Free broadband for a year with Tesco Broadband

Rebecca Rutt
by Lovemoney Staff Rebecca Rutt on 01 August 2012  |  Comments 9 comments

Tesco's broadband and phone deal now includes a £30 voucher, meaning you effectively don't pay anything for the first year! But how does it measure up against the rest of the market?

Free broadband for a year with Tesco Broadband

Back in February Tesco launched its £2.50 a month broadband deal and now to sweeten the offer you can also get a £30 voucher if you sign up.

This means effectively your contract is free for the first year (excluding line rental). And as it includes unlimited internet use and free evening and weekend calls, it’s a very impressive deal.

What’s included

The basic contract includes unlimited internet, so it’s perfect for someone who downloads a lot, free evening and weekend calls (including 0845/0870 numbers), free connection and a router.

If you sign up before 30th August you’ll also get a  £30 Tesco voucher to spend in store or online, thanks to the exclusive deal from Broadband Choices. To get this deal you need to quote the code ‘GIFTCARD-A’ at the checkout.

The catch

As with most phone and broadband packages, you also need to factor in the monthly line rental costs of £13.75 a month which brings the monthly total to £16.75.

It’s a 12-month contract and after this period the monthly payment goes up to £6.50, so including line rental you'll be shelling out £20,75. But at this point you could always switch to a cheaper deal.

What’s the best alternative?

The main competitors in the broadband market are in fierce competition at the moment to try and lure in new customers, which is good news for us as they’re throwing in a lot of extras with their deals.

BT is offering a £25 Sainsbury’s voucher to customers signing up to its Infinity Superfast Broadband deal, while with Sky there’s a £25 Marks and Spencer voucher up for grabs.

Tesco is the cheapest deal when looking at overall costs, but if you want a faster broadband speed, BT, Plusnet and Virgin all offer higher speeds - for a cost.

However, the best thing about the Tesco deal is that behind the sweeteners it is actually a really competitive offer. Here I’ve picked out five of the cheapest deals.

Top five cheapest phone and broadband deals

Provider

Speed (up to)

Usage limits

Calls package

Monthly cost

Total first year costs (including line rental)

Offers

Tesco

14Mb

Unlimited

Free evening and weekend

£2.50

£195

£30 Tesco gift card (exclusively through BroadbandChoices) before 20th August

Plusnet

16Mb

10Gb

Free weekend calls

£6.49

£219.25

Half price for the first six months until 28th August (online exclusive)

Talk Talk

14Mb

Unlimited

Free evening and weekend

£6.50

£232.50

Half price for the first six months, £25 Love2Shop voucher until 9th August

BT

16Mb

10Gb

Free evening and weekend

£13

£260.15

Free for the first six months, £25 gift card until 4th October

Virgin

30Mb

Unlimited

Free weekend calls

£14.50

£267.30

£4.50 for the first six months and free installation until 30th August

More on broadband:

Compare broadband deals in your area at BroadbandChoices

Cheapest ways to use mobile broadband abroad

Broadband speeds: broadband providers are lying to us

BT launches phone and broadband deal for £3.50 a month

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Comments (9)

  • nosbort
    Love rating 125
    nosbort said

    @ TheWildshot, sorry for the shadenfreude but I can remember when KC customers used to tell we mere mortals, who were suffering from BT's lack of infrastructure investment, how great it was to have such a forward-looking and tech savvy company providing their wonderful phone service. Well, ya-boo sucks to you lot ;)

    Report on 10 August 2012  |  Love thisLove  0 loves
  • CuNNaXXa
    Love rating 362
    CuNNaXXa said

    It annoys me that these broadband services are compared at cost level, yet there is never an actual performance comparison.

    To quote a local example, TalkTalk is far cheaper than BT in our area, so you could save a shed load of cash over the year, but contention and bandwidth can make all the difference. In our area, BT is about four times quicker, and disconnections because of contention is few and far between, while those on TalkTalk complain about very slow speeds, and continual disconnection.

    You pay for what you get. If it is cheaper, it is probably due to a lower quality of service.

    What I would like to see with any review of a service such as this is price comparison to service level, showing actual data to demonstrate how reliable or unreliable a service is. After all, it may be cheaper, but if it is unusable, then the little it costs is probably a waste of cash.

    Report on 10 August 2012  |  Love thisLove  1 love

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