'Outdated' landline charges should be scrapped

onomatopoeia99

Decoupling the line rental from the voice service is something I've been arguing for for years, consultations in the past apparently showed that a lot of the public would not understand it, we can hope that this has now changed.

Expect to see "no line rental" broadband products appear that are £12-15 more expensive than existing "deals" once this comes in,

gw3tmh

Yes of course they should be scrapped, at one time as someone mentioned, you needed a landline to carry the broadband data on, but now you don't.

If you are using Fibre optic broadband, you no longer need or use the old copper wires back to the telephone exchange, but you still pay for them, you are now using a shared fibre optic cable to the nearby cabinet, not the copper wires for your broadband, I suspect the old copper wire is still being used for your voice calls however.

If we are allowed to stop paying for the landline part, it is still possible to have a landline by using a VOIP service similar to skype, this routes your landline over the Internet giving you a normal local landline number without actually using your BT landline.

I do this using a firm called sipgate, but there are many others, I then have a "Rhyl" local landline number as that is my home town, and nobody ever realises they are actually being routed over the Internet.

Calls are cheap, and it's just like using a normal phone, an added benefit is that when I go on holiday abroad I can take my VOIP phone with me, plug it into a broadband router wherever I am, and still make and receive local UK calls.

You can now even get a mobile phone app for your smart phone, and give it a landline number.

It's years since I actually had a landline plugged into my BT socket, but I still make and receive landline calls.

Google VOIP services for more details.

Ken (With no connection to any company mentioned)

onomatopoeia99

gw3tmh wrote: »

If you are using Fibre optic broadband, you no longer need or use the old copper wires back to the telephone exchange, but you still pay for them, you are now using a shared fibre optic cable to the nearby cabinet, not the copper wires for your broadband, I suspect the old copper wire is still being used for your voice calls however.

On FTTC you do need the copper wires back to the cabinet and have to pay for them. On FTTP you don't. The FTTP rollout is very limited at present, almost everyone on "fibre" broadband still needs a conventional phone line to their house.

System

Terry98 wrote: »

What is the justification for this and how have they got away with it when inflation is negligible?.

Because exchange comms equipment, its infrastructure and maintenance costs don't form part of the basket of products that are used to calculate the inflation rate?

System

gw3tmh wrote: »

If you are using Fibre optic broadband, you no longer need or use the old copper wires back to the telephone exchange, but you still pay for them, you are now using a shared fibre optic cable to the nearby cabinet, not the copper wires for your broadband, I suspect the old copper wire is still being used for your voice calls however.

You obviously got your information from the same people as Ed Vaizey did :rotfl:

gw3tmh

I think you are just being charged twice, you use a small section of the old copper from your house to the local cabinet, you don't need any more than that.

You pay an extra charge to rent the fibre optic cable on top of the charge for the copper cable from the cabinet to the exchange, so you are renting two cables to the exchange, one of which you don't need if you don't need the land line option. Ken

littleboo

gw3tmh wrote: »

I think you are just being charged twice, you use a small section of the old copper from your house to the local cabinet, you don't need any more than that.

You pay an extra charge to rent the fibre optic cable on top of the charge for the copper cable from the cabinet to the exchange, so you are renting two cables to the exchange, one of which you don't need if you don't need the land line option. Ken

You're not renting the fibre from the cab, neither do you rent the fibre from the exchange for ADSL services.
Line rental is not distance based, otherwise people next door to the exchange would pay less than someone further away. So it matters not if your line is 20 meters or 2000 metres, the price is the same

gw3tmh

We are moving from my original post, which was suggesting a way to use a landline number without the need for a landline. Ken

lee111s

gw3tmh wrote: »

Yes of course they should be scrapped, at one time as someone mentioned, you needed a landline to carry the broadband data on, but now you don't.

If you are using Fibre optic broadband, you no longer need or use the old copper wires back to the telephone exchange, but you still pay for them, you are now using a shared fibre optic cable to the nearby cabinet, not the copper wires for your broadband, I suspect the old copper wire is still being used for your voice calls however.

If we are allowed to stop paying for the landline part, it is still possible to have a landline by using a VOIP service similar to skype, this routes your landline over the Internet giving you a normal local landline number without actually using your BT landline.

I do this using a firm called sipgate, but there are many others, I then have a "Rhyl" local landline number as that is my home town, and nobody ever realises they are actually being routed over the Internet.

Calls are cheap, and it's just like using a normal phone, an added benefit is that when I go on holiday abroad I can take my VOIP phone with me, plug it into a broadband router wherever I am, and still make and receive local UK calls.

You can now even get a mobile phone app for your smart phone, and give it a landline number.

It's years since I actually had a landline plugged into my BT socket, but I still make and receive landline calls.

Google VOIP services for more details.

Ken (With no connection to any company mentioned)

Regardless of FTTC being fibre to the cabinet and the copper not being needed for that length of the journey (for broadband anyway), all of the test equipment is in the exchange. If you have a broadband fault, the first thing that is tested is the copper line.


If you remove the E side (exchange to the cabinet) then you need to somehow provide test head equipment in the local cabinets for to be able to perform tests when your connection goes down? Where do you propose the money would come from to design and build such equipment to fit into the already compact cabinets?

lee111s

gw3tmh wrote: »

I think you are just being charged twice, you use a small section of the old copper from your house to the local cabinet, you don't need any more than that.

You pay an extra charge to rent the fibre optic cable on top of the charge for the copper cable from the cabinet to the exchange, so you are renting two cables to the exchange, one of which you don't need if you don't need the land line option. Ken

Some lines are 20m from the cabinet, some are 1500m. Do we then start to be charged based on line length? After all, a longer line will typically cost more to maintain over the same time period. Longer lines cost more to install too, would you be happier paying more just because you don't live close to the cabinet? I suspect not.