We recently put out a press release announcing our pick of the very best digital TV, broadband and home phone deals, just in time for Christmas. Here it is in its full blown glory, with our top tips up front and the tables at the end.  It’s packed full of stuff, so this time round we’ve decided to include the whole press release. 

And remember, we’re here to help. Just give us a call on 0800 988 8148 or head on over to the main Simplifydigital site and see what the best package is for you.

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Make the most of digital TV, broadband and home phone deals this Christmas with Santa’s Little Helper, Simplifydigital

With Christmas just around the corner, time is running out to find the best digital package for your family. There are over 15,000 different digital package deals on the market, catering for every conceivable taste. If you choose wisely, there are some great deals to be had on your digital services this festive season.

However, with last minute preparations, finding a new digital package is probably the last thing on your mind. That’s where Santa’s Little Helper, Simpifydigital, can help. It offers impartial advice via its UK-based experts over the phone (0800 1388 388) or online at http://www.simplifydigital.co.uk to help you find the best deal in minutes. Its specially designed website allows you to define your exact requirements and see the package options, which you can then order online, or let one of its experts place the order for you. It is the only retailer of digital TV, broadband and home phone services in the UK to be accredited by Ofcom as impartial.  The added advantage of Simplifydigital is that it has some exclusive deals and guarantee to be on hand to ensure that the installation goes smoothly.

Here are Simplifydigital’s top Christmas tips for digital TV, broadband and phone:

1.     Save by bundling your services. One of the best ways to take advantage of the great savings to be had is by buying your digital TV, broadband and home phone from one supplier. According to a recent T-poll survey, commissioned by Simplifydigital, an average family can save over £360 per year by bundling all three services.  So before subscribing to digital TV, it’s worth working out what you are paying for broadband and home phone services and whether you are in contract. Then when considering the different digital TV services, check out the deals offered to take all three services.

2.     Make the most of Christmas entertainment with a great movie package. There are many movie premieres such as Transformers, Shrek the Third and Stardust airing over the holidays so it’s a great time to invest in a movie package. Sky in particular has a great entertainment offering. Their movies package gives you more than 850 movies to choose from per month from Hollywood blockbusters to world-cinema gems. This will, however, add around £17 per month to your package but if you sign up before 25^th December, you’ll receive a £50 M&S voucher. If you don’t want to pay monthly for a movie package, both Sky and Virgin Media give you access to a huge range of Box Office movies for around £3.99 per film.

3.     Get cinema quality movies. If you are planning on having a movie-filled Christmas, you may also like to consider High Definition TV. HD TV gives you cinema quality movies in high definition and surround sound. For anyone who is serious about watching HD, Sky offers by far the largest selection of HD channels and programming in the UK, covering the whole spectrum of content – from all the premium sporting action, to a large range of movies and documentaries.  The Sky+HD box also has all the features of a Sky+ box so that you can pause and record live TV. It usually costs a bit extra though, and you’ll need to have an HD-ready set-top box and TV to watch it.

4.     Don’t miss those Christmas classics. If you don’t want to miss any festive TV, then a ‘PVR’ (personal video recorder) can be a great investment. This allows you to pause, record and rewind live TV and you can even record a whole series at the touch of a button. In the spirit of Christmas, there are also some great special offers available during the festive period. Via Simplifydigital, you can get a Sky+ box for £49 with free installation from Sky or a half-price V+ installation for £75 from Virgin Media. The V+ box also gives you access to BBC HD letting you view your favourite BBC programmes this Christmas in HD.

5.     Catch up with your friends and family for free. If you’re away from friends and family this Christmas and want to catch up on the phone, then certain providers will offer free calls to national and international telephone numbers. For example, depending on your package, TalkTalk offers free calls to 36 international destinations, Tiscali offer free calls to 10 international destinations and Sky to 20. Many packages also include free calls to mobile phones in the USA and Canada.

6.     If you’re buying games, make sure you’ve got the right broadband package. Make sure the kids (and adults) aren’t disappointed by ensuring that you’ve got the right broadband package to allow them to get stuck into a whole world of “online play” (multi-player) games. As a general guide, if you’re predicted speed is less than 2mb it is questionable whether you will be able to achieve the desired connection to the game server to play properly. Ideally speeds of 4mb and above will be ideal for online gaming, especially if you’re using one of the newer high powered consoles such as a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360.

Written by Jonathan

We’ve issued a press release today announcing the findings of our most recent piece of research - looking at people’s choice of home phone, broadband and digital TV providers, how long they’ve had them and some of the reasons behind people not benefiting from some of the best deals they could do.

