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Dollar store broadband? It has arrived in the United Kingdom with this week’s introduction of bargain broadband access charged at just 99p a week – $1.60US or £4.29 ($6.90) per month for the first six months.
99p Stores and Home Telecom have teamed up to offer unlimited 24Mbps broadband with local UK phone calls charged at 4¢ each and calls to mobile numbers billed at 16¢ apiece. Unlike many other offers, there are no connection charges or setup fees, making it one of the least expensive broadband/telephone deals in the United Kingdom.
After the first six months, the price increases to a still-affordable $13.67 a month.
99p Stores hope its broadband offer will differentiate it from rivals Poundland and Poundworld as the three chains battle for customers in ongoing “pound shop wars.”
Phillip, as much as I admire your diligence and accuracy when it comes to reporting on the broadband and telecom industry in the USA, you have consistently misrepresented the true prices of the British broadband deals you have posted articles on over the last couple of years. The vast majority of broadband users in the UK have to pay a line rental of around £15 per month on top of any fee charged by their ISP, and the deal you talk about in this post is no exception. Therefore, the correct price, per month, for the first six months is… Read more »
The presumption here is that the vast majority of the British public already maintains a landline connection primarily for broadband (DSL and its variants have a much bigger share in Britain where cable broadband is much rarer than in the USA). So for most people, line rental is already a fact of life regardless of their provider, unless they are with Virgin (cable) or get Internet from a wireless provider. I called Home Telecom and got answers for some of your questions. 1) Minimum term commitment for this promotion is six months but there is no fee if you move… Read more »
Thank you for your reply, Phillip, and for investigating the deal further. Yes, the line rental is a fact of life for the vast majority of the British public who are not wired for cable TV (and will likely never be at this stage, since wireless technologies and upgrading the existing land line network to fiber optic will eventually obviate the need for cable anyway). But when you post articles about how cheap the broadband deals are in the UK (which you have done several times), when you neglect to mention the £15-£16 line rental that is required to take… Read more »