6 Months Contract...

[Polignac]

Hey guys, this is my first post here and i have a sort of urgent question so i will just ask it here. I am currenly in NZ but will be moving to Birmingham in first week of June for six months.

I understand that the place i will be staying has no landline but is capable of connecting to one. The postcode of the place is B1 1PW. As i am very new here, can you guys please advise which internet provider to go for, cause i will only be in UK for 6 months.

My usage pattern is about 5gb per month, not much downloading anyways. Also, how long does it take normally for a home place with no landlines to get connected to internet? Thanks and i look forward to your suggestions

[Admin]

Hi There,

For fixed line broadband you will need a BT telephone line in that postcode area, this will cost you up to £125 to setup, and then around £11 per month for rental of the line.

At the postcode you mention the maximum speed is estimated at about 6.5Mbps.

You will want a provider who offers short minimum term contracts, We'd suggest you look at:

Plusnet
Eclipse
AOL

All these providers offer some deals that have 1 month rolling contracts and are available in your postcode area.

Your other option is to go with a mobile broadband supplier. I think the most suitable would be 3 Mobile Broadband who you can buy a pay as you go dongle from for £49.99 and then you can purchase top up's which start at £10 for 1GB usage over a month, up to £25 for 7GB over one month.

Mobile broadband you can get up and running straight away when you get the dongle, with fixed line it would take up to around a week to get your BT line sorted then up to 2 weeks to get a broadband supply arranged.

I hope this give you some ideas.. any questions just ask!
Thanks
Admin

[Polignac]

Thanks for the quick and detailed info. Seems as though the landline option is a no go, as it takes too much time, and pretty much need to get locked into 12 month connection with BT. I have two notebook computers, one is mac and the other is a windows pc, does this mean i have to get two separate connections? That would make sense because the data allowance doesnt seem to be too much.

I'm just wondering hows the connection speed using this type of mobile broadband?

[Admin]

Well the speeds are in general a little lower than fixed line, for example 3 Mobile's top speed is curently 2.8Mbps, and it's a little more lag than fixed line, but if you aren't gaming thats less of a problem.

The dongles as they come are designed to plug into one computer, there are however some routers coming out now that you can plug the dongle (or just the sim out of the dongle) into to allow sharing of a mobile broadband connection, but we have yet to test any out.

With 3 mobile I believe that if you use up your data allowance before one month is up then you can just buy another top up, so if you are using 10Gb a month then you'd need to buy 1 £25 top up approx every 20 days.

[Polignac]

Although im not really keen on the ****py allowance for the price, i think that might be the best way to go for me in this case then. Thanks for your help