By Alex Lane on Mon, 5th March 2012
The good
- 12-month broadband contracts
- No connection fees
- Contract-free line rental
- Free international calls
The bad
- Only up to 8Mbps broadband
- No Anytime calls option
- Only 100MB email storage
The Post Office? You know, that little red shop that used to be in the heart of every community? They do broadband and phone services now.
It’s very much an entry-level service for light internet users - there’s an unlimited downloads option but the top speed is 8Mbps, which is slow by today’s standards.
Both Post Office broadband packages are on 12-month contracts and come with basic email protection, anti-spam and anti-virus software, five free email addresses with a 20MB storage limit on each account, 50MB of web space, and a free modem or router.
Line rental is available with or without broadband, and there’s no minimum contract if you just go for the phone service.
It includes calls to UK mobiles and 40 international countries at the weekend as well as inclusive evening and weekend calls to UK landlines.
Our rating: 
2
User rating: 
2
The Post Office has two broadband options: up to 5GB of downloads per month, or unlimited downloads.
They’re both on 12-month contracts and come with basic email protection, anti-spam and anti-virus software, five free email addresses with a 20MB storage limit on each account, 50MB of web space, and a free modem or router.
The bad news is that they’re both up-to-8Mbps ADSL services, which looks like a pretty slow oldservice by today’s standards, since in reality it will average at about half that speed downstream and 500kbps or less upstream.
Standard Broadband with a 5GB allowance costs £16.30/month, and comes with a modem with a single Ethernet port. Extra Broadband has unlimited download, comes with a four-port wireless router, and costs £21.40/month.
The Post Office offers free weekend and evening calls to UK landlines, either with line rental or bundled with its broadband packages.
Line rental costs £12.25/month, Standard Broadband with phone is £21.40/month and Extra Broadband with phone is £26.05/month. Inclusive calls also cover weekend calls to all UK, USA and Canadian mobile networks
Line rental is a rolling one-month contract, broadband bundles are 12-month contracts and inclusive calls last for 60 minutes each. UK landlines includes area codes beginning 01, 02 or 03 and calls to 0845 and 0870 numbers. Inclusive weekend calls also include calls to landlines in the top 40 international destinations and all UK mobile networks: destinations are Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Canary Islands, China, Cyprus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea Republic (South), Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Norway, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, USA.
A call connection charge of 9.6p per call will be applied to all chargeable calls outside the free plan, at 5.36p/min to 01, 02 or 03 numbers, and 5.11p/min to UK mobiles and the top 40 international destinations. 0845 evening calls will be charged at 1.02p/min, and weekend calls at 0.51p/min. 0870 evening calls will be charged at 3.57p/min, and weekend calls at 1.53p/min.
If you need a new phone line or activate an old one, the standard cost is £112.34.
