ntl triple package, too good to be true?

[dave m]

Here in the UK I currently pay ntl £15 a month for a digital television service, a phone line and unmetered "free" internet access (although you can only stay on for 2 hrs at a time, it costs nothing to reconnect). We pay another £5 pounds a month for a second phone line which we only use for our free modem traffic. Due to restructuring the total cost of basic + 2nd line will go up to ~£24-50 a month from May. Or I can change to a so called triple package with both lines included for £20-99. The interesting thing is the 2nd version of the triple package at the same price of £20-99. For this money I can have the digital TV service, the two phone lines or a phone line and a cable modem connection (cable modem not included). Am I dreaming, or am I missing something? It looks like I can trade in a phone line we only use for modem traffic for a cable modem connection.

Dave

[az]

Erm.. I hate to sound stupid (but I do all the time ), but what do you mean by "20-99" pounds (don't know where the pund sign is on my keaboard, and don't know the HTML entity for it)? 20 pounds 99 cents or 20 to 99 pounds - and if you mean the latter, could you elaborate on that?

AZ

[dave m]

Sorry Az, 20 pounds and 99 pence (cents would the same, 0.99 of a pound). A bargain it would seem, but when I rang up to find out, I found otherwise. Enough to close this thread and start again above.

[az]

K

One question though: Is 20-99 the "standard" to say 20 pounds 99 pence or are you the only one who does it?

AZ

[dave m]

I believe so, that's the way everyone I know does it... you're not planning on getting into forging foreign currency as well as new Matrox card banners are you?

[az]

ROFL No, I'm not (And if I was, do you think I'd make 20-99 coins? )

I was just curious, those are things you don't learn at school

AZ

[dave m]

Az, you were right, I am the only one that does it, everywhere I look I see £4.99, £20.99 etc. I have seen the error of my ways
Dave

[Paddy]

Dave, I am on ntl at Leicester.
I pay ~£30 a month for two lines (one of which is permenantly connected to the internet thanks to Win2K's 'redial if line is dropped' feature) and I get the basic cable TV package + sky1....

I am thinking about going digital (just for the modem )....what is this package?

Paddy

[dave m]

Paddy, For £20.99 you get the:

"triple digital base pack

telephone
ntl offers free local talktime* between local ntl telephone customers in the evenings and weekends. After paying a 4.9p connection charge, you can talk free to other ntl telephone customers in your local call area for as long as you like.

Local and national calls cost 3p a minute in the daytime, 2p a minute in the evening and just 1p a minute at weekends, so national calls are charged at local rates, whatever time in the day you call. There is a 4.9p connection charge for all calls. You could also get lower cost international calls through our international call plan for just £2 per month.

free cable channels
With the digitalplus base pack you will receive BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV,
Channel 4 and Channel 5 in addition to a variety of cable channels. To view the cable channels available within the digitalplus base pack click here. Paddy, see below

N.B. Channels are subject to regional availability.

unmetered internet access
ntl is the first major company to offer its customers round the clock, subscription free, unmetered, internet access. This award winning ntlworld dial-up service is available as part of the triple digital base £20.99 offer which includes either two phone lines or one line and a 64kbps broadband internet service together with free cable channels and our great value telephone service."
Paddy,
Note the 64kps "broadband" cable modem. The channels you get are BBC 1,2,ITV,4,5
BBC choice,knowledge,news24,and parliament, ITV2,eurosport,ITN news,QVC,The studio,a guest channel,a local channel and Front Row.
If you want anything like sky one you can buy additional channel packs of half a dozen or so at £5 a go but as they determine what channel is in what pack they probably put all the channels I want in different packs
So don't confuse this with their full true broadband package like I nearly did.

Dave

[Ant]

I've a CM package with NTL, the full blown 512KB jobbie. I pay £24.99 a month and that includes £5 rental for the cable modem. You can buy the CM yourself for around £140 and then pay £20 a month.