MSE News: An end to line rental? No-landline broadband service launches

PasturesNew

London, London, London ... yadda, yadda, yawn.

New company tries something in bits of posh London ..... doesn't apply to about 95% of the country probably.... if that.

anon_ymous

cjdavies wrote: »

Sweet, about time, only reason why I'm with Virgin Media.

Pretty much this. The thing was, with fibre broadband from the other non Virgin companies, I thought "FINALLY. We can FINALLY move away from landlines and the people could adopt VoIP en masse" because fibre broadband has absolutely no need for a landline. It doesn't use the PSTN infrastructure at all.

Yet many companies still effectively force you to buy a landline (Not necessarily with them. It just has to be a "BT" line)

So we're with Virgin, and have a VoIP phone, and no one outside can tell the difference

DUTR

Biscuit_Tin wrote: »

Well it's fast, but wireless broadband for the home is not something new.

e.g. Out in the sticks of Norfolk/Suffolk it's been available for a couple of years now
http://www.itswisp.co.uk

And don't forget Ionica from all those years back.

kwikbreaks

I thought they went bust before they launched but WiKi suggests they were around for 3 years. Still see the dishes on houses. I was going to try them but when they surveyed my house they couldn't find a signal.

fireice

OldGreyFox wrote: »

BT dont have the monopoly.

For large parts of the country, where there's no virgin fibre, Openreach "a BT group business" have a monopoly. Hence the requirement from almost all providers (except Virgin and here Relish) to have a "BT line"

Porcupine

waqasahmed wrote: »

Yet many companies still effectively force you to buy a landline (Not necessarily with them. It just has to be a "BT" line)

The 'landline tax' is just a pricing scam by telcos. It allows them to advertise 'free broadband* (* plus your usual line rental at £99.99 a month)'. Landline-landline calls are almost free these days, at the wholesale level anyway. So you're paying for maintenance of your line, whether you choose to put broadband down it (which does cost the telco money) or phone (which doesn't, the technology is so basic).

Virgin, for example, offers landline-free packages. However they like you to have a landline because they hope you'll call juicy mobile, 08xx or international numbers where they make a stonking markup. Likewise for BT - all these 'call setup fees' are entirely invented: wholesale there's no fee just per minute charging (fractions of a penny for UK 01/02/03 calls).

So, play the game. Don't think about it as a landline cost, you just pay whatever it is for your line, and if you happen to use the landline it's a bonus. Don't fall for the 'free broadband*' scam, just look at the total costs.

Once you've done that, then you can work out the best way to make the calls you want - landline, override provider, dialthrough 08xx number, mobile, VOIP, Skype...

VisionMan

You know, not a lot of people know this, but one can get BT Infinity without having a landline if one pushes hard enough. It costs more than the two combined. But rather than repeat myself, heres the excellent post from UXB from another land line thread -

Uxb wrote: »

This one comes up with weary regularity.
I almost can't be arrrrrrrrseddd to explain it anymore

Line rental in the UK comprises both the component of payment for receiving a voice service on the line and payment for the rent/maintenance/systems/backhaul/upgrades of the physical line to your address.
In the UK OFCOM have decreed that these two components shall be lumped together and misleading called line rental. (the cost of a voice call being extra)

Now they could equally decree that the rent/maintenance etc component is instead lumped in together with your broadband charge instead.
Then we would have sky high broadband charges and only a small amount extra for having a voice service on the line

.....but I'd bet the OP really really really would not like that!

Particularly as there are more phone lines in total than BB+phone activated lines in the UK so your BB charges are being cross subsidzed by the line rental component paid by the phone only lines.

OFCOM really are not stupid you see.

PS If you were lucky enough to have a full FTTP connection from Gigaclear you would pay £37/month for their minimum package.

anon_ymous

Porcupine wrote: »

The 'landline tax' is just a pricing scam by telcos. It allows them to advertise 'free broadband* (* plus your usual line rental at £99.99 a month)'. Landline-landline calls are almost free these days, at the wholesale level anyway. So you're paying for maintenance of your line, whether you choose to put broadband down it (which does cost the telco money) or phone (which doesn't, the technology is so basic).

Virgin, for example, offers landline-free packages. However they like you to have a landline because they hope you'll call juicy mobile, 08xx or international numbers where they make a stonking markup. Likewise for BT - all these 'call setup fees' are entirely invented: wholesale there's no fee just per minute charging (fractions of a penny for UK 01/02/03 calls).

So, play the game. Don't think about it as a landline cost, you just pay whatever it is for your line, and if you happen to use the landline it's a bonus. Don't fall for the 'free broadband*' scam, just look at the total costs.

Once you've done that, then you can work out the best way to make the calls you want - landline, override provider, dialthrough 08xx number, mobile, VOIP, Skype...

Hmm I guess so. Meh, we have a VoIP phone any way, so effectively we do have a "landline" as it were

Also I imagine you're correct. DID Logic provides some services for our landline, and I noticed for 03XX numbers they charge $0.000963/min which is £0.000573/min OR in real terms, you'd have to spend 174 minutes on the phone before you're charged £0.01

Ofcom did say they can't charge more than standard landline charges for 03XX numbers

They charge you $0.0571/min or £0.034/min to call a UK landline, so yeah it's pretty low

VisionMan wrote: »

You know, not a lot of people know this, but one can get BT Infinity without having a landline if one pushes hard enough. It costs more than the two combined. But rather than repeat myself, heres the excellent post from UXB from another land line thread -

If it costs more, I'd rather just have the landline included Interesting why Virgin works differently.

Besides, how does that even make sense?

The landline goes through telecommunication poles, and fibre is something completely different. ONLY broadband will go through those fibre cables. I guess technically, you can have telecommunications go through fibre, but why would you when you already have a telecommunications system in place?

They're two separate bits of infrastructure

Anon

... so the "landline free" broadband is .... 4g mobile based broadband ... ? We can get that already, just clever marketing.

Anon

anon_ymous

Anon wrote: »

... so the "landline free" broadband is .... 4g mobile based broadband ... ? We can get that already, just clever marketing.

Anon

This is essentially true, however for the speeds and because it's "unlimited", it's a pretty decent price. Well, Id prefer wires, over any radio based transmission....

Virgin are around the same price, for a higher speed as well