Check the Small Print

At first glance, BT’s Broadband Anywhere offering looks an interesting proposition. A combined home broadband and Smartphone proposition, complete with talk time, texts and all-you-can-eat data. There are, however, a couple of problems with the proposition.The first is the way BT has chosen to market it.
“From £23.99 per month, only £5 more than the price of BT Total Broadband Option 3” declares the press release. But when you scroll down and see what the little '1' next to the price relates to, you find that the £23.99 tariff is just a three-month promo. After that, the price bumps up to £29.99. Or in other words, only £11 more than the price of BT Total Broadband Option 3. Doesn’t sound quite as exciting, but with a minimum 18-month contract, it’s a more honest representation of what the service will cost for the vast majority of that contract.
The second relates to the data usage. At 10MB, this is not so much all-you-can-eat as a bit of something to nibble on. According to stats released by Vodafone last week, 10MB equates to 500 Internet pages, or three 3-minute movie trailers from Odeon, with 1MB to spare. For sure, you can use all those wi-fi hotspots, but even so, compared to other networks' offerings – 3, for example, offers 1GB, Vodadone, 500MB – it looks paltry.
So while the idea behind BT Total Broadband looks a sound one, it doesn’t look quite so good on closer inspection. If you’re going to launch such an apparently attractive proposition that tries to be all things to all people, it should be equal or better than the competition in all aspects. From where we’re sitting, this one isn’t.

David Murphy
Editor