Free Broadband Blog

It seems the ISP’s are starting to catch on to what i have been doing for over a month now. Thats right they have figured that “Free Broadband” isn’t actually free aswell. PlusNet the supposedly best value isp has a brand called “Free Online” and this seems to have been getting alot of enquiries about “Free Broadband”, needless to say it seem Free Online don’t offer free broadband so they are telling you wahat i have been telling you for a while now. IT ISN’T REALLY FREE! Mind you it still can mean a good deal. I wont comment further on the PlusNet service but i still reckon Pipex has the best service offer around at the moment.

Sky are constantly bringing out new special offers and the latest as you might be well aware is Free Sky Broadband with your Sky TV.

So if you want to know the other current offers available from SKy and you want to take advantage of Sky Broadband go over to the Sky Website.

AT present you can also get Sky from only £15 per month which is an exceptional deal.

You maybe finding that as I have that you are not actually able to get Free Broadband from any of the big players or you simply cannot see it making your requirements. These actually both apply to me, I currently use a lot of bandwidth get irritated very easily if my Broadband goes down and want a customer service department that both has a good standard of English and actually seems to care.

That’s why I am still with Pipex for my Broadband provider.

What do they offer?
Well Pipex currently have three broadband levels and accompanying telephone packages. What I will do is outline the separate broadband packages and there accompanying telephone packages.

Pipexmini
Starts at an amazing £6.50 a month for the broadband package when bought with a phone package and rises to £14.99 when bought as a standalone package.
The Pipexmini option gives you 2gb worth of downloads a month, 50mb of webspace and a generous 100mb of email storage for further details visit the Pipex site.

So if you want standalone broadband it will cost £14.99 Find out more 

If you would broadband and anytime calls it will cost £6.50 for your broadband and £12.50 a month for free calls to any UK landline. Find out more 

If you would like broadband and free evening and weekend calls it will cost £14.99 for your broadband and £4.50 for your calls.  Find out more 

Pipexmidi
The basic price for broadband midi starts at £9.99 when bought with a anytime call package and then rises to £19.99 for standalone broadband.
The Pipixmidi option gives you 15Gb of downloads per month, 150mb of webspace and 100mb of email storage, for further details visit the Pipex site.

So if you want standalone broadband it will cost £19.99. Find out more 

If you would broadband and anytime calls it will cost £9.99 for your broadband and £12.50 a month for free calls to any UK landline. Find out more 

If you would like broadband and free evening and weekend calls it will cost £19.99 for your broadband and £4.50 for your calls. Find out more 

Pipexmax
The basic price for broadband midi starts at £14.99 when bought with a anytime call package and then rises to £24.99 for standalone broadband.
The Pipixmax option gives you an unlimited amount of downloads per month, 250mb of webspace and 100mb of email storage, for further details visit the Pipex site.

So if you want standalone broadband it will cost £24.99. Find out more 

If you would broadband and anytime calls it will cost £14.99 for your broadband and £12.50 a month for free calls to any UK landline. Find out more 

If you would like broadband and free evening and weekend calls it will cost £24.99 for your broadband and £4.50 for your calls. Find out more 

Conclusions
What you will get from Pipex is quality.

•    95% liked our speed and usage as well as our payment plans
•    Over 95% felt it easy to start using our home broadband service
•    Over 95% felt it easy to start using our home broadband service
•    95% would recommend Pipex to their family or friends
•    93% think their broadband connection is consistently reliable
•    Almost 90% feel they receive value for money from us
•    An impressive 90% are happy with our overall service

(Survey conducted by YouGov for uSwitch.com, March 2006. Sample Size 16,000)

Alongside this you get a local rate customer service number which in my experience is rarely that busy and you get competitive pricing. In my eyes this is by far the best paid for broadband service and is still the one to have if you are served your broadband through a BT line.

Go get Pipex Broadband 

Reports seem to be showing that Sky have finally started emailing users who have registered there interest in Sky Broadband but the wait to get the service is not over.

Users have been asked to ring a 0870 number or national rate number and there have been reports of waits of upto an hour. Sounds like another reason why Free Broadband might not be that Free afterall.

Click here to visit the Sky Website and register your interest to find out if you can get the right package
Many users are now starting to take advantage of a Genuine Sky Broadband package. The reason for the delay has been the installation of the equipment needed to run the service.

The first wave of installations were completed early this month and if you are in one of these areas you should be trying frantically to take advantage of the offers available to you (see my earlier article on free Sky Broadband).

However there have been a few issues with sites such as Morethan and CNN and XBOX 360 sites being inaccessible.

