Latest broadband, phone and TV deals: great offers we’ve found around

What are the latest deals? 

Every so often broadband, TV and home phone providers come up with amazing deals, and we bring them to you. Here’s a roundup of those we’ve seen – click on the links to see if they’re still live. 

• TalkTalk offers half-price Entertainment TV Boost and PictureBox movies for two months
• Free Tesco Broadband offer extended, line rental saver coming soon
• Plusnet offers half price BT Sport to Sky TV customers
• TalkTalk launches £10 Plus TV and broadband deal
• Plusnet touts half price broadband for business
• Plusnet offers unlimited broadband for £2.99/month for 9 months
• TalkTalk to offer Plus TV, broadband and phone at half price for six months
• TalkTalk Big Free: 3 month free broadband, TV and calls bundle deal
• Sky bundles £49 Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 for new Sports and Movies sign-ups
• Sky Broadband’s pre-emptive strike at BT offers a double-discount with Sky Sports
• Plusnet pushes £8/month fibre broadband in half-price promotion
• Tesco Broadband drops to just £2/month with Homephone
• EE superfast fibre broadband first thrEE months frEE
• John Lewis: buy a connected device, get free broadband for 6 months
• Plusnet launches £2.99/month for 12 months Essentials broadband deal
• Half-price Sky TV plus £25 M&S voucher – limited edition online until midnight February 28
• PictureBox February Freeview brings free movies to Virgin Media for one month
• Direct Save launches competitor price calculator
• BT SmartTalk turns your mobile into an international landline
• Zen Internet offers free fibre broadband installs until April
• Plusnet Unlimited announced, launching with half price deals
• Sky Fibre Unlimited £30 a month for six months plus free 2TB Sky+HD box
• TalkTalk Essentials first three months free offer
• Plusnet 12 Month Half Price Broadband with Anytime Calls
• TalkTalk Half Price Broadband for NHS workers
• TalkTalk Essentials Half Price Broadband for nine months
• TalkTalk £5 offer cuts cost of calls to mobiles
• Zen Internet adds phone and line rental to broadband bundles
• Be Broadband Half Price Broadband Offer
• Virgin Media Classic Collection bundles TiVo and broadband
• Plusnet 50 per cent off Value and Extra Broadband bundles

Plusnet launches £2.99/month for 12 months Essentials broadband deal 

​Plusnet has launched a new deal which sees you getting its Essentials broadband package at the reduced rate of just £2.99/month for a 12 months.

Open to new customers only, this offer is available from now until April 11 and sees you paying roughly half the price you normally would for your broadband.

Plusnet Essentials gives you download speeds of up to 16Mbps and comes with a monthly usage cap of 10GB. As with all Plusnet packages, you get unlimited overnight usage thrown in as standard.

This means between the hours of midnight and 8:00AM anything you download won’t come out of your 10GB allowance.

Line rental is charged at £13.99/month unless you pay for 12 months up front (£125.88) in which case it works out the equivalent of £10.49/month.

If you took out this offer and paid for the line rental up front then you’d be essentially paying less than £15 every month for broadband with a free wireless router thrown in and unlimited downloads throughout the night.

March 14, 2013

Half-price Sky TV plus £25 M&S voucher – limited edition online until midnight February 28

Sky has handed Recombu Digital a last-minute limited edition deal halving the price of all TV packages for 12 months, but it’s only available until midnight on Thursday, February 28.

New customers can get the Sky Entertainment pack for £10.75/month, Sky Sports for £10.50/month, Sky Movies for £8/month and Sky Entertainment Extra for £2.50/month.

To get the deal, just click on the image below:

​

The half-price deal lasts for a full 12 months, after which you’ll go to Sky’s full prices in 2014 – but it’s limited to the first 1,500 customers.

You’ll also get a £25 Marks & Spencer voucher, along with free installation and a Sky+HD box, plus use of Sky Go for mobile viewing and Sky On Demand for catch-up and streaming video via your broadband connection.

This will give you the BBC HD channels, ITV HD (England and Wales only), Channel 4 HD, Channel 5 HD, NHK World HD, and Russia Today HD. 

Sky HD channels for your selected packages are available at £10.25/month – with Sky F1 HD available to all HD boost subscribers.

​

February 27, 2013

 

BT ditches traffic shaping with Totally Unlimited Broadband

​BT is ditching traffic shaping on all but its cheapest broadband and fibre lines as it launches Totally Unlimited Broadband.

