Great news for consumers: the broadband market is now so saturated that broadband providers are increasingly competing with rock bottom prices and lots of bells and whistles to get the few remaining customers who are subscribing for the first time or switching. Of these two, switching customers are now the main target, purely because there are many people who can be persuaded to switch providers – given the right deal.
Getting a customer to switch presents a number of hurdles. The customer needs to call their current provider to cancel and to provide them with a PAC code; they need to sort out new billing details and worst of all risk going through a ‘dead’ period when they have no broadband access at all. If Think broadband wants you to switch away from your Tiscali broadband, they need to offer you a pretty good deal.
As small reductions are unlikely to persuade (and margins are already tight for providers), now broadband providers have switched to giving equipment away for free – whether laptops or Xbox consoles or some other nice gadget to have. You should remember however that as attractive as these freebies sound you are likely to pay for it in some way, whether it is by taking out a long contract or by paying a premium monthly fee.
Essentially, switching broadband providers is not likely to be of major benefit. If you are getting great speeds already you might want to remain with your provider, on the other hand if your broadband speeds are really low or not close to the advertised speed, this might be an obvious incentive to switch.
Take any offer you have received and compare the different broadband deals online, and then make an informed decision.