BT Basic Phone On It's Own Or With Broadband Cheap If On Certain Benefit's £10.07!

[StarBright]

They do a phone line & £1.50 call's included for a month at just £5.16

They then put a call cap of £10 if you go over the £1.50 so that's £10.16 a month. If you do go over the £10 call cap they charge you 11.3p a minuet which is cheaper than normal call rates at 20p a minuet

You need to be on these benefits:

Income Support
Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA)
Pensions Credit (Guaranteed Credit)
Employment and Support Allowance (Income related)
Universal Credit, with zero earnings

The broadband they only give you 15gb allowance so not as good as I thought!

https://btplc.com/Inclusion/Products...n_FURL_btbasic

hope this helps someone

[nukecad]

There is an unlimited broadband option for just over £10 a month, which looks a good deal:
https://btplc.com/inclusion/Products...band/index.htm

BT Basic + Broadband costs £10.07 a month. This includes your BT Basic line rental and all the same call benefits included with the landline only version of BT Basic. Find out more about the call benefits here.

You won’t need to pay a connection charge for installing broadband, but there will be a postage and packaging charge for the BT Home Hub router that is needed for the broadband to work.

BT Basic + Broadband provides unlimited broadband data so you won’t have to worry about any excess data charges.

The speed isn't the fastest at 10Mbps, but should be adequate for most people.

I might be tempted- If I had a landline.

[StarBright]

I actually thought the same about the broadband being unlimited I'm not sure it is now as I found on this website it saying that the 15gb cap has been taken off due to covid:

They are currently (25 April 2020) not enforcing their 15Gb data cap for BT Basic + Broadband customers. This is important for households who may need extra contact, education resources and entertainment during the lockdown period.

unless they have done away with the cap forever since covid?

Further down the page I will give you the link it say's:

The broadband has a 10Mb average download speed and is limited to 15GB usage per month. That's enough to:

Browse the internet for 30 minutes per day, or
Watch 2.5 hours of online standard definition TV a week (through services like iPlayer and YouTube), or
Play games online for an hour a week
Basic customers will get an email warning them when they approach the data limit.

Those who go over will be charged another £2.20/Gb, or part of a Gb. So, someone using 0.9GB over their allowance will be charged £2.20; whereas someone using 1.3GB will be charged £4.40.

https://www.choose.co.uk/guide/bt-ba...-benefits.html

Also interestingly it says:

Basic is a low-cost package that broadband providers run at a loss, in order to meet their Universal Service commitment.

So perhaps some of the other company's also do a version?.


I guess Nuke it depends on what you are spending a month on your broadband usage if it's over £10.07 a month then stupidly getting a phoneline could be cheaper than not having one unless your somewhere that can't get one

[nukecad]

Yes, I checked it out and the 15 GB cap was lifted for covid.
All BT broadband caps were lifted and all went to unlimited data.

From BT's own information the data caps are not going to be put back, and all BT broadband is going to stay as unlimited:
https://www.bt.com/help/broadband/ge...d-usage-policy

As a result of coronavirus we removed caps on all of our broadband packages so every customer has unlimited data. This will apply from February 2020.

All customers who currently have limited broadband packages will automatically get unlimited data. This is a permanent change, BT will no longer have limited broadband packages.

There will be no changes to the way your product looks on your bill. You will just no longer incur charges if you go over your data limit.

There will be no changes to the way your product looks on your bill. You will just no longer incur charges if you go over your data limit.

You don't need to do anytihng, unlimited data will be applied automatically, so there is no need to call us.

It is a bit confusing as the rest of that page then goes on to talk about exceeding you limit and what charges apply if you do, which conflicts with that statement.
But if you look about a bit more you will see that every BT Help page about broadband now contains that paragraph at the top.
I guess that they added the statement in a rush and didn't tidy up the pages yet?

PS. If you look on BT's community forum you'll see that some are having problems with getting switched to BT Basic.
https://community.bt.com/t5/forums/s...iscussion=true

PPS. I'm always sceptical about the figures quoted for how much data certain activities use.
I'm currently tethering through 3G+ as I have no wifi at home at the moment. So I'm keeping a daily track of my data usage, and with around 3 to 5 hours general browsing and forum use (I moderate on 2 fora) I'm using between 1.4 and 1.6 GB a week.
Obviously if you are going to stream TV, play games online, use Skype, use Youtube, etc. then you are going to use more than that.
And don't forget that Windows Updates happen at least monthly now which can use a lot of data, especially the twice-a-year Feature Updates.