Previously, BT would slow P2P traffic between the hours or 4:00PM and 12:00PM on weekdays and 9:00AM and 12:00PM on weekends. All other kinds of traffic, VoIP, gaming and newsgroups however weren’t throttled at all.

From today onwards, BT’s 16Mbps copper-based Unlimited Broadband product, Unlimited Infinity 1 (up to 38Mbps) and Unlimited Infinity 2 (up to 76Mbps) will be free of any kind of traffic shaping.

Unlimited Broadband costs £16/month for up to 16Mbps download speeds. Unlimited Infinity 1 costs £23/month, gives you top download speeds of 38Mbps, top uploads of 9.5Mbps and a 40GB monthly usage cap. The faster Unlimited Infinity 2 costs £26/month for download speeds of up to 76Mbps, uploads of 19Mbps and unlimited downloads.

February 1, 2013

PictureBox February Freeview brings free movies to Virgin Media for one month

Throughout the whole of February, Virgin Media TV subscribers will be able to access the PictureBox vault of on-demand movies for free.

The PictureBox February Freeview promo will give Virgin Media customers access to line-up of 60 films. Normally costing £5/month, PictureBox’s ever-changing librbary features recent hits to classic movies.

Throughout February you’ll be able to choose from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Frost/Nixon and Lost in Translation amongst others. If you’ve got Virgin Media TV M+, L and XL you’ll be able to sign up for the free trial via the Catch Up & On Demand section of the menu and select ‘PictureBox February Freeview.’

Note that just because it’s got ‘Freeview’ in the title you won’t be able to get this offer just because you’ve got a Freeiew box…

January 29, 2013

Direct Save launches competitor price calculator 

One thing that puts us off changing phone and broadband supplier is the sums – now budget provider Direct Save Telecom has built a three-step calculator.

You just pick your current provider, enter an average for the calls you made on your last few phone bills, and it will tell you how that compares to the most suitable Direct Save plan.

It doesn’t include broadband, but these packages are easier to compare if you know how much you want to use and how fast you want to go.

The comparison calculator include s BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin, and is updated with their latest pricing.

Direct Save CEO, Stavros Tsolakis, said: “Customers can simply visit Direct Save’s website and see how much they can save in a matter of minutes. 

“We are the first provider to put a calculator on its website as we know we are the cheapest, and we want to prove this to all the customers of the Big 4. 

“It’s a new year and therefore a perfect time to get finances in order. The big 4 have dominated the market with over-inflated prices for far too long – it’s now time for a change.”

January 24, 2013

BT SmartTalk turns your mobile into an international landline

BT home phone customers can now download an app which lets them use landline minutes over 3G, 4G or WiFi data from anywhere in the world to UK landline numbers.

The BT SmartTalk app works on Android and iOS phones, for calling UK landlines, 0800, 0845 and 0870 numbers.

Pay-as-you-go smartphone users with a data allowance or in a WiFi hotspot can also use the app to call landlines and mobiles at cheaper rates than most mobile PAYG tariffs, starting from 2.65p/minute.

John Petter, managing director consumer, BT, said: “This is a really exciting breakthrough that means you can take your BT calling plan with you and continue saving money when you’re away from home, either in the UK or abroad.

“BT SmartTalk helps you get even more value from your BT package and much more from your smartphone. At last you can actually call freephone 0800 numbers for free from mobiles and get inclusive 0845 and 0870 calls too.” 

Up to five people can use the SmartTalk app on a single BT calling plan – it’s available on all except BT Basic.

The app can access all of the contacts on your phone, and you can choose to set it as the default way to call different numbers depending on your smartphone tariff and WiFi access.

January 14, 2013

Zen Internet offers free fibre broadband installs until April

Zen Internet is waiving the installation cost of its fibre broadband products until April.

The install fee for Zen Internet’s up to 76Mbps FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) broadband is normally £80, but for the remainder of January and all the way up to March 31, you won’t have to pay a penny.

Zen Internet’s fibre broadband services start at £29.50/month for download speeds of up to 76Mbps, top upload speeds of 19Mbps and 100GB of monthly usage.

Typically Zen Internet customers can expect average speeds of 60Mbps on its higher end fibre broadband products.

There’s also a cheaper Fibre Lite deal which gives you a slower top download speed of 38Mbps, top uploads of 1.9Mbps and 20GB of usage for £23/month.

The terms of getting Zen Internet fibre broadband without paying the install fee see you committing to a 24 month contract. Line rental is also available from Zen Internet for £11.22/month.

