Free Broadband Blog

So Orange aka Wanadoo have stepped up to the plate and are now offering free broadband. But, yes you guessed it (there is a theme here) you need to have a mobile phone with them.

So whats the offer?

Well you need to get or already have a mobile phone from Orange and be paying more than £30 a month in line rental (not pay as you go). If you already have a phone they will offer you a new phone and the free internet if you sign a new 18 month contract and you have less than 3 months left on your mobile contract. If you have a mobile contract with over 3 months left they will ask you to sign a new 18 month contract with no new phone to take advantage of the free broadband.

The broadband provided for free is an 8Mb connection (depending on your local exchange etc) and comes with a very poor 2Gb download limit. Orange do claim that for 90% of their customers this is sufficient. They also state that they wont be hunting people down if you go over a bit or even charge you if you do. However, if you consistently go over they will threaten to disconnect your supply or the only other option is to upgrade to Broadband Max at £27.99 a month ouch!

There are some good points you don’t seem to have to pay a connection charge and they are offering you 150Mb of webspace to put your websites on and 500Mb of webmail space. They will also give you a “Livebox” this is their version of wireless internet and it seems like it remains in the procession of Orange so I reckon they may well want it back after the contract period. To my knowledge however it is possible to connect to a live box using an Ethernet cable so a wireless card isn’t essential either. They also give you a basic firewall from McAfee and a token discount on McAfee Internet Security Software of 20%.Orange have also taken it upon themselves to offer you free VOIP (Voice over internet protocol) calls from your PC or MAC. Basically this will allow you to ring any UK landline starting with 01 or 02 between 6pm and 8am Monday to Friday and all weekend.

Conclusions

As with all these Free Broadband packages they are dependent on you keeping up with service attached to the free broadband, in this case your Mobile contract. The broadband offer is ok but again it really does depend what you use your broadband connection for. On a plus note Orange seem to be willing to be sensible about this but in practice it might well be a different story. The 18month contract is a bit tight to be honest and I really see this offer more as a added value package for Orange Mobile Customers then a serious Free Broadband offer.

Do you have Orange Free Broadband? What it is it like in your eyes? Comments please.

So you want free broadband? Well you probably won’t find it from Sky but you will find a good offer and one i might well even recommend.

Click here to see what Sky say about their broadband

So what’s the offer?

Well there are four packages all with different costs and strangely different names (I think this is for identification purposes) so which one suits you? Well I don’t know that but I know which one suits which type of user.

The packages are available here in a easy to read table.

Ok so as you can see there are four, each have varying costs and connotations.

So which one should I choose?

Well first off if you aren’t a Sky subscriber then none of them (maybe this is a bit rash see my conclusions). But if you do subscribe to Sky TV then you might be in for a good deal.

BASE
This is the first package and is the one for you if you use the internet for checking email now and again and basically don’t download anything of magnitude such as music or video. Unfortunately if you don’t then it is likely that your kids probably will whether or not you know it or not. So I would simply forget that one.

MID
Things start looking a bit better here. It’s only £20 for the activation fee but you do have to pay a subscription of £5 a month. If you combine this with the fact that you can download up to 40GB of data a month and with speeds up to 8mb and the fact that if you compare this offer with other providers who can charge up to £20 a month for a similar spec package I would say it was pretty competitive if you don’t have Sky TV, but even more so if you already subscribe to Sky TV.

MAX
So you want an ultra fast broadband connection? Well you better check first to see if you can get it. This is currently extremely limited as to it’s availability in the UK through ADSL and I really do doubt you will be able to get anywhere near it unless you are in the centre of a major city. For example I live in the centre of Newcastle I can only get 8Mb broadband but to be honest I don’t even get close to that and its usually around 4Mb. But this package does offer unlimited downloads within the realms of Sky’s fair use policy which to be honest I can’t find anywhere so I can’t help with that. So I reckon it is likely to be about 60GB a month without question which to be honest for the increased monthly payment of £5 isn’t really worth it in my eyes. So, considering that a lot of PC’s still only have hard drives of around 80 – 100GB I doubt that you would ever break through the 40GB offered on the MID package and couple this with idea that you will never get anywhere near 16Mb download speeds it ain’t worth the bother.

CONNECT
I haven’t a clue why you are even considering this package it gives no obvious benefits over the other packages on offer and it costs a fortune. However this is what you will be offered if you cant receive the other Sky broadband packages in your area. STAY AWAY!

Click here to see what Sky say about their broadband

Conclusion

• If you have Sky TV and you want to check your email now and again and not much else go for the BASE package.
• If you have Sky TV and you want to download music and video and generally not worry about how much you can download get the MID package, it is a bloody good deal.
• If you don’t have Sky TV but you are going to get it then I also recommend the MID package.
• The free McaFee Software is worth about £50 and there is a Mac option.
• If you dont have wireless connectivity on your PC it will cost you extra.
• Sky uses a different system for the BASE, MID and MAX package and this is very limited in availability so dont get your hopes up, but give them a ring anyway.
• Leave the rest well alone if you meet none of the above then check out another provider.

Click here to visit the Sky Website and register your interest to find out if you can get the right package

Yes they supposedly offer a free broadband service. But yet again it’s not actually totally free because you have to sign up for one of there phone packages in order to get the free broadband.

So what’s the offer?

Well you have to sign up to one of there phone call packages first. The package in this case is called Talk3 and basically it comes in two forms. The first form costs £8.99 and includes free calls to UK landlines with a few exclusions and the obligatory £11.99 a month line rental. This option therefore costs £20.98 a month with the broadband thrown in for free.

The next option costs £9.99 a month (although there are some offers at the moment for £8.99 a month for the first 3 months) and this includes International Calls to 28 Countries.

Both the call options have limits of 70 minutes on calls after which you will be charged at the normal rate. So basically hang up on 69 minutes and redial and you won’t get charged.

So what about the broadband? Well, on the face of it, it is a very good offer. You get download speeds of up to 8Mb and you can download a total of 40GB a month. You also get a measly 15Mb of online storage and 5 email addresses whoopee doo. Now TalkTalk also recommend that you purchase there ADSL modem as well. This costs £29.99 and they say it is because your internet speed will be affected if using an older ADSL modem which doesn’t meet ADSL 2+. To be honest I am not sure about this but if you feel the need to buy a new modem I am sure you will be able to get a similar spec one at an online retailer for less than £29.99.

They do offer two internet security packages for which they charge a minimum of £2.49 a month extra so i would simply get a free virus checker like AVG and a firewall such as the one included with windows and this should stop everyone but the most determined hackers as long as you keep things up to date.

So what should I choose?

Up to you really the offer on the table is excellent on paper and for just an extra £1 a month you might as well get the free international calls, you never know when you might need to ring Australia.

So on paper everything is good, but in reality there have been a significant number of problems with the service to date. Horror stories of people not being connected for up to six months and waiting for hours in customer service queue’s on the phone. Things are not well at the TalkTalk ranch as they seem to have had too many people take up the offer. If you have had any issues please add your comments to the article below as it will help users.

Conclusions

At the moment I would hold off getting TalkTalk broadband if internet access is a priority in your life at the moment. The service is simply not that good but it is improving all the time by the sounds of things and if you want to take the risk then dive straight in.