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BT Broadband Recommendation

A comment based on observation by a customer

At the time of writing this there were several suppliers of broadband Internet in the UK, each trying to outdo the others on the advertising. However, there is a notable observation about the situation of the competing broadband suppliers which is often unnoticed and which needs to be commented upon.

The thing about BT is that it was the original phone network in the UK and so has the phone lines. If you need your phone connection mending, BT is the place to get it done. Therefore, it's obvious that you should have your phone line with BT.

It therefore seems reasonable to have your broadband with BT Broadband or BT Business Broadband.

If the rival companies such as Sky TV and Virgin Media had credible alternatives, they would surely not need to insist that you transfer the ownership of your phone line to them? Yet, perversely, that is precisely what they currently do. For that reason alone, they are best avoided.

This idea of "transferring your phone line" is in my opinion very dodgy. It was a ruse attempted by TalkTalk which, if they had got away with it, would have resulted in the Tiscali TalkTalk Fiasco being very considerably worse, as I would have had no Internet and no phone line. This is a cautionary tale for sure. Don't let them get away with it, and don't leave yourself vulnerable to being caught out.

If you can afford to have more than one phone line, yes, it might be worth having one of them with Sky TV or Virgin Media or one of the other broadband companies, but unless you can afford a line to be down, in my opinion it is not worth the risk. If a broadband company won't let you have their services without the seriously questionably catch of having your phone line, then avoid!

You can't rely on the Ombudsman to save you, as their decisions are often arbitrary and sometimes very poor. This in itself makes the whole "fair competition in the UK communications providers market" decidedly questionable, and therefore it's better to stick with BT, BT Broadband , BT Business Broadband, etc.

After the Tiscali TalkTalk Fiasco , TalkTalk/Tiscali did not relinquish my broadband MAC key. The only thing that saved my Internet service from being scuppered was an additional phone line provided by a good friend. The only thing that saved my phone line from being scuppered as any kind of usable thing altogether was Converting my Phone to a Vonage line! Now that I have emigrated and still retained the phone number, Tiscali/TalkTalk can not inflict any more damage, as there's no physical line there at all. It's all Virtual now!

However, if I had been so foolish as to have allowed myself to be duped into letting a non-BT company have the phone line, I would have been stuffed. Don't let this happen to you! Stick with BT!