Oct. 20th, 2008

kingandy: (Default)
Further to recent entry re broadband: I am considering the relative merits of the services offered by my mobile phone provider.

It seems to get a good price on ADSL you have to go with a lengthy minimum term contract, and in all honesty we're not planning to stay in the flat for more than 6 months or a year. And even those contracts must be considered in the context of the BT line rental (about a tenner on top of whatever prices). The T-Mobile dongle allows a me to take a long-term contract (cause I can take it with me when I move), and doesn't require line rental. On the longest contract it's £10/month (for three months - then £15/month - still cheaper than most landline bands).

Downsides: I'm not wholly convinced I want to take a 2-year contract, and though I rarely use a landline it would be occasionally useful for 0800 numbers or incoming calls. (Certainly some places still don't take mobile phones as contact numbers.) Also I'd miss out on the wireless connection (though the dongle could be passed around and I could possibly do something with bluetooth for the PDA).

Plus.net do seem pretty good for a monthly contract. Ooh and it's unmetered overnight so we could still use the iPlayer without worrying ... nifty.

EDITED TO ADD: Hoom, I guess most broadband people allow you to move house within the minimum term as long as you take them with you. Weirdly, BT also seems to have a minimum term - despite advertising the Unlimited Weekend Plan as "No minimum term", the signup page suggests otherwise ("If you order a new phone line or switch your phone line to BT from another provider, a 12 month minimum term applies to line rental for all Calling Plans above"). I feel slightly betrayed. Also I have no idea if we do need a new phone line. There's a phone socket which I can only assume is a BT line rather than cable or something, but there's currently no signal on it. Does "new phone line" include "reconnection"?
kingandy: (Watchmen Babies)
Am currently connected from home! It turns out my phone acts as a GPRS ninternet gateway.

Not ideal as I don't really want to leave my phone at home for Ant to use for job applications etc, so might still go for the wossname dongle (or, alternatively, whatever cable provider is already plugged in here, if any - we've established there's no BT line but there might still be something in there that only needs to be switched on rather than physically installed). Still, it's a good enough quick fix to post two 55KB .PNG's and a paragraph of text, so I'm happy for the night.

Also: Pleased to find that UKTV Dave is available on Freeview! Who needs subscription-based TV, eh.

Next task: Clearing away all the boxes. Oh, so many boxes, all full of crap.

March 2012

S M T W T F S
    123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25 262728293031

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jan. 5th, 2026 03:57 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios