broadband from the Post Office, with a 5GB monthly download allowance, a free modem, inclusive evening and weekend calls and line rental costs just £19.53 a month. While this would save you £18.72 a month, you would need to keep an eye on your downloads as the monthly allowance is quite low. Use our Broadband Download Monitor to keep track of downloads and ensure you never exceed your limit.

As well as offering broadband and phone deals that also include line rental, the Post Office is the only ISP to accept cash payments. Being able to pay for your broadband over the counter in your local Post Office is great for people on a budget.

Compare deals

There are loads of competitive broadband and phone packages around, just make sure that you think about your needs before switching broadband provider.

For example, think about how much you will be downloading each month and whether or not your ISP’s download allowance is enough to accommodate your needs. Or, if you will be making a lot of calls from your landline, look for a package that offers inclusive anytime calls.

NB Best buy tables (orange background) are always current.

Examples in the text of the article (white background) are correct at time of publication.

Ask us a question

If you have a general switching or provider query please email us at OurExpert@broadbandchoices.co.uk

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