Last week in Cornwall visiting the relatives we were looking at them all sharing FTTC Broadband (converted farm buildings). The biggest issue was could they live without a landline each? Not a daft question as mobile signals are bad anyway and most of the buildings are in a bowl below the treeline. The one who has FTTC says his O2 wifi calling works a treat so tried my Three app. Worked perfectly even over the appalling ADSL at Aunties, so much so I am using it at home now so I don’t miss calls in the workshop.
Only O2 or Three let you use any old Android (4+) phone, EE and Vodaphone are limited models only (mostly new high end ones where it’s built in). I don’t think any of the MVNs have wifi calling. With the Three app you decide which SSIDs to associate it with, no idea about O2.
So some back of fag packet calculations later, even taking into account getting O2 sims with enough minutes to cover their existing landline usage and buying the WiFi kit, it costs in within a year (free labour from me of course, well beer and food costs). So they are all having a think.
That prompted me to look at how much I’m paying Sky – £91! That’s for basic TV, BB, line rental and 24 x 7 calls. Yikes!
No sport or movies in that cost. We worked out most of what we watch is on Freesat so paying £44 for Sky Atlantic (WestWorld and GoT) plus the odd bit of Discovery / Nat Geo was stupid. Now TV at £7 a month could cover some of the gap as and when. £47 for 40mbps FTTC, line rental and calls. TalkTalk will do that for £32 fixed for 24 months and no setup fee.
A quick phone call to Sky and we’re off to TalkTalk, but staying with Sky for TV @ £14 for 18 months (all the channels numerically up to the Movies). That’s slightly cheaper than buying a new Humax recorder for Freesat and the Now TV subs as and when. It’s amazing what discounts they can find when pushed and the renewal date is in the outlook calendar already.
So £91 to £46 with only the loss of a few channels we hardly watch (well it’s going to be £51 as I treated myself to 80mbps :good: )
Hardware wise the Sky box stays where it is, nothing new to learn there. As the WiFi is independent all I have to deal with is IP address changes in the workshop for servers etc.
EDIT – forgot to mention the TT subs comes with a free sim with 200 mins, 5000 txts and 500mb data! Might be handy when one of the Tesco contracts needs renewing.
