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£18.99 for Bt Line Rental |
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#26 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
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How would you expect them to know about it otherwise?
![]() I'm just saying that OR isn't as robust in their maintenance scheme as SteveMcK is trying to suggest. I guess to Openreach's credit, they don't have a spate of green cabinets with doors missing or hanging off, as Virgin seem to do |
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#27 |
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Join Date: May 2005
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You'd think that Openreach would take an occasional look at the state of their outside plant, rather than being reliant on its customers to do it for them. Or perhaps use better connection boxes that don't have covers that can easily fall off?
I'm just saying that OR isn't as robust in their maintenance scheme as SteveMcK is trying to suggest. I guess to Openreach's credit, they don't have a spate of green cabinets with doors missing or hanging off, as Virgin seem to do It could last a few hours or a couple of days at the most and then everything was clear as a bell and a good internet connection. I was with TT at the time and through their forum ran all the tests again ... and again but often it would fix itself and so their line tests passed fine and everything worked. Oh its fixed we thought but as usual a few weeks or months later the problem returned. Wary of engineer charges I jumped ship to Sky where the first few months were fine with faster speeds than I had been getting but then up popped our old problem so this time had to get Openreach out .... a very nice fellow who went through everything and soon determined that the fault was outside (sigh of relief). The problem was a corroded Aluminium wire in a junction box, it crumbled in his hands. He fixed that and no problems since. Speaking to neighbours they have similar problems. Openreach vans are to be seen almost on a daily basis around here, would it not be cheaper for them to fit copper in all those junction boxes instead of Aluminium or is it a case that call out charges may be more lucrative. |
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#28 |
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Herefordshire
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Bear in mind that it's not just the wires that you are paying rental on. But also the maintenance of the equipment on the end of those wires that allows calls to be made in the first place, the electricity needed to keep that equipment running, fuel for generators in case of power failure, and all that stuff also needs maintained.
Equipment these days are more reliable than it ever been and I bet some of it have not been changed for years. Quote:
Now of course, some people will say they don't want a phone service, they just want the wires for broadband. However until Ofcom allow that you are stuck paying for it.
This is not just a Ofcom thing, I doubt BT would want this to happen either. I would not mind paying a reduced amount for no phone, even if I went back to fixed line broadband i would not use the phone I have a IP phone service, so I will keep that.I did hear last year from somewhere that naked broadband was being looked at, but I bet if it did come, providers like BT, Talk Talk, Sky and some other internet provider would push the price up of their broadband only so much it would cost more or just refuse to do Broadband only like they do now. |
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#29 |
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Herefordshire
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Cables are monitored constantly (and tested overnight), and faults are generally repaired long before the end subscriber even notices a problem. Faults usually show up as increased resistance or noise long before call failiures happen, and that is detected by the routining equipment and repairs scheduled automatically. It's all automated, it would be a pretty crap system that relied on customers to find and report faults, they'd never get decent reliability. The only time you'll see someone "come out" is in the rare case when a line fault has happened suddenly (like the lorry that snagged my overhead line & ripped 200m of wire off the poles all down the road before they noticed!).
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For the people who complain that line rental is "too expensive", the reality is that they have no idea how much it costs, or what is involved in providing the lines. I doubt it cost nearly £16 a month per person. My standing charge for my gas meter works out about £7 a month, I bet it takes a lot more to keep the gas flowing than the phone service. The same for my electric. Quote:
If it were really possible to do it for half the price, don't you think that someone else would have started to do so, to undercut BT? Look at internet prices, it's a cut-throat market, everyone is looking for cheaper service (and forgetting the old adage that you only get what you pay for).
