How to halve the cost of your broadband MARTIN LEWIS
BROADBAND is a modern necessity – whether it’s Facetime with family, streaming box sets or just doing your personal admin. Yet the bill is often forgotten, and millions are out of contract and overpaying £200+ a year.
A range of new rules have come in which should help that a touch, but by far the best thing to do is sort it yourself.
Before I start though, take a moment to work out what you’re paying for your broadband and phone line – as the two are wrapped into one. To see the real impact do it over a year. For example, BT price for standard broadband and line is up to £45/mth (£540/yr) and for fibre, up to £52/mth (£624/yr) – and other major providers are similar.
Millions are out of contract – but they’ll now need to warn you of that and warn you when your contract is ending.
On February 15 the rules set by the regulator Ofcom changed. These aren’t just for broadband, they apply to digital TV contracts, mobiles and home phones too.
They must now alert you by letter, text or email 10 to 40 days before your contracts end, and each year they must keep reminding you if you stay out of contract.
Crucially, the alerts must include what the best deal is that firm offers to new customers.
But bizarrely, while the provider must tell you what the cheapest deals are, they don’t have to offer it to you. Though some of the bigger providers, BT, Sky,
TalkTalk and Vodafone have voluntarily agreed they will.
But as the best deals tend to be hot short promo deals from comparison sites, which include incentives like £100 credit on your bill, a £75 Amazon voucher or a £150 on a prepaid Mastercard – they won’t have to offer you these either. Broadband deals are all about short-lived promotions, which makes this rather tricky to write as things are changing all the time.
For up-to-date info use my broadband.moneysaving expert.com tool.
Shell (yep the energy firm) currently has a couple of deals, via the link above, for broadband and line, both give you bill credit and an Amazon voucher. Factor those into the price over the year’s contract and it’s £12/ mth for standard 11Mb speed or £16/mth for 35Mb fast fibre.
Also, for fibre broadband and line the Post Office via broadbandgenie.co.uk is £21/ mth and you get a £50 Amazon voucher, factor that in over the year’s contract and it’s £17/mth.
Even if you want to go for seriously fast fibre broadband, up to 100Mb speeds, prices can be as little as £25/mth all in. To switch just sign up and your new provider should sort it for you.
Rules about speeds have been strengthened. It used to be that only 10% of customers needed to be able to get the advertised speed, but now at least 50% do, and at peak time. Plus, BT, Sky, Plusnet, and Virgin Media will give you a personalised minimum speed before you sign-up, and if it drops below this and they can’t fix it for 30 days, you have the right to leave penalty-free.