ISP/no telphone service

[Mr. Smith]

Moving into a new house soon, has no telephone line, but has the bt points.

I don't want a telephone line or cable - just a decent broadband connection.

What ISP offers just broadband, or do I have to have a telephone line.

The reason I dont want a phone line is I'm moving in with a couple of mates, we all have mobiles and would never need the landline.

Also, it would only cause arguments of who made what calls etc.

TYIA

 

[Dav0s]

could get cable if you are in a cable area?

 

[JN]

For broadband you need to have a working BT telephone line, and from what BT have told me in the past (most likely bs) it needs to be able to make outgoing calls (so there's no hooking ADSL up to a line that accepts incoming only)

 

[Azreil_2]

i know its annoying but why not just agree not to use the homephone? or not even connect one to the line? that gets rid of the extra call charges, but then u still got line rental :S

 

[Hyper]

Satellite broadband maybe

 

[Mr. Smith]

Cable/satellite area...

I know we could agree not to use the phone, I think we might have to just intergrate a phone line into the final costs - I'm stealing the landline phone and throwing it in the anderson shelter out back - no one will look there

OK, so if we take the hit for the phone, which service then? Telewest?

 

[Dav0s]

if you are using cable im 80% sure u dont need a phone line...

 

[BloomerzUK]

On a cable connection, you don't need a phone connection.

I have a cable connection.

 

[Phunky]

Three have just released a new product that use's the mobile network to allow you to get around 3mb with no phone line.

Its quite expensive if you are a heavy user as they have download caps on them, but it is a good option if you cant have a phone line installed and not in a cable area.

 

[nrage]

When I was looking into this I found that most 95% of the ADSL options require a BT phone line. So, you pay at least £10+/month in addition to the ADSL rental cost.

The exception I looked at was TalkTalk where you pay them for line rental instead, being from New Zealand it wasn't a bad option as I could pay £20+/month and get free calls to NZ anytime day or night.

There are other things to consider with a switch like this:

1. Once you have been 'unbundled' from BT to TalkTalk, which involves physically moving your phone line in the telephone exchange, you may have to pay BT to be moved back if you later decide to do that.

2. I'm not sure what speeds you're likely to get with TalkTalk, part of unbundling is moving from BT hardware to TalkTalk hardware which may be better or may be worse. I know one person on TalkTalk and they had a period with absolutely rubbish speeds which lasted for a week.

The main problem with TalkTalk is the minimum 18 month contract. You can break early but will still have to pay the remainder of your contract, or their costs, whichever is less.

I looked at cable too and found that Virgin Cable was a good option. You can get basic/slow unlimited* cable for £10/month and you do not need a BT line. Unfortunately you can only have 1 cable connection per household so due to my flatmate already having cable I couldn't get my own. They have a 12 month minimum contract period.

* subject to fair usage policy.

Of the various ADSL connections out there I was impressed with the PlusNET website, they don't offer an unlimited service, instead they offer "FREE Overnight Usage", the reason for this is that most unlimited connections have a 'fair usage policy' which realistically restricts your connection, therefore it's not 'unlimited' and to market it as such is dishonest. I have no idea what their service is actually like but they do describe their connection options in terms of gaming and prioritising for gaming, who knows.

In the end I made a deal with my flatmate to share his cable, I pay 1/2 the monthly rental and it's working out great. The wireless router I installed is working perfectly

I started my search here, it seems to list most providers.

 

[nrage]

Three have just released a new product that use's the mobile network to allow you to get around 3mb with no phone line.

Its quite expensive if you are a heavy user as they have download caps on them, but it is a good option if you cant have a phone line installed and not in a cable area.

When I was researching broadband I read about mobile broadband. From memory (I can't find the web page I was reading) it has an actual download limit of 1.4mbs (not the advertised 3mbs) and the way it works is that each tower/signal area has a limited number of high-speed slots (like 10, not a large number). Normally you will operate in a low speed slot and when required you will be raised to a high speed slot, assuming there is one available.

It didn't sound like a good system to me.

On the other hand I can't wait till we get fibre optic connections

 

[Mr. Smith]

I need to have a chat with the lads.

At the moment we have the house for 6 months so an 18 month contract is out of the q... We may end up extending to 12 months but I might have to go with IDnet pay/g thing...

Thanks for all the input