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Carphone Warehouse takes wraps off 'free' broadband

Jo Best silicon.com

Published: 11 Apr 2006 18:10 BST

Carphone Warehouse has put an end to speculation on its free broadband product by revealing what it calls "free broadband forever".

For £9.99 a month and an additional £11 line rental, Carphone customers will get free local and national calls within the UK; free landline calls to 28 foreign countries including Australia and the US; as well as up to 8Mbps broadband.

Those signing up to the package will also need to pay a one-off connection charge of £29.99.

Rumours about the promised 'free' service had raised expectations that it would be priced at £4.99 a month initially, rising to £14.99 a month after three months.

The new Carphone offering comes in at roughly the same price as other dual-play services, such as Bulldog's which offers 8Mbps broadband and landline for £20.25, although calls are not free.

According to Ian Fogg, analyst at JupiterResearch, 'free' broadband as part of service bundles could mark the start of a change in the UK broadband market.

"Once one ISP starts to lower prices, it puts tremendous pressure on the others," Fogg said. "For ISPs that just offer broadband, it will become harder to compete with those that can do cross-subsidies."

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5 comments

This may be good for straightforward consumer stuf... Richard Pettigrew
Carphone Warehouse Anonymous
Free broadband?????????????? Great I think. I put... Sholto
Anonymous, I signed up with talk talk internationa... Anonymous
The service is cheap and its cheap for a reason. U... Mark

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Could it be that ISP’s are making this out to be a bigger problem than it actually is? We’re a small country with an internet penetration of less than 60%, for every Youtuber there’s someone who only uses the internet to check their emails, more people surf on their mobile handsets than a few years ago. Surely things should even themselves up.