Sky Announce Line Rental Increase From 3 Dec 2013

patman99

What you have to remember is that BT Retail (the people you have your line with), TT & Sky all have their kit in BT Wholesale exchanges.
BT Wholesale (aka Openreach) charge a fixed per-line fee to each operator to cover the costs of maintaining the lines & equipment (and pay for the upgrade to FTTC). This is a big earner for them.

The actual call handling charges (what your provider pays for the call) is actually miniscule at around 0.4p/min.
Whilst your provider makes only around 10% on the line charge, they make a larger profit on their calls (unless you have a fixed-cost package such as Sky Anytime and use the phone a great deal). This profit is what pays for their call centres, advertising etc.

Virgin have their own network but still have to have it connected to a BT exchange in order to allow their customers to phone BT/TT/Sky customers and vice versa. Their line rental pays for the out-network connections & the cost of maintaining their own exchanges.

scoobers

Not announced in the letter from Sky but updated in their tariff guide are call charges to 08 / 09 numbers. This will affect the cost of calling access numbers as well as many customer service numbers. There is a substantial increase (up to 300%) to these charges which include;

chargeband G8, from 1.02p/min to 3.14p/min
chargeband G9, from 2.04p/min to 4.29p/min
chargeband G10, from 3.06p/min to 6p/min
chargeband G11, from 4.08p/min to 7.64p/min
chargeband G6, from 5.1p/min to 7.62p/min

jhp

scoobers wrote: »

Not announced in the letter from Sky but updated in their tariff guide are call charges to 08 / 09 numbers. This will affect the cost of calling access numbers as well as many customer service numbers. There is a substantial increase (up to 300%) to these charges which include;

chargeband G8, from 1.02p/min to 3.14p/min
chargeband G9, from 2.04p/min to 4.29p/min
chargeband G10, from 3.06p/min to 6p/min
chargeband G11, from 4.08p/min to 7.64p/min
chargeband G6, from 5.1p/min to 7.62p/min

and the G22 half a pence 0.51p goes up to a 2.57p/min.

Plus a hefty 15p connection charge on top of all of them

Jo4

Can you use 18185 when you have your phone line with Sky?

scoobers

No, it will only work with BT. If 18185 offer a freephone or local access number then these should work with Sky.

Jo4 wrote: »

Can you use 18185 when you have your phone line with Sky?

networkguy_2

> No, it will only work with BT.

18185, 18866, 1899 and other indirect services will work on more than just lines rented from BT.

Agreed, several services, such as Sky, which rent line to customers, and provide a calls package, are in a position where they can 'block' such codes from working, but not all services block.

My line rental is with Primus and costs under 7.50/month (no calls included) and I use 1899 for various international and UK calls (5p per call, 0p/minute for UK landlines 01+02, but found they don't support calls to all 03xxx numbers at present).

Ypaymore

networkguy wrote: »

> No, it will only work with BT.

18185, 18866, 1899 and other indirect services will work on more than just lines rented from BT.

Agreed, several services, such as Sky, which rent line to customers, and provide a calls package, are in a position where they can 'block' such codes from working, but not all services block.

My line rental is with Primus and costs under 7.50/month (no calls included) and I use 1899 for various international and UK calls (5p per call, 0p/minute for UK landlines 01+02, but found they don't support calls to all 03xxx numbers at present).

All providers can block access to Indirect Numbers if they wish to do so, even BT can do it now. Primus have started blocking access on certain lines.

networkguy_2

Ypaymore wrote: »

All providers can block access to Indirect Numbers if they wish to do so, even BT can do it now.

Thanks. I know all providers can block - it's a network service option on the Price List, from memory, but it's not only lines rented from BT that can use indirect access shortcodes, which was why I posted.

Primus have started blocking access on certain lines.

OK. Didn't know that.

Wonder if that's only on lines with Broadband (since they appear to be using TalkTalk for the BB service, maybe line is switched to TT while Primus pays TT as a wholesaler, and Primus charges end user for the service) ?

mattyprice4004

Amazing how wholesale line rental is actually getting cheaper for the providers to buy, yet the prices keep going up!