What are digital bundle deals

The best way to explain digital bundle deals is to give you an example. Sky have long been offering digital TV, but have more recently added more digital services, namely broadband and home phone services to their offering. BT, Tiscali and Virgin Media also offer similar digital bundle deals on their digital services. Meanwhile, Orange and TalkTalk for example offer broadband and home phone digital bundle deals.

Why should I get a digital bundle deal?

The good part is the cost – you'll find that almost all digital bundle deals include some kind of discount as an incentive to take a digital bundle deal. Sky for example offer a free broadband and home phone service when you subscribe to their digital TV service and Virgin Media offer a free TV service when you subscribe to their broadband service.

Independent research by YouGov on behalf of Simplifydigital undertaken in November 2008 shows that on average, people who buy a bundle of all three services from one provider pay an average of £30 per month for all three services (digital TV, broadband and home phone) which is £360 per year less than people who buy each one separately.

Indeed those households who take the three services from three different providers are paying an average of £72 per month, with the average cost of standalone broadband services being £18 per month and the average cost of standalone home phone services being £21 per month.

There are lots of great bundle deals to choose from, to cater for every household's needs, but the two digital TV, broadband and home phone bundles that really stand out for us are:

• The Sky bundles - Sky TV, Sky Broadband and Sky Talk which start from as little as £28.50 per month (including line rental)
• The Virgin Media equivalent bundles which start from just £25 (including line rental)

In addition to the cost benefit of a bundle deal, digital bundle deals tend to be easy to set up and convenient to have one combined bill for all of your digital services (and one contact number to call if anything goes wrong with your digital services).