Direct Save Telecom Claims “Cheapest Advanced Line Rental” with Broadband

The United Kingdom’s broadband and phone price war appears to be reaching a new level after ISP Direct Save Telecom announced that their £1.95 per month unlimited broadband package, which also comes with free evening and weekend calls, would now be offered alongside the markets “cheapest advanced line-rental” from the equivalent of just £11 a month (pre-paid at £132 per year).

The change has actually been live on DST’s website since late 2014, although this is the first time that the ISP has officially spoken about it and the price is significantly lower than their standard monthly line rental fee of £16.75.

The only downside is that you have to take out a 24 month contract and there’s always a future risk that cutting profit margins to aggressively low levels may result in degraded service or support.

Stavros Tsolakis, CEO of Direct Save Telecom, said:

“Quite simply our £1.95 unlimited broadband deal, with the £11 advanced line-rental, is easily the cheapest deal around at the moment. There are no hidden gimmicks or price jumps, we are not pretending it is free, we are just offering customers the chance to pay a lot less for their broadband.”

Otherwise the package includes “totally unlimited” broadband with speeds of up to 17Mbps (ADSL2+), a free wireless router and UK based customer service. Curiously the press release talks of an initial set-up fee worth £33.90, although their website states this to be £24.95 (incidentally a number of DST’s budget rivals don’t charge for setup).

On top of that there’s a fairly typical £8.95 router delivery charge and apparently customers also get some sort of a Discount Card worth £50, although at the time of writing we couldn’t see this stated on their website. Overall DST is certainly one of the cheapest, at least so far as unlimited broadband bundles go.

UPDATE 1:49pm:

DST states that the setup fee difference is due to the PR including their router delivery charge into the fee.