Broadband Guide

Broadband with a new phone line

By Editorial - news@consumerchoices.co.uk

If you're looking to get both broadband and a home phone line, then bundling your services with the same provider can save you time and hassle as well as getting you a better deal.

A growing number of broadband providers now offer home phone calls and line rental that can be bundled with a choice of different broadband packages to get you a deal that perfectly suits your needs.

Free landline installation offers

If you don’t already have a landline in your home, you will need to get one installed. Whether you're looking for a copper wire ADSL connection or a broadband and home phone bundle from cable provider Virgin Media, you'll still need to have a phone line installed in order to make calls.

BT broadband (www.BT.com), which is the main copper wire landline installer in the UK charges an installation fee of £130 if you are only taking a BT line, but they have an special offer available online of £40. However, installation is free for customers taking a broadband or TV package.

But if you live in a new build home, with no line whatsoever, you might also still have to pay up to £130 depending on how much work needs to be done.

Other suppliers including TalkTalk and Sky broadband (www.Sky.com) will also install a new landline for you - and at a lower price than BT. But as providers like TalkTalk use local loop unbundled (LLU) networks, their lines only work with their own networks and you would have to have yet another new line put in if you wanted to switch broadband provider again.

Virgin Media's installation fees start from £49.95, but again, the cable provider will waive this charge completely if you take a triple play bundle of broadband, home phone and digital TV.

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Choosing a broadband package

While it’s important to stick to your budget, you need to think about more than just price when it comes to broadband. Think about the kind of download speed you'll need - remembering that you'll rarely, if ever, get the top speed advertised by your provider. Ask for a speed estimate before signing up to a new supplier.

You also need to think about your download allowance - if you want to spend a lot of time online downloading music and movies, playing online games and catching up on all your favourites on the BBC iPlayer, then a budget package with a low download allowance won’t be suitable.

Finally, think about customer service and do your research; what are the opening times for customer services, how much will it cost you to call technical support if there’s a problem with your connection. Run a postcode search from our home page then click on a package to read full details of download allowances, call costs and any connection fees.

But all of this doesn’t mean that you have to fork out for a high-end broadband package, there are loads of low-cost providers offering fast, reliable broadband.

Line rental costs

Unless you're a cable customer with Virgin Media (www.Virginmedia.com), you'll have no choice but to pay for your line rental - even if you only need it for your broadband connection.

But there are ways to cut the cost of your bills by searching the market for the best deals on line rental. Some smaller providers, such as Primus Saver offer much cheaper line rental - and you can even save with some of the big, award winning broadband providers.

O2 broadband (www.O2.co.uk) has won a host of awards for its home broadband and customer service and has been offering home phone packages since 2010. O2's line rental with evening and weekend calls costs less than getting line rental alone from other providers, making it a good value option. You do not need to get broadband to have a home phone package but you cannot get line rental without a calls tariff.

O2 charge £86.81 for line installation, but if you bundle home phone with a home broadband connection by taking either its All Rounder or the Works package, O2 will reduce the installation fee to £43.

Saving with a bundle

Signing up to a provider that offers a cheap broadband and home phone bundle package can save you a lot of money - even if they don’t offer the cheapest line rental.

Instead of looking at the cost of each individual aspect of your bundle, look at the total you'll be paying each month. For example, TalkTalk broadband (www.Talktalk.co.uk) charges £14.50 a month for its line rental, which doesn't compare favourably with some other providers.

But TalkTalk’s Essentials package, which comes with speeds of up to 24Mb broadband, a generous 40GB download allowance and evening and weekend calls, costs just £6.50 a month, making the overall cost much more competitive when compared with other providers offering a similar packages.

If you want to upgrade to O2’s The All Rounder package, which offers “unlimited” downloads, you can get the whole lot - broadband, home phone calls and line rental for £25.50 a month with the O2 discount.

Compare broadband packages for a full list of providers offering broadband and home phone bundles. You can order your results by first year cost, broadband speed, download allowance or monthly cost as well as getting full details of each package to help you choose the right deal for your needs.

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