Getting connected - Phone & Sky

Well we've made some progress on the technology front.

Since Helen arrived in the UK, she's been using a Vodafone wireless internet connection, which runs on a USB device, this was the easy way to get up and running. This has been very impractical since I arrived, because we've been sharing the internet. Also the coverage isn't the best at home, so the speed is very slow and it drops often. This has made life rather difficult.

We've now ordered a BT phone line, from 22nd October we can make local calls using that for much cheaper than using our prepay cellphones (again, the only option on first arrival). Unfortunately BT will charge us £125 to connect the phone line. While we are still living on New Zealand dollars that hurts!

To get broadband, the best deal overall was to have Sky installed. It will cost us £49 for the installation, but for that we get Sky+ (same as MySky back in New Zealand)and a whopping 8MB connection with a 40GB cap. Modest by UK standards, but huge by New Zealand standards. The sky and broadband combined will cost us £22 a month and the BT phone line is another £10 a month.

So we're getting probably more service than we were in New Zealand, for approximately the same money.

We would have loved to install Sky+HD (same as MySky HD back in New Zealand), the install cost is currently only £75 but it would cost an extra £10 per month although there are lots of HD channels to watch. Unfortunately because we don't yet have jobs, and don't yet have a TV, that is hard to justify right now. I would have loved to have gone with that but it just isn't viable.

Interestingly full Sky HD services here including all channels requires two satellite dishes installed. That must be a result of the amount of bandwidth required.

The funniest thing is, we don't have a TV yet so we have MySky+ but no television. We really just have to get it installed as a package now to get the broadband which for us is a necessity. Not only would we incur the cost of a TV, but we will have to pay a TV licence which we're just not ready for yet.

So watch this space!