line rental/query

Steve_xx

To answer the original poster. Yes you can have a different ISP to the one/s you decide to use for telephone calls. See the detail following:

Line and Calls companies do not have to let you make calls through other companies although they may choose to do so. If you want to make calls using other phone companies, you should check with your new provider that they will let you do this. You can still use other companies for ‘dial-up’ internet access. You should check with your internet service provider to see if you need to make any modifications to your internet settings, including possible changes to your payment with your ISP.

djohn2002uk

paul_h wrote:

I know what you're saying, but the guarantee of service is the same.

At the end of the day, you are still a customer of BT Wholesale who operates and maintains the infrastructure, albeit via a different retail company.

:santa2:

Sorry but you are not a customer of BTWholesale, but a customer of your chosen supplier. BTWholesale are, as the name implies, a wholesaler and do not have private customers. And what's more a private customer cannot even talk to BTWholesale.
I would concur with EdinburghLass and premier on this, BT are more likely to look after their own customers first and the CPS ones will go to the bottom of the queue. I don't see how your CPS can make such a guarantee while they have to pass the request on to a 3rd party(BT).

mobilegossip

AP.
When you signed up for Onetel Line Rental did you not agree to put all your calls through them?

paul_h

djohn2002uk wrote:

Sorry but you are not a customer of BTWholesale, but a customer of your chosen supplier. BTWholesale are, as the name implies, a wholesaler and do not have private customers. And what's more a private customer cannot even talk to BTWholesale.

Perhaps I could have worded it differently, what I meant was you are still using a line provided by BTW. Your relationship with BTW should be the same regardless of your chosen retail seller, be it BT, onetel, or whoever. These principles are set out by ofcom in the recent consultation and BTs response has been to separate the retail and infrastructure areas of their business more clearly, rather than face being forced to split their business.

djohn2002uk wrote:

I would concur with EdinburghLass and premier on this, BT are more likely to look after their own customers first and the CPS ones will go to the bottom of the queue. I don't see how your CPS can make such a guarantee while they have to pass the request on to a 3rd party(BT).

CPS customers can still report faults to BT as they are their line rental provider, I assume you mean WLR customers.

The fact is that companies like onetel do make these guarantees, so I would assume that the systems in place do work. I fail to see how onetel could offer BT's superior response packages to residential customers for an extra monthly charge if their fault reports simply "go to the bottom of the queue".

Incidentally, when I have dealt with BT retail in the past, I found them extremely frustrating - once the matter is passed on to the BTW engineers, they have been very helpful and competent in my experience.

AP

mobilegossip wrote:

AP.
When you signed up for Onetel Line Rental did you not agree to put all your calls through them?

I signed up to One.Tel's StandardUK Talk package and CPS all calls through them last year when BT was moving everyone on their Standard package to BT Together Option 1. But my line rental was still (stuck) with BT as One.Tel was not offering it at the time.

I took up One.Tel's line rental offer at the end of last month giving one month's free after six months before BT's announcement of increasing their Option 1 line rental. This is just a 'bonus' to me as my line rental is now already with One.Tel before BT put theirs up.

I also e-mailed One.Tel and asked them to confirm that I will be getting the free one month's line rental, just in case after they are taken over by Carphone Warehouse who is not going to honour this offer. They e-mailed me back yesterday and confirmed that:

'Please be informed that if you have registered for Line Rental before 30/11/2005 you will receive one month's free rental credited on your bill after you have paid six months for the Line Rental charges.'

I now have something in black and white to get back at Carphone Warehouse later should they decide not to honour this offer by One.Tel.

Steve_xx

Whether you have your line rental and calls package with BT directly or you choose CPS or another Line & Calls carrier which uses BT's exchange lines, you will more than likely receive the same service levels that you were used to with BT.

These alternative service providers will have negotiated and agreed terms of service with BT such that there will be a guarantee of service similar to that which BT offers its own clients. Indeed it will probably be enshrouded in OFCOM regulation to ensure that BT does not favour its own customers at the expense of others.

In any event, if BT is perceived to be the most expensive service provider, then it will follow that its customers will migrate to other operators for Lines & Calls. If this happens to any great extent then it will have fewer directly connected customers of its own and therefore the bulk of its servicing time would be spent on repairs to exchange lines that it had leased to other service providers.

It is far more important to consider whether you can least cost route with your chosen exchange line provider than it is to worry about who will repair it and how long it will take if it goes faulty.Though of course, these considerations should figure in some small way, in any decision taken.

phoneman44

paul_h and Steve_xx are correct. BT Retail is a customer of BT Wholesale in the same way as TalkTalk, Post Office etc.

As part of Ofcom's Strategic Review of Telecommunications in September, a new operationally independent company within the BT Group has been created called Openreach. This company has been set up to provide equality between providers on precisely this issue see https://www.openreach.co.uk/about.html.

All faults on the 'BT' access network are reported via the same route regardless of provider and there is little scope for abuse on BT's part.