O2 Home Access Broadband

• Available everywhere in the UK
• Uses BT's wholesale 8Mb broadband
• Unlimited downloads - though a fair use policy applies
• Add O2 home phone with an Anytime or Evening & Weekend call plan
• Free O2 Wireless Box when you sign up online
• No connection fee
• Includes exclusive O2 Broadband extras like 100 free web texts per month
• Free UK based customer service 24/7
• First 3 months for free!

O2 broadband review: Home Access

STOP PRESS 1! O2 Broadband offers a 30 day moneyback guarantee on this package, so you can truly try before you buy.

STOP PRESS 2! Are an O2 mobile phone customer (pay monthly OR payg)? Then you can get this package for £5 less per month.

Live outside of an O2 unbundled broadband area? With Home Access you can still receive O2's excellent broadband services.

Available Nationwide

O2 Broadband is now available nationwide - even in non-O2 Broadband areas - thanks to a hook up with BT.

While you won't benefit from O2 Broadband's superfast speeds (you'll have to live in an O2 Broadband area and opt for the 20Mb O2 Broadband Premium to get that) you will get everything else that makes O2 Broadband quite frankly one of the best - if not the best - broadband providers in the UK.

Unlimited Broadband

What you will get is an up to 8Mb broadband service, courtesy of the BT ADSL network, with unlimited downloads.

However, O2 Broadband does impose a fair use policy. Though our investigations into the fairness of their policy revealed that O2 LLU (i.e. Standard, Premium and Pro) is indeed very fair note that slightly different rules apply to this deal because it's a non-LLU product.

According to the provider most O2 Home Access users, "...use less than 10GB a month. Aim for that and you'll be okay."

Elsewhere O2 suggest that they'd never contact you if you used less than 40GB a month but this is still a little way from completely unlimited and something to watch out for if you are a heavy downloader.

More positively, O2 Broadband has refused to play along with the British Phonographic Industry in fingering users downloading files illegally saying that member privacy is of utmost importance to them.

Whilst we don't condone illegal downloading, we tip our hats to O2 Broadband for sticking to principle whilst most other large broadband providers capitulated.

O2 Home Phone

O2 are now offering home phone deals bundled with their broadband.

These are very well-priced: either £9.50 for Evening & Weekend UK landline calls or £12.50 for Anytime calls to UK landlines and 20 international destinations.

Given that BT line rental sets you back £11.25 and an anytime calls deal from the same place is an extra £4.99 - that's quite a significant saving.

All the extras

What else does O2 Home Broadband Access offer?

O2 Home Broadband Access still comes with all the added extras available on the other O2 Broadband packages, including a free O2 Wireless Box II (essentially a wireless router), McAfee security software free for a year, O2 Broadband's acclaimed email and messaging services (including 100 free web texts per month) and the O2 Contacts feature which allows you to back up your mobile and store all your mobile contacts online - so if you lose your phone, you won't lose all your numbers.

Impressive customer support

Most impressive though, we feel, is O2 Broadband's simply superb customer support.

For a start, it is totally free and operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And where is the support team based? The Punjab? Malaysia? Cape Town? No, right here in good old Blighty. So if you live in Gloucester, you won't have to be told you live in Glow-Kester.

With O2 Broadband's superb reputation, we're absolutely delighted to see that the service is now available countrywide.

Infuriatingly more expensive

While infuriatingly more expensive than the dedicated O2 Broadband packages, O2 Home Broadband Access provides a neat route into a once unavailable service for just about all the UK.

That's made it a popular option for those not lucky enough to be served by an unbundled exchange and we only expect it to get more so.

A little more detail...

Broadband		Special Note...
Package:	Home Access	-
Connection:	ADSLMAX	Telephone line
Max Speed:	Up to 8Mb	Up to 448Kbps upload speed
Usage Limit:	Unlimited	Very relaxed fair use policy applies
Totally Unlimited:	No
Hardware:	O2 Wireless Box II	Built-in firewall
Internet Security:	Included free for 12 months	McAfee Internet Security Suite free for the first year, with 3 licenses (can be installed on up to 3 computers).
Online Gaming:	All major consoles supported

Mobile Phone
Summary:	O2 mobile phone customers save £5 a month
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