We’re always looking for ways in which we can help people save money, so the reasons why people don’t switch and bundle their services are always really interesting to us. Here’s what we found out: 

> Cash strapped Britons are wasting £900 million by sticking to legacy deals on their digital TV, broadband and home phone services!

> Over half of you (59%) feel under pressure to save money on digital services due to the credit crunch.

> 1 in 3 people have not changed their home phone provider for over 5 years. 

> 1 in 4 of you are still buying all three services separately instead of saving £360 a year by bundling them together! That’s the equivalent of a return flight to New York or £30 a month to put back into the family budget. 

> Over 45% of consumers have not switched their broadband provider in the last 2 years and a third (33%) have not changed their home phone supplier for over five years.

> Nearly two out of three people (59%) feel under pressure to save money on digital services as a result of the credit crunch, and 63% have taken the trouble to research the market within the last 12 months, but only one in five (21%) have actually switched in the last year due to total confusion.

So why are people so confused and seemingly unable to switch and save?  Well just under 50% of people say that the reason that they have not switched is as a result of a combination of confusion as a result of too many conflicting deals available (19%), fear of the sheer time and effort required to switch (14%); and a lack of impartial advice as to where the best deals are to be found (13%).

As Charlie (our CEO) puts it, “This is where Simplifydigital can really help, it is the only company in the UK to be accredited by the regulator Ofcom to provide a completely free and impartial advisory service to help people save money on their digital TV, broadband and home phone services.”  

Enough said. Get in touch on 0800 988 8148 or head on over to the special triple-play section of our site here to find out how to help us help you make that £900 million figure smaller next time. 

PS: The full press release is available over here - we’d be interested to hear what you think of the results and the juicy bits that we’ve highlighted.

Written by Jonathan

Of com has just released its latest report on The International Communications Market 2008 and it’s packed with lots of interesting and (less than interesting) data on global trends in the use of all things digital, including TV, broadband, telephony and radio.

Here’s our take on what’s most interesting in the report, hope it’s useful. 

The digital world is converging fast!

> There are 26 broadband connections per 100 people in the UK, placing us third behind the Netherlands (35%) and Sweden (31%) and penetration is growing at about 5% per year.

> UK surfers are spending nearly 14 hours per week online, second only to US internet users who spend 15 hours online each week and this is growing at an average annual rate of 30% - so by our calculations, if this continues for another ten years web users will be online 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

> More and more people are viewing TV shows over the web and its growing in the UK at a rate of 69% per year. The US lead the world with 26 downloads per head per year, with UK second at 8 downloads per head per year.

> As a result 15% of UK web users claim to watch less broadcast TV as TV viewing retains its basic appeal (thanks to X Factor no doubt).

> Mobile broadband availability (via HSDPA) is highest in the UK covering 87% of households.

> The age of the CD is well and truly coming to an end - digital recorded music sales are growing at 20% per year and mobile music downloads now account for over half of all recorded digital music revenue in France, Italy and 29% in the UK. Whilst in Japan, mobile accounts for a staggering 90%+ of all digital music revenue!

> Use of social networking sites on mobile phones is growing but still very niche, but broadcasting TV on mobiles has had less success with various service closures around the globe over the last 18 months.

The UK is the world capital of digital television!

> The UK leads the way globally with the 86% of main TV sets connected to digital, followed by the US with 70%. Within digital TV, pay-TV thanks to successful marketing by Sky and Virgin Media continues to grow and is now in 47% of UK households.

> High definition (HD) TV remains niche with approximately 1m homes enjoying HD (out of a total of nearly 25m TV homes) in the UK.

> Nearly one third of UK households have a DVR (digital video recorder). This is the highest penetration in the world. This is largely due to the huge appeal and success of Sky+ which is now in over 4 million households.

> TV is still a major national pass time with viewers in the UK watching over 3.5 hours of television a day, 7 days per week! This is less though than the Americans who watch an hour a day more on average.

Telephony use and spend just keeps on growing!

> Telecoms companies keep on getting richer. In the UK alone their revenues continue to grow at 5% per year, driven by increased mobile use and broadband take-up whilst fixed line revenues fall slightly.

> Broadband take up continues apace in the UK, but as penetration increases it is slowing from 20% in 2006 to 14% in 2007.

> Texting keeps charging ahead with volume of texts sent growing by over 35% in the UK alone in 2007.

> The UK lags the world in the provision of state-of-the-art fibre-optic delivery technology. In Japan an amazing 85% of the population have access to a full fibre-to-your-door service, whilst in the UK this is only 1% of the population. This reflects Virgin Media’s approach of running fibre to the street, rather than your door.

