UK's biggest con

VisionMan

Here are two posts that sum up the situation perfectly - @copyright Uxb

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.

Uxb wrote: »

Well try working out the REAL cost of replacing things
a telegraph pole cost is £600 to buy
Add in the men/traffic control/hole borer etc etc for a day's work all in.
Then the total overall cost of a pole replacement is probably around £2000.

OK now say pole supplies 4 houses.
£16 line rental/month for 4 houses is £770 per annum.
So a single repair of a pole for these 4 houses has wiped out the total GROSS line rental for 3 years and the net profits to BT from these 4 houses for probably somewhere near 10 years from all of them.

Now consider your reply if you were renting out a house to tenants and were told you needed to do a repair which was going to wipe out all your profits for 10 years - I bet your answer would be unprintable.

Conclusion - Line rental is going to continue to go up - a lot.

Not rocket science.

Pincher

I think there was a "free" internet idea called packet radio.


Everyone who wants to participate would put up a radio mast. Each household would keep an internet router hooked up to the mast. Data Packets would travel across multiple hops, and get there eventually.


Purists would probably prefer to bounce the signal off the ionosphere when the inversion layers are "just right" for transatlantic hops.


It does mean you need a radio operator license, I expect.


Members of this cult would identify themselves by wearing anoraks, and live with their mothers.

Nodding_Donkey

mije1983 wrote: »

Surely that's down to the physical limitations of the copper wiring rather than 'it's rubbish'? Not a lot your ISP can do about it.

And that's my point, if the copper wire is too old to do the job replace it. If it has too many joins, replace it. THAT'S what I'm paying line rental for, maintenance.

VisionMan

Nodding_Donkey wrote: »

And that's my point, if the copper wire is too old to do the job replace it. If it has too many joins, replace it. THAT'S what I'm paying line rental for, maintenance.

Yes, thats right. Are you there yet?

kwikbreaks

Of course the sad fact of the matter is that they will only guarantee the line for voice because that's all that was around when they were privatised and that is all that's in their service obligations. If there is a big degredation - less than 70% of the minimum speed recorded in the first 10 days iirc - they will consider that a fault. Setting that performance level is what the initial 10 days is actually for not "training the line" - the line profile on BT connections is subject to change at any time.

Retrogamer

Nodding_Donkey wrote: »

And that's my point, if the copper wire is too old to do the job replace it. If it has too many joins, replace it. THAT'S what I'm paying line rental for, maintenance.

Please see my post a little above regarding consumers driving down costs for services and little to no profit being made.

kwikbreaks

Only just spotted this one...

Pincher wrote: »

Who pays for the undersea trunk, the satellite link, the UK backbone? Line Rental is just what they call it.

No. None of those things are anything to do with line rental and are not provided by the same people.

Line rental is exactly what it claims to be - a charge for use of the copper pair between you and the exchange.

Nilrem

Nodding_Donkey wrote: »

And that's my point, if the copper wire is too old to do the job replace it. If it has too many joins, replace it. THAT'S what I'm paying line rental for, maintenance.

Except that even with the line rental the cost of fully replacing such a line is still probably going to cost far more than your total BB cost (inc landline) for 5+ years...

Just the cost of an engineer to fix a fault will typically eat up something like 6 months of line rental for an hours work.

BT do replace lines, but it's a very gradual process (and often just the fibre to the cabinet improves the situation massively, just by reducing the length of the copper run), as it is a hugely expensive process, not to mention often very disruptive if the line has been down for a few decades and either not in a modern duct, or in a duct that has been damaged by the likes of ground movement, traffic, flooding, tree roots etc.
Even just the actual cost of a few hundred meters of good telephone cabling rated for outdoor use will probably cost 4+ months of line rental before any thought of the time costs.

There are tens of thousands (if not more) of miles of phone lines in the country, replacing even just a short stretch can cost tens of thousands of pounds, which is one of the reasons BT are doing fibre to the cabinet, as it's cheaper for them to put in a few fibre optic cables and terminate the copper nearer the premises than to totally replace the copper.

Rather amusingly (or depressingly depending on if you're affected) both BT and VM tend to face opposition from locals when it comes to doing large scale replacements (or new installations) of their cabling and ducting etc, as apparently having some roadworks for a few days is so much worse than being stuck with 90's internet.

Retrogamer

Some of the ISP's i'd worked for don't make any profit at all off their customer (as prices are already so low) until after the 10th month of their contract.
Even then, it's still very small.

If the customer has a faulty router, fault on the line or calls in for support then it will take even longer to make a profit and a lot of the time if they leave after 12 months they operate at a loss.

corf999

I have 120mbps BB only from Virgin and its cheaper for me to NOT have a phoneline.