Looking for new landline provider

Hi Adam, There are alot of providers out there these days so i recommend going to

. Alot depends on where your located, for example you could be in London say and the East may have Broadband and a host of other providers yet the West may not have Broadband because there Telephone Exchange system hasen't been upgraded yet. At USwitch.com you can just type in your postcode/phone number and away you go, it will list all the available options for you in that area and list the cheapest etc etc. Hope this helps.

Sin

That's hardly fair. What you get for £20 is your BT line (normally about £10) and unlimited national and international (certain countries) calls. In my case I don't make enough calls to justify that on its own, but when broadband (currently costing me £17.99 a month on NTL) is thrown in it becomes a pretty good deal. I think of it as paying £10 for broadband with free calls. Some points to watch though. You do have to pay a connection charge of just under £30, and unless you trust them 100% to connect you on the day they say, you may have an overlap period with your current provider, and you do have to sign up for a minimum of 18 months.

I find it hard to think that they could get away with reneging on the "free for ever" claim. Maybe they could bump up the price of the service it rides on the back of? Possible but poor customer relations.

Rob

Pretty much eveyone can get broadband these days. As I understand it, all the exchanges have been upgraded, however there are a small number of people who live too far away from the exchange to get broadband.

The speed you can get will vary too. The minimum IIRC is 512k, advertised speeds of 8Gigs(?) will not be available everywhere.

True, it does look on paper like a good deal. I agree that it's not a lot of money to pay for what you get. But it really isn't "free" in any meaningful sense of the world.

I'm sure they'll find a way to get out of the "free for ever" claim. Call me a cynic if you like.

But the big question is, does it actually work? Or will I find myself with missed connection dates, endless calls to moronic customer service representatives, inaccurate billing, and all the other things that make you wish that telecommunications had never been invented?

In article , rob writes

Up to 8 Meg?,.. Yep possibly if you live inside the exchange!...

We're 700 yards from ours, and only get 4.8 M/bits......

There are many cheaper alternatives.

Do any of these offer the same level of service as BT, no of course not, you get what you pay for.

BT has a monopoly and is the only game in town for service and reliability. The adverts aren't lying when they say most people come back to them within 12 months.

Often you end up paying more anyway.Eg

BT Line Rental plus caller display. £11

Talk Talk Line Rental plus caller display. £12.50p

They could just put the cost of the tariff you are on up to some ridiculous amount, wouldn't surprise me with TalkTalk.

I only mentioned USwitch because it does give some great alternatives. Now you can get upto 16MB via BullDog, but there customer support is something left to be desired apparently, but once on there system it's good. I'm unsure if TalkTalk BB actually goes live until August anyway, i might be wrong there, but where i am i know August i the set date.

Thank you

Sin

I'd go with that too. When I had to call BT customer services I was speaking to somebody within 3 or 4 rings. When my partners father had to call onetel he was sat on the phone for 50 minutes before he even spoke to someone. Its not until you have a problem that you realise what you are paying extra for.

On a side note have you noticed that when you are dealing with other providers and there is a problem, they always blame BT.

In article , Peter King writes

Well to be fair we have Bt and ntl mainly for diversity in that if ones down..

But ntl.. we've never had a fault in 10 years since 1996 and Bt just the once........

In article , snipped-for-privacy@googlemail.com writes

Course a lot might be dictated to by what you want phone service for. In one example my eldest daughter and her mates all are mobile centred so will spend some 25 to 50 quid a month on a mobile package that includes a lot of inclusive mins.

If you factor the extra cost of a BT line rental at say £11 a month thats quite a few extra inclusive minutes of call time, so for some a mobile can work out a bit cheaper especially if a mobile is a "must have"......

Or you could refer to Magsys -

- as their coverage lists many other companies that do not pay Uswitch a commission. I'd look for a good deal on call packages and leave line rental with BT.

My mates getting 8Meg but he can virtually spit on the exchange from his bedroom window. I get around 4.5Meg but the exchange is probably just over a mile away.

Gav

If that's true, I find it really depressing. In my recent experience, BT's customer service really sucks big time. If it weren't for many years experience of dealing with large British PLCs, I would be tempted to think "Surely the others can't be any worse", but I guess that actually they could be. Scary.

Any particular villains to avoid?

Yep, evidence suggests that however bad BT are, the rest are worse, by a very long way.

They don't call it NTHell for nothing.

tim

>

Having to deal with ntl and BT I'd say that ntl "is" improving as difficult as it seems to believe that!....

"Gav" wrote in message news:e6oq33$73u$ snipped-for-privacy@newsreaderm2.core.theplanet.net

[snip]

I'm still on 2Mb even though I know my local exchange was enabled for 8Mb ages ago (1/2 mile away). No response so far from Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange or whatever they're calling themselves this week.

Ivor