Every month we will research the best broadband deals for you.

In order of cheapest (by first year cost) here are this months top five:

1. Bulldog 8Mb broadband with 1Gb cap - £9.75 per month. Setup £1. First year cost £118. Must pay Bulldog for line rental.
2. Tesco 512k broadband with 1Gb cap - £13.97 per month. Setup Free. First year cost £167.64
3. Toucan 512k Unlimited - £13.00 per month. Setup free. First year cost £167.88. Includes a calling package.
4. Telewest 2Mb Unlimited - £14.99 per month. Setup free. First year cost £169.88. Must live in a Telewest area.
5. UK Online 1Mb Unlimited - £9.99 per month. Setup £54.99 (modem cost £29.99. activation charge £25). First year cost £174.89. Must live in a UK Online LLU area.

At long last Virgin has accepted an offer of £962 million from NTL for Virgin Mobile. This will create the UK’s first “quad play” provider offering home phone, digital TV, broadband and mobile products and is part of NTL’s vision of become a massive force in the telecommunications market. NTL recently merged with fellow cable provider Telewest. NTL will rebrand as Virgin, but only if Richard Branson is happy with improvements to NTL’s rather dodgy customer services. Virgin has a good name in terms of customer services and its focus is on keeping its customers happy. That attitude is likely to be forced on NTL in an attempt to bring NTL out of customer service hell. This is great news for existing NTL customers.

More info:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4874694.stm

At long last, the marriage we have all been waiting for. Well, not quite, but there are reports that ntl and Virgin are about to announce a deal. The Register is reporting that ntl has offered £900 million for Virgin Mobile after Virgin turned an earlier offer of £817 million.

What does this mean for you? It will allow ntl to be the first company in the UK to offer “quad play”. Quad play is a bundle of digital television, home phone, broadband and mobile products. You can receive one bill and have only one company to deal with for all four products. As with other bundles, ntl are likely to offer the bundled products at a lower cost than if you took all four separately.

Bundling is a win-win situation for both provider and customer. It gives the provider the chance to earn extra revenue from one customer and it gives the customer a discount from individual products. Telewest and ntl already offer “triple play” bundles, which is digital television, home phone and broadband. Companies such as Toucan and TalkTalk offer home phone, broadband and mobile bundles.

Our advise to any customer is to look at their needs and investigate the bundle options as well as individual options. It is still often cheaper to take the lowest cost products from individual providers than it is to take a bundle.

Yet more rumours emerged today from the upcoming Carphone Warehouse announcment. The Independent is suggesting that Carphone Warehouse will offer a broadband package for £4.99 per month with the first three months for free through its TalkTalk brand. The only condition is that you have to pay your line rental to TalkTalk. But that isn’t much of a condition. TalkTalk offers line rental for the same price as BT and its calls are amongst the cheapest in the market. This is truly a stellar deal. £4.99 per month is half the price of the current best offer in the market, which is 1Mb unlimited broadband from UK Online for £9.99 per month.

A word of warning though: This has yet to announced by Carphone, so we should not count our chickens before they hatch. And we have no idea what kind of broadband product it will be. There maybe a very low usage cap. This would mean that even though the monthly cost is low, you may not be able to do much online before you reach a limit.

Article from The Independent:
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article354944.ece

TalkTalk (part of Carphone Warehouse) have been rumored to take the UK telecoms market by storm later this month. Carphone Warehouse recently acquired Onetel and Tele2 to bolster its customer numbers and put itself in pole position to be the biggest competitor to BT.

But that is not enough for the aggressively minded folk at Carphone Warehouse HQ. While they have done well in the home phone (landline) market with 2.5 million customers, they are well off the boil in the broadband market. They have simply failed to attract a significant number of broadband customers.

So how are they going to make inroads in the ultra competitive broadband market? By doing what no one else would dare to do and offer it for free! Rumours are spreading about the offer to end all offers and to be fair, noone really knows what they are going to do. One option appears to be to offer a home phone/broadband bundle that includes line rental, all inclusive phone calls (to UK landlines) and broadband for less than £25 per month. BT’s Together Option 3 plan offers line rental and all inclusive calls for £25.50 EXCLUDING broadband. So TalkTalk would effectively be offering broadband for free. This would beat any other product out there. Even if you purchased the cheapest broadband, line rental and call package from individual providers, you still would not come close to this offer.

There are other options available, such as offering a free talk package to someone who takes broadband or simply cut priced standalone broadband.

What ever the finer details are, it is likely to be a ground breaking offer. Watch this space!

More info:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,20411-2111851,00.html