A HUGE and growing array of companies are offering broadband services to Scots - around 40% of the UK population have a broadband line in their home. With the technology evolving and competition for customers hotting up, here is our guide to how you can get the best deal.
Chris Williams, broadband product manager at comparison site uSwitch.com, told Scotland on Sunday: "A huge number of people are paying over the odds for their broadband service. More than £20 a month is probably too much. A saving of £7 to £8 a month
works out at almost £100 a year."
USwitch monitors 44 broadband suppliers in the UK. In April the market embarked on what Williams believes will become a major price war, when Carphone Warehouse unveiled a broadband package with total monthly charges of £20.99. The £20.99 deal offered under the TalkTalk brand includes the cost of line rental.
At present, homeowners must pay the cost of renting a phone line from either BT or a cable provider. This typically costs about £9 a month, even when consumers take broadband from another supplier. TalkTalk has now been followed by Biscit and PlusNet in absorbing the cost of line rental into a fixed monthly broadband charge. A similar broadband, call and line rental package would cost £38.39 with AOL and £43.49 with BT.
First things first
To calculate the best deal, a vital first step is to note down when and how the computer and phone are used - how many hours are spent on the web each week and at what time of day calls are made. It is also important to consider contract length. TalkTalk and Biscit require customers to sign up for a minimum of 18 months, while other providers including PlusNet offer rolling one-month contracts.
Not all companies offer the same broadband speed. In simple terms, a 1Mb broadband connection (offered by NTL and AOL) is 40 times faster than a dial-up connection, while a 8Mb connection (offered by most of the new entrants, as well as by Wanadoo and BT on their more expensive packages) is 160 times faster. Williams says that an 8Mb connection would only really be needed by people who want to watch TV and movies over the internet.
Most broadband companies supply a free modem along with software to set up the connection on a home computer. Some will also charge a one-off connection fee. E7broadband charges a £60 connection fee, while Biscit and TalkTalk have a set-up fee of £29.99.
Providers are increasingly bundling in calls with internet usage. Once again, however, contracts vary. Biscit's free national calls are capped at 120 hours a month, while NTL and Wanadoo restrict their unlimited free calls to off-peak hours. TalkTalk has unlimited free national calls and allows free international calls to 28 countries.
Some other broadband providers, PlusNet among them, promise free international calls but use so-called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to deliver them. This effectively means free calls can only be made between other PlusNet or VoIP users and not to 82-year-old Great Aunty Betty in Australia who only has a regular land line.
Do not forget service
Uswitch carries out a biannual survey of customer satisfaction. This has consistently found that NTL, AOL and BT customers are the most dissatisfied with their broadband service. The findings cannot be attributed to sheer weight of numbers - NTL, AOL and BT have half of all broadband customers in the UK but the survey factors this into its research criteria.
The survey found 82% of BT customers were dissatisfied with the service offered by the company. Some 40% of BT customers thought that they were not getting value for money, believing that BT was not doing as much as it could to ensure they were on the best-value broadband package for their level and time of usage.
PlusNet topped uSwitch's customer satisfaction rating, with 92% of customers claiming to be happy. PlusNet is also the broadband supplier that people are most likely to recommend to a friend, although a cynic might venture that this has something to do with the £5.50 it deducts from a customer's bill per recommendation.
Beware support charges
Most broadband providers offer some form of online help. This most commonly consists of a list of answers to the most frequently encountered problems. Those who prefer to talk to someone about their technical problem should be aware that there is a considerable difference in how much broadband providers charge for calls to their customer support lines.
Few companies offer free phone numbers, while the rest charge anything from a few pence to £1 a minute for calls (see table, left). Factor in time spent on hold, and answering even the simplest of queries can result in a phone bill of £10 or more. E7broadband charges £10 a month for its basic broadband package but also charges £1 a minute for calls to its helpline.
The future is almost upon us
Homechoice is currently trialing a TV package through its broadband service to homeowners in England and plans to roll this out north of the Border soon.
Subscribers receive Sky and other satellite and cable channels on their TV via their broadband connection. Customers can choose from dozens of digital channels and 4,000 movies and music videos. Packages start at £17.99 a month.
BT is planning to launch a service which will allow people to watch football matches over the internet by the end of 2006, and both Sky and Virgin/NTL are exploring wrapping in TV with modem-based broadband services.
Uswitch's Williams believes that joint mobile phone and broadband packages are also imminent.
He told Scotland on Sunday: "Last week Wanadoo rebranded as Orange as they are both owned by the same parent company, France Telecom. We anticipate Orange offering a deal that gives free broadband to Orange mobile customers, but probably only on long-term, 18- to 24-month contracts. O2 and Vodafone have also made it clear that they wish to get into the broadband market."
Talk is cheap with new phone package
LYNNE Tagg from East Lothian is saving almost £60 a month after changing her telephone and broadband provider to TalkTalk - although at first she did not believe what she was hearing when told of the saving, writes Lindsey Rogerson.
Tagg, a customer service adviser, explains: "I was in the Carphone Warehouse shop buying a new mobile and I asked them some questions about the free broadband package. To be honest, I thought it sounded too good to be true."
She was previously renting her phone line from BT, paying around £55 a month for her telephone calls as well as £23.99 a month for her broadband connection with Onetel. She now pays £20.99 a month to TalkTalk, which covers line rental and the Talk3 International call package, with free broadband forever.
Tagg says her husband is delighted that she can now call anywhere in the UK and 28 other countries free of charge.
She says: "I have family in America and phoning them was quite pricey, so it is definitely very good that I can now call America for free."
She has also been impressed with how easy it was to change supplier and to set up TalkTalk broadband on her home computer.
Tagg explains: "I signed up for it in the shop and my phone changed over within seven days and my broadband within 28 days. I received a welcome pack along with a free modem.
"I am not a very technically minded person but I managed to connect it all up myself. It was no problem to set up the e-mail account as they sent instructions in the welcome pack which were very straightforward and easy to follow."
