How I got O2 The Works broadband free for a year

Two things happened recently: fibre optic broadband (40mbps) became available in Winchester and we came to the end of our 12 month contract with BT for line rental. I looked into BT's Infinity fibre service, but at £18 a month + £10 BT line rental (and it has to be BT line rental) and combined with an 18 month contract, I've decided to wait.

Given that the European Commission has said that BT have to provide the same access for third-parties to their fibre network as they currently do for their copper network, I'm crossing my fingers that within 18 months providers other than BT will be offering fibre. Whether or not 18 months will be enough time for contract terms/prices to become more attractive? I'm not sure, particularly given that BT are being allowed to retain price control.

With that decision taken, I thought I'd have a go at lowering my monthly cost for line rental and broadband. MoneySavingExpert recommend Primus Telecom, but it I'm honest, their 90s website put me right off. Then I remembered that O2 do fixed line rental now, and my experience of their broadband has been positive enough for me to trust them with the line rental.

I phoned up and explained to the advisor that I'd like to add their basic home phone (line rental only) service for £7.50 a month and also asked if I could renew my broadband at the same time (we were 11 months in). I also told her that I had a loyalty discount on the broadband, and that my ideal case was to renew the broadband whilst retaining the discount and also add the line rental. At this point she popped me on hold as she needed to consult retentions to find out how to handle the loyalty discount.

When she came back, she said that if I was prepared to sign up for 12 months of line rental at £7.50 a month, she could give me 12 months of broadband free of charge. I really wasn't expecting this and after a a quick pinch make sure I wasn't dreaming, I agreed. The agent said she'd need to transfer me through to retentions to sort out the broadband first and then she would call be back to finalise the line rental. When I got through to retentions, they explained that I could indeed have 12 months of broadband for free, but that as they no longer offer the same terms as I was on, I'd have to change my package. She went on to tell me that she'd move me onto their highest package "The Works" (netting me a static IP), that my bill will say -£21 a month and that she'd post out a new wireless N router to me immediately.

With that call finished, I waited for the call back from the first agent, which duly arrived and I went through all the contractual terms and acceptance. Once that was completed and the verbal ink was dry, I mentioned to the agent how much better this call had gone than I was expecting. She told me that she didn't even know 12 months free broadband was possible and that I was now paying less than her staff rate for my service!

The switch-over of the line from BT to O2 happened today and I have to say it was seamless, I didn't even notice any downtime. We've had some intermittent issues when there has been heavy rain, but after a visit from the OpenReach engineer who discovered a fault and switched us onto the spare core between our house and the cabinet, it's been rock solid and in fact our speed has increased with a current sync or 9629kbps down and 1265kbps up. Not bad for a total cost of £7.50 a month.

Running Spotify on an O2 Joggler

Back in April I picked up an O2 Joggler on the cheap and after quite a bit of mucking about I'm now running Ubuntu netbook edition on it and using it to feed Spotify into my main amp and speakers. I have tried a few different solutions along the way so I wanted to write this post to summarise what I've found to work best.

You will need:

• an O2 Joggler
• a Spotify Premium subscription
• a USB key (min 4gb)

When considering which USB key to use, it's worth investing in one that has a high transfer rate. I started out with a freebie key and the performance wasn't great. After some reading around I settled on an 8Gb SanDisk Cruzer Extreme which was €18 from eBay. It's a bit of a beast and sticks out quite a bit, but it gives a reasonably zippy performance.

I've also tried a both Spotify under Wine and the Spotify for Linux preview and both Stephen Ford and Jools Willis' Ubuntu images for the Joggler. Spotify for Linux runs significantly better on the Joggler than when under Wine (hence the requirement for a Premium account) and Spotify for Linux behaves much better on Jools Willis' image which is Ubuntu 10.10 based, as opposed to the Stephen Ford 9.10 image which gave me issues with both installation and then playback. The 10.10 images also has a screen calibration utility built in and a much nicer on-screen keyboard.

First, download Jools Willis' Joggler Ubuntu image from exotica.org.uk (I have v1.3). Next unpack the image onto your USB key (Unix users will find instructions on the download page, Windows users should use Win32DiskImager).

Once the image is written, switch your Joggler off and insert the USB key. When you switch the Joggler on, it will automatically boot from the USB key. This process will not make any changes to your Joggler's firmware - if you want to return to the supplied operating system simply switch off, remove the USB key and switch back on.

