unfair for broadband providers to force you to get Phone line?

cajef

How are the telecoms companies milking the line rental, if you have your line with them they rent the lines off BT and have to pay them.

I pay my ISP for broadband only and they do not force me to have my line rental with them, I accept that I have to have a line with someone to have broadband and pay another company for the use of their line and maintenance of their equipment.

Sooler

arch039 wrote: »

I don't even have a phone plugged in and yet I have to pay monthly line rental

where would you plug your router in?:think:

arch039

yes, of course you do need a data outlet to run broadband. ... but you don't need landline phone number, as telecom/broadband companies have control over this.
when you buy broadband you get, like it or not, a land phone line and number.

in regards to renting the lines from BT or whoever, that is the case with all infrastructure (rail tracks, airports, gas, electricity, water, etc.) but you don't get separate extra charge for it.

. ...its like going to a pub for selling 1p a pint and then when you order they charge you £4.99 for the glass ...

anyway ... I don't support marketing of anything where large cost is hidden on small print ... broadband is one of them.

JJ_Egan

Hidden in the small print ???
Whinge whinge whinge .

cajef

What you do not appear to understand is that with the majority of ISP's you need a land line and whether they supply it or not it costs money, without it they cannot supply broadband, what you consider a hidden charge is in fact a necessity.

If you are that concerned and do not support it then don't have it, that is the choice you have.

iniltous

This comes up all the time, if you only paid for 'broadband' and the line that delivers it to your house developed a fault who should pay it fix it ?, if Openreach are not being paid for using their property, should they also have to pay to keep it in a serviceable condition ?, if a neighbour who didn't have a phone line ordered one, and there was no capacity left in your area, would it be ok for Openreach to take the 'line' that goes to your house that you don't pay 'line rental' for and move it to your neighbours house, because they want a phone line and are prepared to pay line rental for that line ? Or do they have to pay to install more lines even though they have lines in the area that they don't get any rental money for ?
If you accept that you have to pay line rental you just don't see why you should pay for the ability to make and receive phone calls, how much do you think line rental should be reduced by ? after all what you pay is your provider can get away with, what Openreach get is probably half what you pay to your provider £7 to £8 wholesale, £16 retail)
Seems to me what you really want is for ISP's to be honest about prices, not much chance of that when price is the biggest draw for attracting customers, and advertising broadband for £2.99 or whatever grabs people attention,

brewerdave

Just to straighten one of the points out raised in post 14 - you DO have a similar situation with gas/electricity/water -its called a standing charge -and most Utility companies in the UK raise such a charge.

PlutoinCapricorn

I cancelled my BT landline in 2008, and have used prepaid mobile broadband ever since, with no problems.

Timalay

What you are failing to comprehend is that current BT system runs on copper, as it stand this can deteriorate. Fixing this is what the Line rental helps pay for.

Retrogamer

arch039 wrote: »

technically you are right and I agree. every service (gas pipes, electric cables, etc) you can split it up same way and you can pay for them all... but its not the case with most.

... its not fair to mislead the consumer with false advertising... if it says Broadband £5/month (with big letters) it should be £5/month

It is £5 per month. Most ISP's allow you to have line rental from another company before taking out their broadband product. So if you already have an active line with someone you can take out their broadband product for £5 per month.

If ISP's didn't charge for line rental and the whole infrastructure was changed to accommodate this then broadband only prices would rise significantly (Virgin Media already do this if you decline their line rental)

The price pays to keep the infrastructure maintained, engineers and other staff paid etc. Without that extra money from line rental the already poorly maintained network would be much worse, there would be much fewer staff to answer calls when things go wrong and they would be poorly trained.

In short, it would be a disaster