First, you will need a BT landline. Line rental costs roughly
£13.60 a month.
Once you have a landline, you can pick one of two calling
plans. The basic plan is free and gives you unlimited weekend calls
to all UK landlines. The second plan extends this to weekdays. The
Anytime Unlimited plan costs £4.99 a month.
Both plans include free BT Answer 1571 voicemail and free
calls to 0845 & 0870 numbers during your selected free call
periods. You can also send text messages from your landline to
other UK landlines and mobiles. Texts cost 10p with the basic phone
plan and are included with the other two bundles.
If you make a lot of overseas calls, you may want to upgrade
your plan with International Saver from an extra
£1 a month. It gives you cheap rates to many international
destinations, from 3p a minute. Or for an extra £4.89 a month, you
can get the International Freedom plan, which gives you free calls
to 36 popular destinations.
If you want to call mobiles from your landline, you can get the
Mobile Saver add-on, which lets you call all
networks from 7.5p per minute. This add-on is £1.50 a month.
Broadband
BT Total Broadband packages start at £7.99 per
month for the first three months, going up to £15.99 after that.
With that you get speeds of up to 8Mb, 10GB usage allowance, plus a
free basic BT Home Hub (a wireless router).
For £20.99 a month (£13.99 for the first three months), you can
increase your usage allowance to 20GB. You also get the new
wireless Home Hub, the next generation in routers.
If you are a heavy broadband user, you
may want to consider BT's unlimited download
package. With that you can download all the films you want
and not worry about going over your monthly limit. It costs £18.99
per month for the first three months and £24.99 thereafter. This
package includes a free Hub phone that slots into the Home Hub.
BT Home Hub
The new Home Hub is more than just a wireless router. It has
twice the range of other routers so you won't lose the connection
at a crucial moment. It also has a built-in firewall to protect
your computer from online viruses. The Broadband
Wizard lets you know the moment there's a problem with your
connection and will help you get back online. There's also a power
save mode to help you conserve electricity.
The Home Hub also gives you access to BT Vision, BT's digital TV
service.
BT Digital Vault
This feature lets customers backup up to 5GB of important files
online. You'll never have to worry about losing precious digital
family photos or important electronic documents. Digital Vault Plus
gives you a massive 50GB of back-up storage space. This can be
incredibly useful if your computer crashes. You will have to decide
whether this peace of mind is worth £4.99 a month.
BT Fon
Join the BT Fon network and get free unlimited access to
hundreds of BT Openzone Wi-Fi hotspots around the country. Openzone
lets you use other people's wireless internet when you are in the
vicinity of their router. To join the network, you must agree to
share your own internet connection with other members. BT's
security software lets you do this safely. Alternatively, you can
pay a fee to use the Wi-Fi hotspots.
BT Vision
BT Vision is BT's digital television service. It comes with all
of the Freeview channels, plus thousands of hours of on-demand
programming, including films and popular TV shows. With BT, you
don't have to pay for channels that you will never watch. You can
pick from a selection of value packs (starting at £7.50), or just
pay per view. Individual films start at around £2 and TV shows at
around £1.
BT Vision comes with the V-box, a personal video recorder that
allows you to pause and rewind live TV. You can record up to 80
hours of programming, and even record two shows at once. The
V-box is not as sophisticated asSky's Sky+ Box, but it's
free.
Bundles
You can save money by opting for one of BT's bundles, rather
than individual services. For example, you can get a broadband and
phone bundle for free for the first 3 months then £15.65 a month
plus line rental thereafter.
Why it may not be right for
you
BT is more expensive than some of the other providers. If you do
not need services like the Digital Vault, you may be better off
with a cheaper provider like TalkTalk.
If you want a lot of channels
BT Vision gives you access to thousands of hours of on-demand
TV. However, if you want hundreds of channels with live
programming, you may want to consider either Sky or Virgin
Media.
18-month contract
To get the BT Total Broadband deal, you will have to sign an
18-month contract. Other providers only require a 12-month
contract. So if you're planning to move, BT may not be right for
you.
If you're a heavy broadband user
While 8Mb broadband speed is fine for everyday web browsing,
several providers offer much faster speeds. If you do a lot of
downloading and don't want to wait, you may want to consider Virgin
Media's superfast 20Mb broadband.