MSE News: BT to cut landline costs for up to one million customers...

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

redux wrote: »

Actually, never mind a phone company, it has struck me that this close of 6 houses could go down to one or two lines, with wifi for internet, and with 6 or more cordless VoIP extensions for calls.

The old fear though - tricky about emergency lines in a power cut.

I haven't bothered to suggest it.

I have been puzzled for years why roads don't club together to do this.

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

Out of interest does anyone know te current wholesale cost for a line from Openreach?

Caddyman

redux wrote: »

Because it's physically impossible for them to save money, so how can they pass part of a non-existent saving back to you as a discount?

But it looks like you could carry on asking the same question 5 or 10 times, so I doubt if any answer is satisfactory.

It's not that I find your answers unsatisfactory at all, but it seems that at every point, you are trying to provide any justification you can find on behalf of BT.

And I'm sure BT could save everyone a bit of money if they wanted to. I wonder just how much the Residential telephone directory costs to produce for the entire UK? Scrap that and pass the savings back to the customer, or perhaps the Residential directory has nothing to do with BT?

I absolutely understand that BT Openreach have an infrastructure to maintain and to put in place new facilities where needed and indeed because of investment in the infrastructure, I am now on fibre broadband, something that up until a couple of years ago was just a dream. But the costs seem to be slewing out of proportion in my view.

Caddyman

Well I found OFCOM's Telephone Directory Information Obligations and Regulations document and it does indeed state in the document that it is paid for out of the line rental aspect:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0025/37456/dirinfo.pdf

I suspect the vast majority of home telephone users don't bother taking the directory out of the plastic wrapping. I just cannot see the relevance of it any more. Bin it and pass the saving onto the customer and reduce line rental, though it'd probably only work out about a quid a throw lol!

Perhaps someone should stick a FOI request into BT to ask them how much it costs to produce this scammers best friend?........

Ectophile

All the people saying "but i don't make any calls" are missing the point.

I just looked at my latest phone + broadband bill. £18.99 for line rental, and £0.00 for the broadband. Yes, the broadband is totally free for a year. The only way this is possible is that it's being cross-subsidised by a ridiculously over-priced line rental.

Would it make any difference if the line rental was £10 and the broadband £8.99? Not to me, it wouldn't.

But to anyone who just uses their line for phone calls, the current line rental price is a total rip-off. They are simply subsidising everybody else's cheap broadband.

dggar

Caddyman wrote: »

One of my biggest bugbears, is why BT Retail continue to push out private customer telephone directories. They could undoubtedly save a huge amount of money by binning these. I haven't used a Residential telephone directory in years. I refuse to have my name listed, I don't want one and I've asked not to receive one, but still, every single year, someone shoves the worthless piece of toilet paper through my letter box and it goes straight into the recycling bin. Really, apart from scammers, does anyone actually every use a Residential telephone directory these days? [/QUOTE]

I trust you don't really think scammers sit thumbing through a telephone directory and the phone up each entry in turn.

iniltous

Caddyman wrote: »

Well I found OFCOM's Telephone Directory Information Obligations and Regulations document and it does indeed state in the document that it is paid for out of the line rental aspect:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0025/37456/dirinfo.pdf

I suspect the vast majority of home telephone users don't bother taking the directory out of the plastic wrapping. I just cannot see the relevance of it any more. Bin it and pass the saving onto the customer and reduce line rental, though it'd probably only work out about a quid a throw lol!

Perhaps someone should stick a FOI request into BT to ask them how much it costs to produce this scammers best friend?........

You obviously accept that 'line rental' is necessary as a 'line' is required to host the broadband connection to your home and the 'wholesale' price OR charge for this local loop is around £8 to £9/ per month,this thread is about the fact that BT will charge line rental from next year at the retail rate of £11.99/per month, the (approx) £3 difference between wholesale and retail covers the costs of retailing the product, such as ( dirty word coming up ) profit, bill production, customer service provision, etc, etc., the fact that £7 is deducted is pretty much OFCOM saying all providers (not just BT) subsidise broadband by £7/month , in other words what you pay for broadband is disguised by over charging LR by £7/month.


My question to you, is how much of a reduction per month (££) would you expect if the telephony element was removed and not charged for ?...the line stays the same, the equipment in the exchange stays the same, ( it has to, it's how a loop is accessed for testing purposes ) the only difference would be the line 'set' in data to OCB (outgoing calls barred) instead of a usable dialtone.

IMHO , you are looking at this the wrong way, you pay for a line (£12/month retail) it has the capability of making phone calls , this facility is provided free , if you make use of it by making calls then a charge is raised, either on a per call basis or you can buy a call bundle , but if you chose not to use this free facility (dialtone) that is fine they don't charge you for that anyway.

If dialtone is provided 'free' , and you chose not to use it , why would a discount be given for not using this free facility ?

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

I in a way fail to understand why those who do not have Broadband with ANY provider on a BT retail provided line should pay less than someone who chooses to receive an ADSL/VDSL signal through it. People who have a land line and make calls make use of the infrastructure as do those with Broadband.

To be fair we should now all be going down the route of community WiFi where Wifi transmiters are on lamp posts and people can just access the web on a PAYG basis

iniltous

A_Flock_Of_Sheep wrote: »

I in a way fail to understand why those who do not have Broadband with ANY provider on a BT retail provided line should pay less than someone who chooses to receive an ADSL/VDSL signal through it. People who have a land line and make calls make use of the infrastructure as do those with Broadband.

To be fair we should now all be going down the route of community WiFi where Wifi transmiters are on lamp posts and people can just access the web on a PAYG basis

The point is that the likes of Talk Talk and Sky for years have disguised the true cost of their broadband , it was never 'free' or £5/month.
They took a product (an OR local loop ) it's wholesale price has decreased year on year , to around £8-£9/month, and charged £17-£20/month for it, to make their broadband look cheaper than competitors broadband , and cheaper than it actually costs them to provide it .
The problem of course , is quite a proportion of the population think that broadband really is £5/month out of a £25/month bill, and if they didn't have to pay 'line rental' they would save £20 per month, and those providers have a pretty obvious reason for perpetuating this misinformation, because it's 'BT' that gets the bad press for £20 line rental not them, even though that £20 is split £9 to OR and £11 to the ISP

spenderdave

Clearly we have a lot of people on here who only use their mobiles for calls. But a lot of us do still use the phone every day for what it is designed for. Here my PAYG mobile is only used for emergencies, the landline is an essential part of my life. I also object to having to pay to call all you mobile only chaps.
The problem nowadays is compounded by bundling line rental into the broadband package cost, at apparently Jo Public's request. Many of us do still want phone and broadband from different companies for various reasons and it makes comparing packages far from easy.
This is a step in the right direction for some but more is clearly needed.