Customer support is crap but the service is pretty good (and you get access to some of the binary newsgroups).
Bought a second hand Sky dish + box + expired card off eBay, fitted it myself, gets us the free to view channels. Also still get some channels on the ntl digital stb that they never collected when we cancelled the TV subscription!
Our phone service is through Vonage for £7.99 a month (all geographic calls free) and a couple of contract mobiles.