Still want more? Then head on over to the BBC, Daily Telegraph or WebUser for further analysis.

Written by Jonathan

Simplifydigital commissioned a YouGov poll earlier this year and found that over one in three adults (39%) are not making the most of the huge money savings that are available if they choose to bundle.  On average £160 could be saved per year from taking the bundling route. Our CEO commented on the findings:

“There are big savings to be had by bundling, but the real trick is choosing the right bundle to match your needs. Until now there has been no place to go for impartial advice as to which one to take, which is exactly what our digital experts specialise in at Simplifydigital. With our help finding the best bundle, we could certainly put money back in people’s pockets.”

For the more savvy 31% who have already opted for the bundle option that includes digital TV, broadband and home phone, over four in five said that the quality of service (87%) and overall costs (82%) had been better or the same from using one service provider.

Worryingly, many people are not doing their research before signing up to digital TV or broadband. Only 24% said they did extensive research before signing up to these services. Ponsonby concluded:

“The falling cost of broadband coupled with ever-increasing competition in the digital TV market means it’s vital that families do their research in order to get the perfect package. The mass of conflicting advertising can make broadband and digital TV seem unnecessarily complicated and confusing, resulting in customers possibly missing out on the ideal service. Our team is able to search through over 530,000 different package options on our database in a matter of minutes, which would take the average person over two years if they took two minutes to review each one.”

The report found 24% of the pay-TV customers surveyed said they were planning on ‘stripping down’ their pay-TV package including sports and movie channels.

According to the research, Freeview has now become a popular choice for cash strapped consumers. The survey found 15% had chosen subscription-free Freeview because of cash concerns. An additional 13% of responders’ said they planned to switch to Freeview within the next year for the same reason.

At Simplifydigital, we know that there are great savings to be made simply by finding the right package for you. We’re already helping confused consumers save money every day. To find out how much you could save, give us a call or use our online digital services comparison tool.  

Written by lee

With more than 530,000 different broadband, digital TV and telephone service package combinations to choose from, shopping for a telecoms bundle can be a time-consuming chore. Simplify Digital claims to help narrow your search with recommendations based on your personal needs. Which? delivers its verdict in this First Look review.

As a Which? subscriber you also have access to;

• 1,000s of product reviews
• 1,200 UK restaurant reviews
• 200 car reviews
• FREE telephone helpline
• 3 years’ worth of magazine archives

Simplify Digital is available online as well as over the phone
Simplify Digital bills itself as a free, impartial digital concierge service. It’s available online, over the phone via a freephone number, or through third-party partners including Sainsbury’s, the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph.
All strands of the service work in the same way: you submit your digital TV, broadband and phone requirements and Simplify Digital recommends packages that match your needs. This differs from rival services such as uSwitch and Money Supermarket, which typically take just a few basic details (such as postcode) and then list the cheapest headline deals from each major supplier. It also goes one step further. If you decide to take up Simplify Digital’s recommendation, the company will also set up and oversee the switching process for you. The service is accredited by telecoms industry regulator Ofcom and holds the Ofcom Price Accreditation Scheme logo. This means the company’s digital TV, broadband and home phone comparison engine has been recognised for providing an unbiased and transparent service.

Will I get a better deal with Simplify digital?
You’ll be asked about your requirements before Simplify Digital makes recommendations
To test it out, we asked five volunteers to try Simplify Digital’s online and phone services.
All found both the website and phone services approachable, convenient and easy to use and the majority were offered a cheaper deal that met their requirements and approval. Our testers preferred the flexibility of the phone service over the website, as it gave them the opportunity to ask questions, discuss their requirements and give more detailed information about what they were looking for. Over the phone, no pressure was felt to take up the recommendation and most were offered a good ‘top match’ recommendation as well as similar alternatives. They also appreciated the chance to get recommendations sent to them for consideration in their own time. Out testers felt he online service, which involves answering a short questionnaire, was a useful guide, but less helpful overall. This is mainly due to the one way nature of the internet and the inevitable constraints of choosing options through rigid search tools. For example, we would have liked a wider choice of TV channel requirements (rather than just premium sport and movies), the ability to search for phone deals that include overseas calls and information about achievable broadband speeds in different areas. Simplify Digital’s website does, however, give you more insightful recommendations than rival sites. In particular, we liked the range of options available for narrowing down the types of TV, broadband and phone package you’re interested in. These options include HD TV, the ability to record and pause TV, a choice of broadband download speeds, the option to search for mobile (as well as conventional) broadband deals and a choice of the times you’d like to have free calls.

