My General advice in situations like this is to STAY with BT for your phone line rental.

By all means have a seperate call package that might save you money on phone calls.

and - as far as broadband is concerned - becuase you have a BT line - you have a wide.choice of supplier ! - And take note of all the comments you will find in these posts about the bigger suppliers - some of whom have been already mentioned in this thread!

As I've said many many times on these posts before WHY OH WHY does everyone seem to only ever think of saving money and not look for quality of service??

I second the remarks made by landshark. The bigger providers are a nightmare . it's CHEAP for a REASON!!

Regards

Eric-ISP

Anyone opting for an LLU service without knowing that you will have to pay £125 to re-join BT is being misled. This is a serious issue which is biting a lot of people after the initial honeymoon period is over. This re-connection charge equates to over £10 per month to rejoin BT if you need their service in future and I cannot see any benefit when the chief brigands in this LLU con are Tiscali (second only to Pipex and AOL) in the worst ISP of the decade awards.

Virgin is only ever good on their own cable service. Beyond this, they are a nightmare like others.

Deregulation does not always offer the customer a good service, and the Internet Broadband saga is evidence enough.

SHARK!

Hello js1234,

Please bear in mind if you give up your BT line after six months it will cost you £125 to reconnect, why would you want to reconnect I hear you ask?

After 12 months the prices on Virgin Media go up.

Kind Regards,

Michael.

Thanks reel, that makes sense to me now! Ive had a quick look on sky but they dont do just phone and broadband packages (i think they include tv which i dont want). Probly would make more sense for me to stay with BT but i've had nothing but hassle over the last few years. Virgin sounds like i will get more my money and they were really nice when i spoke to them (which is not what i can say about BT)

Thanks

Hi JS.

If you switch to Virgin you don't need a BT line because Virgin runs through cable not the BT exchange. That's how you can drop the BT line rental - cancel your BT line. Beware though, if you ever intend to use anyone other Virgin in the future you will have to pay whatever BT charges as a reconnection fee at that time.

Before you do make the switch though, have you looked at offers from other providers such as Sky? Yes you'll still have to pay BT line rental but the rest of the Sky package is much cheaper than my Virgin services. The service from Virgin is pretty good (I've been with them/Telewest for 4 years) if you're looking for fast broadband, etc, but their packages are normally more expensive than many other equivalent packages on the market because of that.

For example, my current Virgin package is nearly twice what I'd be paying if I was with Sky. The problem for me is that I'll currently have to pay a BT connection fee of approx £125 and (I think) stay with BT for 12 months before switching to Sky. The other downside is that Virgin are going to increase my broadband speed from 4MB to 10MB whereas the fastest I could get through Sky (BT exchange) is about 4.5MB in this area. But I could live with that for £20 per month less considering that's roughly what I'm getting now.

So my advice is not to switch to Virgin unless you are really after fast broadband. Others may disagree - this is my first post on here so please be gentle!

Reel

Hello, I currently have my dial up from Tiscali. i pay them £19.99 a month for internet and phone. i also pay BT £11 a month for their line rental. my 12 month contract is now over and i am thinking of switching over to virgin media who can give me an excellant package (£15.50 for better internet, phone and landline) they told me i no longer have to pay BT £11 a month for landline as it is now included in my new package. I double checked this with BT and they told me that i actually do have to pay them £11 line rental. is this correct? i have been told off a few people that i have to pay BT as it is their line and others have told me that i shouldnt be paying it. Could you shed some light on this please?!