January 7, 2013

Plusnet Unlimited announced, launching with half price deals

Plusnet has announced two new Plusnet Unlimited packages, bringing unlimited downloads for fibre broadband and copper/ADSL customers.

Launching on Wednesday, December 19, Plusnet Unlimited and Plusnet Unlimited Fibre will give customers the freedom to surf for as long as they like, 24/7.

For years Plusnet has offered unlimited downloads to all of its customers, but only at certain times of day – normally after midnight until 8:00AM. Plusnet Unlimited gives you the freedom to download as much as you want at any time of day.

Plusnet Unlimited offers speeds of up to 16Mbps, unlimited downloads and a free wireless router for £9.99/month.

Plusnet Unlimited Fibre provides faster speeds of up to 76Mbps, unlimited downloads and a free wireless router for £19.99/month.

As well as launching these new products in time for Christmas, Plusnet will be offering new customers the chance to get Plusnet Unlimited for £4.99/month for the first 12 months.

Plusnet Unlimited Fibre customers can also sign up for the new unlimited service and get a 6 month discount which sees you paying £9.99/month instead of the usual rate.

The new packages will replace the older Plusnet Extra packages which offered the same speeds but came with monthly usage caps of 60GB (non-fibre) and 40GB (fibre) and unlimited overnight usage.

Existing customers will be able to switch to Plusnet Unlimited and Plusnet Unlimited Fibre by contacting the call centre or logging in to their online accounts. The new prices will be available for any existing customer who wishes to sign-up for a new contract term, but the half price deals will only be offered to new customers.

December 17, 2012

 

Sky Fibre Unlimited £30 a month for six months plus free 2TB Sky+HD box

Sky has decked the halls with a seasonal broadband and TV offer which sees you getting Sky Fibre Unlimited and the Entertainment Extra channels for £30/month for the first six months and a free 2TB Sky+HD.

The new Sky+HD box gives you a roomy 1180 hours worth of TV recording in standard definition (SD) and 350 hours of HD recording. It’ll normally set you back £149, so if you had your eye on the big 2TB box and fast fibre broadband this one’s for you.

Sky Fibre Unlimited uses the Openreach FTTC network, which will give you download speeds of up to 80Mbps and uploads of up to 20Mbps. You get unlimited downloads and the new Sky Hub wireless router also comes bundled for free.

Connecting your Sky+HD box up to the Sky Hub means you’ll be able to access on-demand programmes from BBC iPlayer and 4oD and queue up Sky On Demand downloads from your iPhone or iPad.

December 14, 2012

TalkTalk Essentials first three months free offer

TalkTalk has renewed its Essentials package deal which sees you get unlimited broadband free for the first three months.

The regular rate of TalkTalk Essentials is £6.50/month, which gives you a free TalkTalk 523a wireless (802.11 b/g/n) router which promises to be 35 per cent faster than the older model, HomeSafe and unlimited Evening & Weekend calls to UK lines (01, 02, 03 and 0845 & 0870).

There’s no fee for installation, but if you need a new phone line installed TalkTalk is offering £25 off the usual price of £50.

This offer is available until the 26th of December, so if you’re planning on getting someone low cost broadband for Christmas, this deal could be the one for you…

December 13, 2012

Plusnet 12 Month Half Price Broadband with Anytime Calls

Plusnet has announced a pair of new 12 month half price deals which will see you paying as little as £3.24/month for your broadband.

Available to new online customers only, the entry level Plusnet Value package gives you download speeds of up to 16Mbps, 10GB of monthly usage with unlimited usage applying during overnight hours – from midnight to 8:00am – and a free wireless router.

This costs £3.24/month plus line rental which works out at either £10.49/month if you pay £125.88 up front (Line Rental Saver) or £13.99 for the standard rate.

The Plusnet Extra Broadband package can also be had for half the regular price for a year. Coming with up to 16Mbps download speeds, a 60GB monthly data cap, overnight usage and free wireless router, Plusnet Extra Broadband can be had for £5.74/month.

The good news is that if you’re living outside of Plusnet’s network – you’re connected to an exchange where Plusnet hasn’t installed its equipment – then you can still benefit from the same prices.

The only ‘catch’ so to speak is that you’ll also have to take out the Anytime calls package, which costs an extra £4/month.

In both cases that still puts the monthly price of the broadband under £10 and gives you unlimited calls to UK landlines (01, 02, 03, 0845 & 0870 numbers).

