Every little helps from the providers

TV and broadband providers are doing a little bit extra to help us through the crisis.

Virgin says it will ‘be prioritising those customers who are without service’ and that if engineers need to visit your home they will be wearing protective gear, will wipe down anything they come into contact with, and will also be adhering to social distancing guidelines.

All providers ought to adopt similar precautions. If not, insist on it.

All the main providers indicate that they will take a lenient view of customers who are in financial difficulty but, remember, they will eventually come after payment so try not to let bills pile up.

When it comes to other measures, Sky is launching three new channels, available for free – Sky History, Sky Nature and Sky Documentaries.

It is also making all national landline phone calls free up to April 30.

Virgin’s basic triple play package already provides free ‘anytime’ calls to Irish landlines and, more importantly, mobiles as well. It also gives you 400 free minutes to landlines in 22 international destinations, which could be a valuable lifeline to those with relatives abroad.

Sky is also making Sky Go Extra available to its customers for free, ‘so busy homes will have access to Sky TV on three screens at the same time’.

This means customers can ‘download movies and shows to watch offline, and watch on two mobiles or tablets at the same time as your main TV’.

Sky also said its customers can pause their Sky Sports subscriptions as there is no live sport on at the moment.

Eir is ‘delaying’ the planned – and highly controversial – charge for its email service.

It also said it would remove the data limit on at least one of its mobile phone packages. The Business Performance package is set to move from 20GB to unlimited data.