I am looking at various options for getting broadband/wifi back and as you say it may be worth the cost of getting a landline in, but there is no existing line so it would be a new line at £140 connection charge.
I can probably justify it by spreading the installation cost in my calculations. But I'd still have to find the £140 to pay BT all in one go, not easy when your income is only ESA WRAG. (Budgeting loan maybe?).
It's further complicated a bit because if/when the pub next door reopens (it's still closed because it's too small for social distancing) and puts their wifi back on I can use that for free, one advantage of living next door to a pub.

[StarBright]

Arh in that case you defo will be better off getting the BT basic broadband because somewhere not sure if it was on the website I linked to above say's that 99% of people who are accepted to the BT Basic phoneline & broadband I.E are on the stated benefits are given a free landline! (it said one way to get your phoneline changed for free from virgin)

All you pay for is the postage of the modem which I think said somewhere £9.99

Yes it is in the first link I gave it says:

Exceptions
People receiving one of the benefits listed above, may still not be eligible for BT Basic due to the following exceptions:

While most phone lines in the UK are BT-compatible, some - like those used by Virgin Media,- aren't, and therefore won't be able to get BT Basic. In this situation, BT are willing to install a line, usually free of charge.

But obviously you need to check with BT.

The phone number for applying is:

Give BT a call on 0800 800 864 between 8am and 6pm on a weekday and they'll send out an application form.

[nukecad]

You had me searching there, it's in you second link to 'choose' not the first to 'btplc'.

TBH that 'choose' article seems to be out of date and is contradictory in places.
For instance further down from the 'Exceptions' it says:

What does it cost to get connected?

As mentioned above, those who don't have a phone line but are eligible for the package should be able to get the line installed and connected free of charge - a saving of up to £140.

But then at the bottom:

How to apply for BT Basic

Those who do decide to go for Basic will need to apply by post, and they'll need to be an existing BT account holder.

Hard to see how you would be an "existing BT account holder" if you don't have a line already?

Still as you say it may be worth giving BT a call, if you don't ask you don't get.

(There is also a second possibility that I've thought of. The Charity shop that is part of this building used to be a taxi office and so there is an unused landline/broadband socket in there which I could probably relocate into our part).

[StarBright]

Sorry Nuke I got my links muddled

Yes it's contradictory for sure

I did find somewhere when searching this deal that it's a government thing, they are making BT do this offer to help people on benefits. It also said that BT are having to run this at a loss.

I don't think you can get a better deal than this as long as they put a free land line in worth the phone call indeed

[StarBright]

I thought when I've looked at Now Broadband that they put a free phone line in & just checked again & they do:

Do I need an engineer visit?
If you need an engineer visit to install a phone line, we’ll book one for you when you order. The waiting time depends on when an engineer’s available, but it’s usually within a couple of weeks. There's no charge for a phone line to be installed.

If you already have a line, we’ll switch your broadband remotely. This should also take place within two weeks of your order.

Keep in mind Even if you have a phone socket in your home, you might still need an engineer visit to get your line up and running.

Link: https://help.nowtv.com/article/how-d...-now-broadband

If BT don't give you the line free (I think they will) then the cheapest Now Broadband deal is £18 a month for

Average speed 11 Mbps
Unlimited downloads
Free anytime calls
Line rental included
No activation fee
12 months

[beau]

We have the Now TV package without the TV. Customer service is good, our router went down, they checked the line and a replacement was sent out immediately. When our year is up the price is still reasonable for what you get. The calls also include calls to mobiles at anytime which many packages don't include. We do use our landline for calls rather than a mobile.

[StarBright]

Apparently Now TV/broadband is run by Sky but is cheaper. If you call them when your out of contract & ask for a deal as the price is now too high for you people have said they are good at giving another deal for 12 or 18 month contract.

Good to know they are a reliable company, I've been close to getting rid of Virgin & going with them before because I would need a new phone line & as Nuke has said it's expensive but these give it to you free.