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Homecall Broadband
by: Neil Shevlin
Caudwell Communications, telephony business from the Caudwell
Group and owners of mobile phone company Phones4u announced
in October their new phone line and broadband internet package.
The broadband home service is known as Homecall.
The main advantage of Homecall over other services is that
they can combine all your needs. A single bill every month
includes your phone bill and internet bill. Because of their
ties with Phones4u they often provide mobile phone promotions
and their standard package includes free international and
local calls, and cheap mobile phone calls!
Homecall don't provide their ADSL themselves though,
they do it through Tiscali Broadband. Although they offer
they own services and support, Tiscali have a bad reputation
when it comes to customer experience and also use the unpopular
Datastream method of connection as opposed to IPstream.
With BT being forced to open up their phone lines for other
companies to use directly, many companies have chosen to install
their own equipment at BT telephone exchanges. On IPstream
all customers are channelled down the main 155Mbit line which
feeds directly into a BT controlled network. This means the
ISP's using IPstream have to pay BT, but the service
is much faster. Datastream providers have their own 2Mbit
circuit in each telephone exchange, so you are only sharing
your bandwidth with the other people connected to your local
exchange rather than all the bandwidth over the country. This
means Datastream customers find their internet often running
slower and not providing their full internet bandwidth, sometimes
limited to slower than 56K dialup.
A recent poll by Homecall showed that the number one reason
people surf the internet is to download music. Second was
downloading adult services, third watching music videos, fourth
listening to the radio and fifth was downloading movie trailers.
Online gaming and family file sharing (i.e photographs) were
also in the top ten. A Homecall spokesperson said "Broadband
in the home has really taken off."
Homecall offer no setup costs and all the equipment you need
to get online. Their prices are competitive and there's
no usage cap on your bandwidth, meaning you can download as
much as you want, although with the Datastream problems you
may not be able to download that much anyway. If you go for
Homecall broadband it is so much more beneficial to get a
package deal including phone calls. This will save you some
money on both phone and internet. Homecall undercut all of
BT's phone prices by a couple of pounds a month and
give you more free calls and unlimited internet. Unfortunately
their internet packages are of a slower speed than the main
competition or slightly more expensive. Homecall offer 2Mbps
and 512Kbps broadband access.
Homecall's package is perfect for users who don't
want a download cap and access to high speed unlimited broadband.
Combined with their phone package you can make savings on
your BT contract and get loads of free phone calls all throughout
the day. The only problem is you may end up having your speeds
slashed if too many people in your local area are also on
Homecall.
About The Author
Neil Shevlin is the owner of UK Cheap Broadband which is
a great place to find broadband links, resources and articles.
For more information go to: UK Cheap Broadband www.ukcheapbroadband.
© Copyright 2005
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