bbb_uk wrote on May 16
th, 2014 at 10:13pm:
For me, however, it's a no as PO charge £10 for unlimited broadband.
bbb_uk, (its good to see you back on a rather more more full time basis by the way and sorry to hear that Dave has had to break for a while for personal reasons)
How much do you pay for "Unlimited Broadband" then and do you mean copper or fibre? Here in the countryside we are a Market 1 exchange area so most providers charge in the mid/high teens per month for copper broadband.
As P O Homephone has nationwide pricing for broadband they are actually about the cheapest in a Market 1 exchange area at only £7 per month for a service with a 10Gb download cap. But they also have an unlimited service at £10 per month. And anyhow both currently come with a £50 bill credit for signing up making them effectively just over £4 per month cheaper than those figures in the first year.
The main issue though is all out of bundle calls are now subject to a horrendous daytime per minute call rate of 8.5p per minute plus 15p connection so for you dear old mum you would also need to be taking the full anytime calls bundle at £5.75 per month (similar to BT). This does cover 0845 and 0870 but but not 0844 and 0871 which are now all subject to penal rates at all times with 15p per call connection charges.
The free Extras of free international landline and UK mobile calls up to an hour exist between 6pm Friday and 6am Monday as long as you take at least the evening calls or anytime call bundles.
You don't have to take your broadband from P O Homephone though. I only take the phone line and calls from them and take my broadband from the small ISP known as
www.vivaciti.netOn the two exchanges our family has lines with P O Homephone from (exchanges with 1800 and 4500 lines) the services still clearly comes from BT Wholesale as
www.1899.com and
www.18185.co.uk can still be used for daytime calls. However it is rumoured that on large town exchanges P O Homephone buy their service from TalkTalk and consequently Indirect Acces with 1899/18185 etc is blocked.
If P O Homephone ever block 18185 in particular or Indirect Access specfically it will be time to move on with the lines we have with them. Having said that BT Retail now also have the regulatory right to block Indirect Access use from Ofcom but have not so far had the nerve to try and impose it on their own lines.