The man from Sky he say:

“This is the same issue as CNN - Morethan’s hosting provider’s upstream ISP hasn’t updated their filters to allow the Sky IP range in.

As Sky’s range is rather large (1.05 million IPs - 90.192/12 for net anoraks), RIPE allocated us this range from a greenfield IP range which until now has never had anyone on it.

Consequently, IP carriers round the Internet filter out these ranges (bogon filters).. mainly to stop things like spam/DDoSes spoofed from these illegal IPs.

Now that this range is no longer “illegal”, these ISPs need to update their bogon filters.

Most are pretty good at updating them, however there’s always a few that fall through the cracks, hence situations like this.” Sourced from adslguide.org.uk

So basically the problems people are having should get sorted over the coming weeks as more servers update there allowed IP addresses.

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

Can you really get free broadband? Or does it come with a price?

Since TalkTalk announced early this year they were introducing free broadband there has been a steady stream of other companies either announcing there intention or actually launching a free broadband service.

We have so far had offers from Sky, Virgin, and Orange and some other smaller companies. All of the offers are based on you taking up another service first and are therefore effectively only free in name. What is true however is that you are probably able to save yourself significant money if you are a subscriber or potential subscriber to the core service being offered alongside the free broadband. This must cover a very large percentage of the population as we nearly all have a mobile phone, a fixed phone line and or satellite TV (Sky). Basically what you need to do as someone that is wanting to take advantage of free broadband is rate what is important to you.

I have a very simple test that you could use upon yourself to see if you are in fact suited to a free broadband provider at this current time. Generally speaking so far the customer service and service being offered by these companies has been poor. This I honestly believe is not intentional and will no doubt improve over the coming weeks and months but it is currently something we should consider. Therefore, you need to firstly look at the other service which is being offered by the company in question offering free broadband. Is that a good deal for you? Rate that service 1 to 5 in your head; will it improve on your current offer? Is it the same as your current offer? Now look at the broadband package being offered, is that better than your current offer? Does it meet your needs? Are you a heavy internet user? Do you like downloading music or video? And now rate this 1 to 5 in your head. Basically if you are getting a score above 5 then potentially the offer is for you, if it is 7 it is obviously even more suited and finally if it is 9 or ten then you shouldn’t be hanging about, read the other articles here on this site and click on the companies websites to get your free broadband as soon as possible.

But, if you are below 5 or unsure of what your usage is or the other service being used you should always go with a more traditional paid service as you never know the unexpected and you might get caught out by over doing it to much one month.

The honest approach: Virgin Mobile offers Free Broadband!

So Virgin has now entered the Free Broadband market. But virgin are not pushing this as a standalone service with conditions but more as a special offer that you get if you take a sim only contract on Virgin Mobile.

So if you want to change phone companies and not your phone then and you happen to just want free broadband from a reputable ISP in this case Virgin.net please read on.

So what’s the deal?

Basically you sign up for a new a Sim Only deal of either £20 per month or £32 per month. This then gives you either 200 anytime anyone minutes and 500 texts or 300 anytime, anyone, minutes and 300 texts for 20£ or 500 minutes and 1000 texts for £32. You can swap your number over to them as well and they will give you a sim for free. All you have to do is cancel the direct debit after the first month to stop being charged and you are then free to go to another provider.

The actual free broadband you receive is for 12 months and comprises of:

• Up to 8 Mbps download speeds
• 6 GB monthly download allowance.
• A free broadband modem.
• Free activation no set up fees or activation costs.
• Plus, free anti spam and virus protection.

The catch is that if you cancel your Virgin Mobile Sim deal you will be charged £17.99 or a £50 cancellation fee if you cancel your broadband with Virgin.net within 12 months.

Conclusions

This is a genuinely good deal as long as you don’t have to pay to much to you current broadband provider to cancel and you are out of contract with your mobile provider. Virgin.net has a good reputation and has been providing a good service for a number of years. If I am honest because that seems to be what Virgin Mobile is doing I would say this is the best deal yet for Free Broadband and knocks Orange, TalkTalk and Sky for six.

If you want to find out more click here to go to the exact Virgin Mobile page on there website.

The UK ISP TalkTalk is famous for it’s ‘Free broadband for ever’ product, but how good a service do they provide? Here’s a blog by a British student who’s had nothing but problems with them, and even though he’s no longer receiving their service continues to be billed.
Go to http://talktalkissues.blogspot.com/

A very interesting little article from the BBC’s Working Lunch TV programme, highliting one mans plight with Orange broadband. The article then goes on to discuss other options on broadband with companies such as BT. Definately worth a read.

BBC News Article