Tesco cuts cost of unlimited broadband to £2 a month


Updated on 16 May 2013 | 7 Comments

Unlimited broadband now costs less than a box of eggs a month with Tesco.

Tesco has cut the cost of its unlimited broadband package to just £2 a month.

The new low price runs for the first 12 months, rising to £6 a month after. You will also need to pay £14.90 per month for line rental.

If you don’t want to sign up for the full year, there is a 30-day rolling contract available, though this will incur a £40 set-up cost. There are no set-up costs if you go for a year’s contract.

The deal isn’t on a broadband-only package though – it includes your home phone. The Tesco package offers free evening and weekend calls, while you get to earn Clubcard points on your bill.

The Tesco offer runs until 30th June.

How Tesco compares

Let’s take a look and see how this deal compares with other broadband and home phone packages

Package

Usage limit

Speed

Call package

Up-front cost

Monthly cost

Total first-year cost

Plusnet Essentials + Weekend

10GB

Up to 16Mb

Free weekend calls

£5.99

£2.99 for first nine months, £5.99 thereafter, plus £14.50 line rental

£199.87 (thanks to £25 cashback if you go through broadbandchoices.co.uk before 29th May)

Tesco Broadband and Homephone

Unlimited

Up to 14Mb

Free evening and weekend calls

None

£2 for first 12 months plus £14.90 line rental

£202.80

EE Broadband & off-peak calls (mobile customers only)

Unlimited

Up to 14Mb

Free evening and weekend calls

£6

£5 per month plus £14 line rental

£204 (thanks to £30 credit if you go through broadbandchoices.co.uk before 31st May)

Primus Saver Broadband + Phone

Unlimited

Up to 14Mb

Free evening and weekend calls

None

£2 per month for first six months, £4 thereafter plus £14.90 line rental

£204.80 (thanks to £10 credit if you go through broadbandchoices.co.uk before 31st May)

TalkTalk Unlimited Broadband & Phone Essential

Unlimited

Up to 14Mb

Free evening and weekend calls

None

£3.25 for first 12 months plus £14.95 line rental

£218.40

Sky Broadband + Talk weekends (existing Sky TV customers)

Truly Unlimited

Up to 14Mb

Free weekend calls

£2.18

Free for first six months, £7.50 per month after that plus line rental of £14.50

£221.18 (you also get £25 M&S voucher if you go through broadbandchoices.co.uk before 16th May)

Plusnet Unlimited + Weekend

Truly unlimited

Up to 16Mb

Free weekend calls

£5.99

£4.99 per month for the first nine months, £9.99 thereafter plus £14.50 line rental

£229.87 (thanks to £25 cashback if you go through broadbandchoices.co.uk before 29th May)

Sky Broadband Unlimited + Talk Weekends

Truly unlimited

Up to 14Mb

Free weekend calls

None

£5 per month for first 12 months plus £14/50 line rental

£234 (plus £25 M&S voucher if you go through broadbandchoices.co.uk before 16th May)

As you can see, the Tesco deal can be beaten by Plusnet’s Essentials + Weekend package, though you will be limiting yourself to no more than 10GB of usage and paying for calls in the evening.

If you need more data and want to make evening calls then Tesco becomes the best deal to go for.

Unlimited vs truly unlimited

[SPOTLIGHT]As you can see from the table, offering ‘unlimited’ broadband is no longer enough – now some suppliers have upped the ante with the promise of ‘truly unlimited’ broadband.

When a broadband provider uses the word unlimited, it’s not exactly telling the truth. Generally you are actually subject to a fair usage policy. In the words of Tesco, this policy is “in place to prevent abuse and reduce the impact of these heavy internet users on others customers”. So there’s a limit to your unlimited package.

Exactly how limited your unlimited package really is depends on your provider. With Tesco it’s currently set at 100GB per month, a level which it claims will not affect at least 95% of its customers.

It’s a similar story with Primus, which says only users downloading data well in excess of 100GB per month will be hit by the fair usage policy. It suggests that less than 0.5% of customers are affected and point out that such data is the equivalent of downloading more than ten movies a week.

But now Plusnet and Sky claim to offer ‘truly unlimited’ broadband. This means that there is no small print to look out for – you really can download as much as you want. BT also offers some truly unlimited packages, though they aren’t competitive enough to make our table of best buys.

Compare the latest broadband deals at broadbandchoices.co.uk

More on broadband

The best broadband freebies and incentives

The UK's worst broadband provider

The best broadband dongle

The cost of not switching broadband

Comments


View Comments

Share the love