Orange, OneTel (BT line), Sky customer

[#1]

Hi there.
A friend of mine is looking to move phone and broadband supplier.  At the moment, she's with Orange (Wanadoo) for ADSL, OneTel (about to be TalkTalk) for phone (on a BT line), and Sky for TV.
I am recommending PlusNet, and she's read good things about plusnet herself.  However I am only with plusnet for broadband and am not with plusnet for phone, and so am not with their LLU service.  Is PlusNet's phone service and LLU service any good?
Virgin Media tell her that she isn't in a cabled area.  Virgin were the only other people she had heard good things about.  Am I right in thinking that their ADSL provision isn't nearly as good as their cable-broadband provision?  What are the downsides of going with Virgin for ADSL broadband and phone?
She currently gets around 2.2Mbps (and is disappointed that this isn't nearer the "up to 8Mbps" advertised).  I said I thought this wouldn't improve, whoever she went with - am I right?
The ADSL modem she has got is a USB one which she bought from Wanadoo 3 years ago.  I said I thought this should work with PlusNet, but that she might consider getting a new one, and one that is a router and not USB because USB modems lead to slower and less reliable connections.  Am I right?  (She isn't interested in wireless.)
Is there anything I haven't asked her, or anything I haven't told her, that might help her make the decision?  I'm not into doing a sales job on people I refer - I want to help them to make the best decision for them.  So I've already advised her to look on adslguide as-was.
Thanks.
Yours,
Martin

[#2]

If your friend is subscribing to Sky and intends to continue, then it would seem logical to have their broadband as it will be 'free', albeit with a 12 month tie-in.  I have set up my friend's computer on this and have had no problems.  She is an undemanding user - surfing and e-mails only and the connection has been fine.
She doesn't use them for telephone calls and pays BT for line rental/calls but there is the facility for telephone calls via Sky if required.
With regard to the Homephone, I can only say that I have used F9 Anytime since December of last year and luckily have had no problems.  However, there are restrictions of 1000 minutes per month for this package.  The Homephone basic is good value at £11 rental including evening and weekend calls.

[#3]

Quote from: snozboz

Is PlusNet's phone service and LLU service any good?

PlusNet's phone service isn't LLU (and they're not putting people onto the broadband LLU platform any more either).  The phone is based on WLR (wholesale line rental) whereby you pay PlusNet for the line rental and they pay BT - it means that you no longer get a BT bill.

[#4]

Hi there,
Our services are no longer supplied using LLU and our phone service is the Wholesale Line Rental service provided by BT Wholesale, as the previous posters advised.
This means if anything goes wrong in terms of a fault your friend would get the same Openreach engineers she would get if the problem occured with BT Retail.
The service itself is pretty good (I would say that wouldn't I? :)) and quite competitive IMO, considering line rental is included (this is not the case with some of the other offers around at the moment).
Is the 2.2MB the sync speed? Are you sure she is on Max?
The hardware should work just fine, although you can pick up some routers very cheaply online these days which would be a good improvement for a relatively small fee.
With the 90 day guarantee we're running at the moment there's nothing to lose.