£15 p.m. premium for Broadband due to distance from exchange

ellanvannin_2

Has anyone heard of this? I spoke to Talk Talk today about possibly moving my Broadband from Orange to them and they wanted to charge a £15 per month premium because we are "quite a distance from our local exchange". He said that the signal gets weaker the further you are from the exchange which makes sense, but I don't understand why that would incur such a hefty surcharge for us.

When I did an online pricing for Tiscali (now owned by Talk Talk), there was no mention of this premium being charged. Talk Talk rang me as a result of my Tiscali online search to see if they could persuade me to move to them.

I know we can never get packages like the Sky phone, TV, broadband package because we are always outside their coverage, but this is a new one on me.

We're now thinking maybe we'd be better with a dongle, especially as we have two broadband packages in two separate homes (one is a holiday home - I'm NOT a politician!!) at the moment and we gather we could use just the one dongle.

macman

It's not because of distance from the exchange, it's because TT are not LLU on your exchange, this means they have to pay BT Wholesale for the service, which makes the price higher, rather than use their own equipment.
Do an exchange search on samknows.com to see which ISP's are LLU on your exchange, the LLU providers will offer the best deals.
Alternatively post your exchange name and someone can advise.

spike7451

macman wrote: »

It's not because of distance from the exchange, it's because TT are not LLU on your exchange, this means they have to pay BT Wholesale for the service, which makes the price higher, rather than use their own equipment.
Do an exchange search on samknows.com to see which ISP's are LLU on your exchange, the LLU providers will offer the best deals.
Alternatively post your exchange name and someone can advise.

Yup,
Where I live I can only get BT or O2 from my exchnge,I was looking at getting phone & bband from TT but on discovering the £17 odd a month for an 'off-net' service I said no.So I've decided to get O2 BBand in & possiby phone from the Post Orrifice (providing they're not on strike....:p)

ellanvannin_2

Thanks for your help. I've done a search on Sam Knows but unfortunately no ISPs are LLU on my exchange (Pickmere, Cheshire). I don't know what my alternatives will be then, presumably I won't get "cheap" broadband from anyone

macman

ellanvannin wrote: »

Thanks for your help. I've done a search on Sam Knows but unfortunately no ISPs are LLU on my exchange (Pickmere, Cheshire). I don't know what my alternatives will be then, presumably I won't get "cheap" broadband from anyone

Unfortunately not, that's a small exchange and unlikely to ever be unbundled. If the service is a resold BT Wholesale one then the prices are generally around the same level.

spike7451

macman wrote: »

Unfortunately not, that's a small exchange and unlikely to ever be unbundled. If the service is a resold BT Wholesale one then the prices are generally around the same level.

I agree with macman,that's about the best you'll get.

macman

ellanvannin wrote: »

Thanks for your help. I've done a search on Sam Knows but unfortunately no ISPs are LLU on my exchange (Pickmere, Cheshire). I don't know what my alternatives will be then, presumably I won't get "cheap" broadband from anyone

You could look at Plusnet Value, on a market 1 exchange that will cost £5.99 for 3m, then £11.99. 10GB monthly limit. £28 Quidco cashback. That makes a first year cost of £8.16 a month.

ellanvannin_2

Thanks again for your help. I'll look into the Plusnet package. We have the house up for sale, perhaps we should look for a new house with an unbundled exchange!!

macman

Not much point in migrating if you are moving, as you'll be locked into a 12 or 18m contract.

ellanvannin_2

macman wrote: »

Not much point in migrating if you are moving, as you'll be locked into a 12 or 18m contract.

Ah, when I say we're moving, the house has been on the market for over 2 years with just two viewings. If we kept hanging on waiting for the move we'd never do anything! Luckily we aren't in a hurry to move as we spend a lot of our time in our holiday home in Wales.

macman

I think you may need to reduce the price...and get a new estate agent...