Landline only deals 16 March at 4:55PM in Phones & TV 5 replies 140 views

bertha73

An elderly relative had a landline-only service from SSE, which was then rebranded as OVO. She was paying £28 DD a month for line rental and a call allowance. Last week she received a letter from OVO to say that her "phone and broadband" account is being taken over by origin broadband, part of Talk Talk. They say there will be no changes in terms of service, billing, price.

However, my feeling is that £28 seems a lot to be paying for a basic phone line and call allowance, especially as I can't find any information anywhere about what the call allowance actually is (relative doesn't know either, only that until August last year she was paying £47.50 a month and SSE then told her she was overpaying and moved her to the £28 a month plan).

I can't find any info on the originbroadband.com website about landline only deals, so I'm assuming that she's actually paying for broadband even though she doesn't have a broadband service (and never has done). Are there any deals available for landline only services at a decent price? It seems daft to me that she's paying about as much as she would for a FTTC and voice package.

Neil_Jones

Its about the going rate, considering line rental is about £25 on its own never mind the cost of a calls package on top which is on average about another £8 or £9, so that £28 is pretty good.

The market has moved and its better value to lop broadband into the mix and sell it as all inclusive for near enough the same price.

However if eligible, this will wipe the floor with the rest of the market (other providers do similar things):

https://www.bt.com/broadband/home-essentials

J_B

We pay Bee Tee £27.30 for line rental / inclusive landline calls and voicemail extra (I think it's called)

No Broadband

southsidergs

In their infinite wisdom it has been decided that only certain companies have to provide cheaper line rental for no broadband so you may want to look at BT as I believe they have been told they have to

Stuart_W

I think Direct Save Telecom is the only other company actively selling a line rental only option for new customers, other than BT.

They do seem to be offering 12 months line rental advance (£210 is their price) and it is genuinely for 12 months of line rental. 

As some places are now in "stop-sell" stage of the PSTN switch-off, you will need to buy a calls package too to activate a VoIP calls service (even if it's the £2.95 PAYG option, which is still cheaper than the £5.00 BT Voice charge), the DST website isn't overly clear if you will definitely be connected to fibre or still be over PSTN where available.

southsidergs

Stuart_W said:

I think Direct Save Telecom is the only other company actively selling a line rental only option for new customers, other than BT.

They do seem to be offering 12 months line rental advance (£210 is their price) and it is genuinely for 12 months of line rental. 

As some places are now in "stop-sell" stage of the PSTN switch-off, you will need to buy a calls package too to activate a VoIP calls service (even if it's the £2.95 PAYG option, which is still cheaper than the £5.00 BT Voice charge), the DST website isn't overly clear if you will definitely be connected to fibre or still be over PSTN where available.

The BT deal is actually cheaper overall even less than the line rental only price from direct save, BT is 11.73 line rental