Help! a few questions about getting broadband.....

[petitmaman]

My dh has a work computer at home with broadband internet using our phone line. I need to get a computer with internet access.
I will prob get a laptop and put it in our spare room which has no phone connection at the moment.
is it possible to put a 2nd broadband connection through our excisting phone line or would we need to get a 2nd line put in?
Seeing as we would have to put in an extra phone socket would it be better just to get wireless broadband? is this quite good nowadays or not as good really? or more expensive?
Any light you could shed would be fantastic. thank you

You can only have one broadband contract per phone line. Normally you'd have a router (something like this) plugged into the phone line and all the computers in the house would connect to that. It has 4 sockets for cables to plug in and an aerial so you can connect to it wirelessly from another room to save running cables.

How well the wireless works depends on how big a house it is and what lies in between to block the signal. Most people get that to work though.

Btw there is the other kind of wireless where you plug a dongle into the back of a laptop and it works anywhere indoors or out like a mobile phone. Unless you're traveling a lot that isn't worth it since you'd be paying for both lots of broadband.

You probably need to find out what broadband DH has now and if his computer plugs into the phone line or into a router first.

Thanks Onagar. Dh does have a router. does that mean that i can run another computer on his broadband at no extra cost?

Bump

"does that mean that i can run another computer on his broadband at no extra cost?"

Yes, broadband is paid for per phone line, not per computer. The only cost might be to make sure you have all the wireless doohickeys that you need (not all routers are wireless, some of them just have lots of sockets that you can plug into).

thank you

If you can find out the name and model number of the router someone here will probably have the same one.