Once the Joggler has booted up, you should be able to connect it to your network using the onscreen keyboard. Here are the two icons you need:

Once on the network, you should open a terminal window (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and use the on-screen keyboard to type sudo apt-get install openssh-server. When that has completed, you can find out what IP address your Joggler is using by typing ifconfig. Here's a screenshot of mine:

Once you know the IP address, you can connect remotely to the Joggler using SSH (Windows users, get Putty), this is really helpful as it means you can use a real keyboard rather than the on-screen one, which while very functional can be a little slow.

After you've connected using SSH (username & password: joggler) you can go ahead and install Spotify for Linux by typing the following (or cut & pasting, if you're using Putty you can right-click to paste):

sudo su

echo "deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

apt-get update

apt-get install spotify-client-qt spotify-client-gnome-support

apt-get install vino

exit

As well as installing Spotify, the above will also install Vino which allows you to VNC to your Joggler so that you can control it with a keyboard and mouse. To enable VNC, click System -> Preferences -> Remote Desktop:

The most useful thing about being able to VNC to your Joggler is that the maximizing the Spotify for Linux window is really hard with the touch screen, so being able to use a mouse makes all the difference.

I was going to write and complain that the drawback of the Jools Willis image is that it uses btrfs and as such cannot be resized from it's 4gb size. However, I've just checked and version 1.3.1 is now available which comes in both a btrfs and ext4 flavour. I would recommend the ext4 version.

My unbelievable new O2 contract

Following on from my October post about checking my O2 bills, I've just negotiated a new 18 month contract.

I was waiting for O2 to release the Nokia E71 handset, so when my previous contract expired I moved onto Simplicity (600mins, 1000txts, unlimited data - £20p/m) to save a bit of cash before going back on contract when the E71 came out. Now, I think I first asked O2 about the E71 back in August last year, and since then the release date has been moving back by a week or so every time I've called up to check. That's been pretty frustrating, given that the handset has been available on T-Mobile, Three & Vodafone for all that time.

Just before Christmas, O2 did release the E71 - but only to their business customers. When I went through the business sales process, even after applying the maximum available discounts, they couldn't beat the standard T-Mobile price. I called the O2 Select line to ask when they'd be getting the handset on normal tariffs, and they were unable to offer any date at all. I vented my spleen somewhat at this point, and said that I was struggling to find reasons to stay with O2; poor communication, no ability to commit to provide the product I want, poor price flexibility etc, and that I was about ready to leave and go to T-Mobile.

Often the networks call your bluff at this point and give you your PAC code to leave and transfer your number, however thanks to a string of horribly expensive bills incurred whilst travelling on business (and thus paid by my expenses, not me), I seem to have made it into the "retain at all costs" bucket. Even so, I was surprised at the offer of 18 months on the lowest tariff (75mins, 200txts) for £0. Yes, that's right, and 18 month contract for NOTHING.

Of course, I had to push this further so this week I called back and asked them if they could still do the previous offer. Then I asked them if they could add unlimited data to it. The chap let slip at this point that he could ask the system what was possible, so I decided to go all out and give him my require minutes and texts and asked him to get me a suitable contract for free.

I have to say that he rose to the challenge as me offered 18 months of O2 Online 25 (200mins, 400txts - £25 p/m) plus unlimited data bolt-on (£7.50 p/m) plus international traveller service (cheaper roaming £2.99 p/m) for a truly astonishing £0 p/m for the first 15 months, and then £10 p/m for the final 3 months. As I'm a Select customer, I can upgrade after 15 months anyhow, so I'm basically getting my mobile phone service for free until April 2010. Thanks O2!

I don't get a new handset included, but I do still have the option to buy one handset for cost price during my contract, so the plan is that I'll buy the E71 when it finally releases for (hopefully!) around £180. That would make the total damage £11.50 a month for 18 months!

Vigilance and paperwork can be your friends

I'm near the end of my O2 contract and as usual I went through all my bills to see what my usage patterns have been like before starting the negotiation for a new tariff. Whilst totalling up, I noticed some strange discrepancies on my bills, such as my number of texts and minutes availble for the next month varying wildly. After calling the Select customer service team, it turned out that the last time I renegotiated my contract back in November 2007, none of it was applied correctly to my account. The result? Next month O2 will be refunding me £170. Yep, one hundred and seventy pounds.

Getting it sorted out is great, but the fact that it was wrong in the first place is a huge breach of trust. When I asked the agent for compensation, she said that the refund was the compensation. Nice try, but as I quickly pointed out, therefund is simply O2 delivering on their contractual agreement with me, which they've failed to do since last November. The agent wouldn't budge however, so it looks like I'll be writing in.