Combined with the cost of line rental, at the cheapest option you’d be paying £17.73/month for Plusnet Value and £20.23 for Plusnet Extra Broadband.

Aside from this there are no charges aside from the cost of connecting a phone line (if you don’t have one already) which is £49.99.

This Plusnet deal ends on December 5, so you’ve got just over a couple of weeks to snap one of these up.

November 20, 2012

TalkTalk Half Price Broadband for NHS workers

TalkTalk is launching a new half price for 12 months broadband deal for NHS workers.

Those employed by any NHS Trust across the UK will be eligible to sign up for 50 per cent off TalkTalk Essentials – normally £6.50/month – meaning you pay £3.25/month for a whole year.

Line rental costs either £9.50/month when bought up front or £14.50 if not. TalkTalk Value Line Rental costs £114 (£9.50 x 12) which saves you £60 compared to the standard rate.

So in total, nurses, porters and cleaners working for a local trust can pay as little as £12.75/month for unlimited broadband.

TalkTalk Essentials gives you download speeds of up to 24Mbps, depending on your distance from the exchange and unlimited downloads. You also get a new TalkTalk wireless router which is four times as strong as the older Essentials routers and unlimited evening and weekend calls.

£25 of welcome credit is included for new and reactivated lines and 3,000 landline to mobile minutes is included free for the first three months.

The connection fee of £30 is also waived as part of this NHS exclusive deal.

The TalkTalk NHS bundle is available to order online now until December 12 2012.

November 5, 2012

TalkTalk Essentials Half Price Broadband for nine months

TalkTalk’s entry-level Essentials package is now available half price for the first nine months of the contract.

TalkTalk Essentials gives you the fastest speeds your ADSL phone line can handle (up to 24Mbps) unlimited downloads plus standard TalkTalk features like HomeSafe and Calling Circle, which gives you 10 per cent off the cost of calling to the 16 numbers you call the most from your landline.

Evening & Weekend calls to UK landlines is included as standard as is a 2-port wireless router and £25 of welcome credit.

Costing £3.25/month for the first three quarters of an annual contract (plus £9.50/month for line rental), the total cost works out at £12.75/month.

For the last three months the cost of TalkTalk Essentials goes up to the normal rate of £6.50 which plus line rental sees you paying £16/month.

This offer is only available to customers who sign up online ands expires on the 12th of December 2012 – in two months’ time.

To compare the new TalkTalk Essentials package with TalkTalk Plus – which includes a year’s free Lovefilm subscription – check out our TalkTalk deals page.

October 12, 2012

TalkTalk £5 offer cuts cost of calls to mobiles

TalkTalk has launched a new 1000 Mobile Minutes Boost to go with its call plans. For £5/month the rate of calls to mobiles works out at the equivalent of 0.5p/minute.

This is great news for parents who want to call their sprogs mobiles from home – calls to mobiles from landlines has been hugely expensive in the past, so you stand to save plenty here. TalkTalk 1000 Mobile Minutes costs just £5/month on top of your standard TalkTalk phone package.

If you think 1,000 minutes is overkill then there’s the slightly cheaper TalkTalk 100 Mobile Minutes Boost.

Costing an extra £3/month, this offers 100 landline-to-mobile minutes which by the same logic works out at 3p/minute.

In addition to this, TalkTalk has Calling Circle – a 10 per cent discount on up to 11 numbers, mobile or landline – as a standard feature with both the Essentials and TV Plus packages.

Standard out of bundle charges for calls to mobiles from TalkTalk landlines are 11.3/minute in the daytime and 5.3p in the evening, the same as BT’s standard rate.

October 9, 2012

Zen Internet adds phone and line rental to broadband bundles

Zen Internet has added phone and line rental bundles to its DSL and fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) broadband packages, with free transfers and discounts on activation.

Deals include rolling one-month contracts on DSL and annual contracts for fibre, there are no call connection or setup fees, and 5,000 inclusive UK minutes on all contracts.

Activation is free for up-to-16Mbps DSL broadband, and half price (£48) for up-to-76Mbps FTTC, with line rental £11.22/month for domestic users and £13.49/month for business.

There are separate deals for home and business users, usage limits are tight at 20GB/month, although there’s no traffic shaping or fair usage policy. Inclusive minutes cover UK landlines (01, 02, 03), 0845 and 0870 numbers.

