MoneySaving Poll: Is the landline dead?

minislim

l33tsp33k wrote: »

The "land line" element of BT's service is split off into "BT Openreach", and is heavily regulated by OFCOM in terms of how much they can charge and how much profit they can make. BT's sports rights are not (really) subsidised by Openreach. Openreach wholesale prices are public - it's about 8 pounds a month for line rental (depending on the exact service).

The real scandal is how much that wholesale line rental is marked up by not only BT but almost all other telcos, so that they can peddle FREE* BROADBAND
(* with £18/month line rental)

Given that there's companies that offer retail line rental for £12/month (e.g. Direct Save Telecom) - that's including all the overhead of billing, customer service, bad debt, etc, the £6/month most operators charge on top is a hidden subsidy to their broadband offerings.

Why the Advertising Standards Authority lets telecoms companies get away with this, when as this poll shows, a landline is almost exclusively used for broadband access these days, I have no idea. The ASA should force these companies to advertise their broadband prices including line rental.

Between that and allowing BT, Virgin, Sky and others to advertise their copper services as "fibre broadband", the ASA are pretty useless...

M

exactly my point. so there's at least £6 of the £18 line rental going elsewhere. what also is annoying is that the line rental saver deals that used to offer a decent saving are now only fractionally cheaper than paying full price.

and i totally agree with the ASA, a chocolate fireguard is more useful than them!

mdud

Martin,

How do we source an 'Internet' connection for home, without the cost of having a landline?
Its clear from your survey that roughly 50% of people never use their landline to make calls.....but never the less are saddled with a £15-16 a month cost which clear has little or No value......

There is your latest task!!!

l33tsp33k

mdud wrote: »

Martin,

How do we source an 'Internet' connection for home, without the cost of having a landline?
Its clear from your survey that roughly 50% of people never use their landline to make calls.....but never the less are saddled with a £15-16 a month cost which clear has little or No value......

There is your latest task!!!

It's possible to buy an internet connection without a landline. Here's a few options

- Virgin cable broadband - £20-ish a month
- use a 3G/4G hotspot - for normal residential usage, this will probably also cost £20-ish a month for a sufficient data allowance
- (in central London, but they are looking at expanding) Relish - a fixed wireless broadband service - also £20/month

It's not possible to get broadband over BT Openreach copper without paying "line rental". The wholesale cost of this is ~£8/month, the retail cost between £12-18 depending on who you use. The higher the retail cost of the line rental, the greater the cross-subsidisation of any broadband service on top. So high line rental charges enables operators to offer "Free broadband". If you were not paying "line rental" then there would be an equivalent charge for "use of the BT Openreach copper to your house" - it doesn't mean that you could have only the "free broadband" without any other costs.

It is true it is not efficient that at the telephone exchange your landline has to be connected to voice call infrastructure (as well as broadband infrastructure) when many people are no longer using landline voice services. For that, blame OFCOM for not forcing BT Openreach to offer "naked DSL" - i.e. broadband without a voice service. But this would not result in a significant drop in cost.

Mike