Picking your package
Results are displayed clearly on Simplify Digital’s website
Online results are ordered first by the number of requirements met and then price. Package summaries are detailed and clearly presented, and we liked the way not all recommendations are single-provider bundles. For example, a recommendation could be a BT phone line matched with Zen broadband and Freeview TV, saving you time constructing your own bespoke combination. However, prices are ranked primarily by initial discounts rather than the long-term monthly costs, so you’ll need to check the long-term price of each deal. And while it is made clear where you have to pay for a BT phone service on top of the monthly fee, the reported savings don’t take this into account, so could be misleading. The site does not explain the differences between your current deal and the site’s recommendations. It would also be helpful if it explained any differences in the TV packages on offer, and what type and what differences there are in the broadband services (for example, any fair use policy and the fact that cable gets closer to advertised speeds than ADSL). This is of course not so much of a problem using Simplify Digital over the phone, where you more free to ask questions about recommendations.It’s a good idea to write down any questions you have before making the call to ensure you get the most out of the recommendations.

Which? verdict
Simplify Digital is a very helpful tool if you’re confused about digital media options and aren’t sure how to get the best deal to suit your needs.
The website is great for narrowing down your options, but is by no means exhaustive. For a personalised recommendation that’s likely to suit your needs and budget, you’re best off speaking to one of the service’s advisers over the phone. But the Simplify Digital website still compares favourably to other online comparison tools, with much greater flexibility than its rivals.
Our testers felt Simplify Digital felt like a genuine service rather than a sales mechanism, and its flexibility really sets it apart from other comparison tools. It’s a unique service that’s particularly suitable for less tech-savvy consumers looking for a better bundle deal.
Pros: Free to use, personalised recommendations, whole market comparison, available online or over the phone, no pressure selling, accredited by Ofcom
Cons: Website lacks advanced search options, doesn’t always take into account full set-up costs

One point about us that is incorrect so we’d want to point this out:
“However, prices are ranked primarily by initial discounts rather than the long-term monthly costs, so you’ll need to check the long-term price of each deal.”

In fact, our results are currently ordered by the package that meets the highest number of a user’s unique requirements, and then further sorted by monthly cost.  We completely agree that ordering the results by initial discounts does not always provide the customer with the best option over the course of the contract.   Therefore, our results are displayed firstly on a user’s unique requirements, and then ordered by first year cost including line rental and subscription.   Customers will still be able to see monthly, set up and equipment costs separately.

Written by matt

Ofcom has officially announced that Simplifydigital is the first and only digital TV, broadband and home phone retailer to be given its official accreditation of impartiality for its price comparison calculator.

Ofcom has officially announced that Simplifydigital, is the first and only digital TV, broadband and home phone retailer to be given its official accreditation of impartiality for its price comparison calculator.

Simplifydigital’s accreditation is significant given that no other retailers or consumer comparison sites offering these services have been accredited and consumers are crying out for accurate and impartial digital TV, broadband and home phone advice they can trust.

A recent survey* showed that impartiality was the single most important factor of all those considered by customers,when they use a comparison service with over two thirds (69%) of respondents wanting reassurance that the advisor they were speaking to was genuinely impartial.

The Ofcom accreditation of Simplifydigital confirms to consumers that its price comparison calculator is not only impartial, but also, accurate; transparent in showing customers how it makes money; and offers comprehensive choice.

Simplifydigital was launched earlier this year by former Sky Marketing Director Charlie Ponsonby. It offers consumers a free digital advisory service, to cut through the confusion and ensure that they find the best value digital TV, broadband and home phone deals that meet their unique requirements. Simplifydigital’s experts are also on hand to ensure that the services are installed in customers’ homes with minimum of fuss.

The free Simplifydigital service is delivered via their experts over the phone or online at www.simplifydigital.co.uk and uses Simplifydigital’s proprietary comparison technology to match an individual’s unique digital requirements to one of over 15,000 package combinations on their database containing all the UK’s leading digital TV, broadband and home phone service providers.

Charlie Ponsonby, CEO of Simplifydigital commenting on the Ofcom accreditation says:

“Consumers can save an average of £160** per year if they are clever in the choice of their digital TV, broadband and home phone services. But finding the right deal can be a nightmare in a world of complicated technology and confusing offers. Trust, transparency and impartiality are the biggest concerns of consumers. This new accreditation sets the benchmark against which all other companies will be judged and assessed. My hope is that all other companies will go through the same rigorous process that we have. Consumers deserve it!”

Compare broadband, home phone and digital TV

Written by matt