• Zen Broadband and Calls: £24.50/month (business £21.81/month ex VAT)
• Zen Fibre Broadband and Calls: £33.73/month (business £29.50/month ex VAT)

September 20, 2012

Be Broadband Half Price Broadband Offer

Be Broadband has cracked open a sizzling end of summer deal which sees you getting 12 months of broadband for the price of 6.

This offer applies to any Be Broadband package whether it’s Be Value (up to 10Mbps down, up to 1.1Mbps up), Be Unlimited (up to 16Mbps down, up to 1.1Mbps up), or Be Pro (up to 16Mbps down, up to 1.9Mbps up).

When you take out any of these packages on a 12 month contract, the cost of each will be halved. Entering the promo code ‘HalfPriceSep’ will see you getting the discount applied during signup.

This means that for a year you’ll end up paying the following for Be Broadband:

Be Value: £8.50/month
Be Unlimited: £11.00/month
Be Pro: £13.50/month

Be Broadband 12 months for the price of 6: Price breakdown

Note that line rental (£10/month) isn’t included in this deal so you’ll have to pay the usual rate for this.

No calls are included with Be Broadband line rental as standard but the Evening & Weekend plan (6pm-6am weekdays, 01, 02, 03 and 0845 and 0870 numbers) can be added for £11/month (essentially £1 extra) and Anytime calls (including international calls) can be added for an extra £14/month.

Looking at the cheapest possible option (standard line rental) here’s how it all adds up:

Be Value: £18.50/month
Be Unlimited: £21.00/month
Be Pro: £23.50/month

Finally this offer is only available if you’re taking a 12 month contract and you can only sign up for the duration of September 2012.

September 3, 2012

Virgin Media Classic Collection bundles TiVo and broadband

Virgin Media has taken the wraps off of its Classic Collection, a new £18/month bundle deal that throws Virgin Media TiVo and 30Mbps broadband into the pot.

The TV package comes with a 500GB TiVo box and 58 channels including five HD channels.
Catch up TV from BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD and Demand 5 are included as well as roughly 700 hours of extra on-demand programming.

With TiVo you also get apps – stuff like BBC Sport, Spotify and Teletext Holidays as well as programme-specific ones like the Star Trek app.

Added to the Classic Collection the standard Virgin Home Phone service which gives you unlimited calls to 01, 02, 03 and 0870 UK landlines and Virgin Mobile numbers on weekends.

Currently Virgin Media is offering the Classic Collection to new and existing subscribers for £9/month for the first six months with £18/month being the regular rate. As well as this you’ll need to have a Virgin Phone line installed and pay Virgin Media line rental.

Virgin Media Classic Collection: Price breakdown

Virgin Media line rental costs £13.90/month. This means that for the first six months with the Virgin Media Classic Collection you’ll pay £22.90/month (£9 + £13.90). The regular monthly rate for the Classic Collection is £31.90 (£18 + £13.90).

Though the box itself is free, installation for the Virgin Media TiVo box costs £49.95 up front.

As well as the Classic Collection, Virgin Media offers Essential, Premier and VIP bundle deals which include things like Sky channels (Sky Sports, Sky Movies) 60Mbps broadband and more HD channels.

September 3, 2012

Plusnet 50 per cent off Value and Extra Broadband bundles

Plusnet is offering a huge 50 per cent discount on Plusnet Value and Plusnet Extra broadband and home phone bundles ordered by the 29th of October.

This will see the price for the Plusnet Value (up to 16Mbps, 10GB download cap) falling to £3.24/month and the price of Plusnet Extra (up to 16Mbps, 60GB download cap) dropping to £5.74/month.

The home phone packages give you free Evening & Weekend calls (from 7pm-7am weekdays) to 01, 02, 03, 0845 and 0870 numbers.

Though the cost of line rental isn’t halved, will be charged at £12.99 for the months up until the 30th of October, after which the usual rate of £13.99/month will apply.

Plusnet 12 month half price broadband and home phone bundle: Price breakdown

Adding up the cost of line rental to Plusnet Value sees you paying £16.23/month between now and the 30th of October 2012 and £17.23/month for the rest of the year.

Plusnet Extra including line rental works out at £18.73 before the 30th of October and £19.73/month thereafter.

When you sign up to Plusnet for 12 months you’ll get a wireless router included but will need to pay £4.99 for the postage and packaging of this. There’s also a one-off connection/activation fee of £25.

This sees the total first year costs for these Plusnet packages (assuming at least one month of discounted line rental) working out at follows:

Plusnet Value: £235.72
Plusnet Extra: £265.75

September 3, 2012