Best way to stay on line for work and home use

[Bob G]

I'm hoping that the bright young people on this forum can help me.

I've been paying a lot (£52/month) for a BT landline (used for incoming calls only), internet connection (~18 - 36 Mbps), and (until last October, BT Cloud (now a withdrawn service).
My mobile provider is Vodafone as it is the best (only) one with a reasonable (very poor) signal in the village.

Now that BT cloud has gone, I would like to do a rethink on how to get better value. I don't stream movies on my phone. I don't do social media other than this forum and LinkedIn for work. I use the internet for business, and I use a combination of cloud storage and removable hard drives for back up of files. The fastest internet connection we can get in the village is supposedly 56Mbps, but the network rarely delivers more than half of that.

I want to retain our BT internet email addresses, as everyone we know knows these. Similarly I want to retain my Vodafone number (which was originally an EE number before I changed providers) if I change to eg Lebara.

I want a new cloud reliable storage provider too.

When I last told Vodafone I was considering changing to Lebara (which uses the same network as Vodafone, so it would work in the village), Vodafone told me I couldn't keep the number, because it was a different service provider using the same Vodafone network. They said I could only keep it if I went to e.g. O2 which had a different network. I'm sure this was a lie to keep me with Vodafone.

I find UK services appalling. I can be on a yacht in the middle of the Caribbean, or anywhere in the Mediterranean, and be totally assured of a strong 4G signal. At home, I don't get any signal indoors (I have to use wifi calling) and the odd bar outside.

So my shopping list is:

Internet connection
Cloud storage (~2Tb)
Retain email names
Change (?) mobile network provider
Mobile phone is 100% purchased by my business
Retain SIM only mobile number
Not bothered about landline to be honest.

What are your best thoughts/experiences/suggested shopping list?

Bob

[Bealman]

I cannot help at all with this, but I would just like to comment that I had a couple of bad experiences with Vodafone on a trip there two years ago. Good luck!

[Ch4lkst3r]

Bob,

Can't help with everything but you're a bit stuck with BT if you want to keep full access to your email addresses (see https://www.bt.com/help/email/what-happens-to-my-email-address-when-my-bt-broadband-service-st) as you'll have to switch to basic access.  Used to be in IT and always told people not to use ISP emails as they usually don't let you keep them or restrict access if you change provider.  Always better to use gmail, hotmail/outlook etc. as it doesn't matter who your ISP is or like me have a domain and your own email addresses (costs about 4 quid a month for hosting etc.).  In terms of ISP instead of BT then it really depends on who is in your area.  Remember that anyone apart from Virgin uses the BT openreach network so they'll be using the same wires to your house.

If you're looking at cloud storage a question I'd ask is do you use Microsoft products such as Word, Excel etc.  You can get a family Microsoft 365 plan for 79.99 a year that has all those plus 6TB of cloud storage with OneDrive.  There's also business plans if you could charge them to your business - sorry don't know what you do or if it's feasible!

Iain

[Bob G]

If you're looking at cloud storage a question I'd ask is do you use Microsoft products such as Word, Excel etc.  You can get a family Microsoft 365 plan for 79.99 a year that has all those plus 6TB of cloud storage with OneDrive.  There's also business plans if you could charge them to your business - sorry don't know what you do or if it's feasible!

Iain

Hi Iain

It's a one man business. I work from home, in a garden office built in 2018 (before Covid, thankfully).
I use laptops in the office, and on site/on holiday; a Dell XPS PC as a "server" in the house, and each has a separate MS Office Business set of apps. Until now I've steered clear of MS 365. I might have to change that if that's the best way to get cloud storage. More than happy to go teh business route for cloud storage, as even if I retire tomorrow, I have to retain files securely for 5 years for PI purposes.

Bob