There are some that undercut BT, but they can't under cut by too much as they still have to pay BTOR or BT wholesale depending how they get the service.Internet prices are low to get you in and then they hope you will spend a fortune on over services, like anytime call packages, or some sort of TV package. The you get what you pay for do not always work, I know people that pay very little for their broadband and yet get a good service and yet people who pay more gets a naff service. |
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#30 |
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Herefordshire
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Ok, so as you accept line rental is not a confidence trick, what is a reasonable return on the use of a local loop, you say £15 is way too much and £10 probably too much, the wholesale rental for a local loop is about £9, that's what OR get, what you pay to a service provider at retail is dependent on what provider you use, but if that £9 turns into £18 or whatever that hardly OR's fault, The £18 was not BTOR, but BT retail, adding more on because some one do not want to use direct debit. Why should people be forced to pay more because of the way they pay? I do not pay more for my house rent or council tax because i do not pay by direct debit. BT is not the same as other companies, they are the monopoly, the ones that have been around for year, the main supplier of phone services in this country and should not be forcing people to pay more for the way they pay. I pay by direct debit for my broadband, because it is the only way they accept payments, but I knew that when I signed up. My Dad still pays his phone bill when he gets it, ok my sister pays it at work as they have a paypoint there. He do not get charged extra for doing so. Quote:
you don't use BT retail, and absolutely no one has to, there are lots of providers, BT Retail cannot be held responsible for what others charge, only what they charge Mine pays for my broadband, sure the price no doubt includes maintenance costs, but the price is just one price. Also the price have not gone up in the last 2 years or so, something that line rental have done, in fact if I am not mistaken it have gone up three times in the last couple of years.so to recap line rental isn't a con, and £9 line rental (wholesale price) is what the regulator ,and it would appear you also think is fair for the use and upkeep of that local loop.. ..you use a wireless provider and they probably charge 'line rental' yet they don't even provide a 'line', their transmission medium is the air, and I always thought the air was free, but you pay willingly for some of yours If the radio waves are free then why do we have to pay for a Tv licence and why did we have to pay for a CD licence years ago? Allpay still got maintenance, a lot of their equipment is in a field i bet it gets battered there, they have to pay for a lease line from Zen, I bet that is not cheap. At the moment they seem to have congestion problems, I am giving them a chance to sort it out, I love supporting smaller companies and even more so when they are local, but they still need to do the job I am paying them for. But this is not the argument here. If my provider said they are going to charge a line rental, I would certainly tell them what I thought about it and buzz off elsewhere. |
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#31 |
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Join Date: Jan 2002
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If it is all automated then it should be cheaper to maintain.
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I doubt it cost nearly £16 a month per person. My standing charge for my gas meter works out about £7 a month, I bet it takes a lot more to keep the gas flowing than the phone service. The same for my electric.
Quite the reverse. For gas and electricity the bit of connection that is "yours" only goes as far as the main in the street. There's one common gas or electric main that just splits up like a tree. At the supply end there's just a pump or transformer that keeps that main suppllied.For the phone service, every individual phone in the country has a dedicated, continuous, pair of wires all the way back to the exchange, several miles away. When it gets there it's connected to a dedicated line unit. Far more equipment, and far more expensive to maintain, than some buried cast iron or plastic pipe, or a single big heavy chunk of copper cable. Quote:
There are some that undercut BT, but they can't under cut by too much as they still have to pay BTOR or BT wholesale depending how they get the service.
Which is exactly my point. They still rent from OR because they can't install their own lines any more cheaply. If they could, they would.
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#32 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 14,633
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For the phone service, every individual phone in the country has a dedicated, continuous, pair of wires all the way back to the exchange, several miles away. When it gets there it's connected to a dedicated line unit. Far more equipment, and far more expensive to maintain, than some buried cast iron or plastic pipe, or a single big heavy chunk of copper cable. Shame then that they have decided to patch up the copper/aluminium for as long as possible before accepting the inevitable. Plenty of savings to be made, but BT and its shareholders aren't interested in the long term Quote:
Which is exactly my point. They still rent from OR because they can't install their own lines any more cheaply. If they could, they would.
But as myself and others have pointed out, Openreach themselves charge only a small fraction of BT Retail, who chuck on a huge amount to the price themselves. So what Openreach has to do is of no relevance here. If I could pay about £9 in line rental and not have a phone service I'd be okay with this. Paying double that, plus even more if you don't pay in the BT Retail approved way, just to fund their expansion into sports and mobile is a bit much. |
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#33 |
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Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: South Wales/Gran Canaria
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Rental should not be a profit making exercise, it should just be to keep the equipment running, that is why I have said before BTOR should become a non-profit making company
. Back before faster broadband my phone and dial up provider bill would be about £150 a month, I pay less than half that now for fast FTTC/unlimited calls local/national/international/to mobile networks and unlimited downloads all of which to me means fantastic value for money Being charged £3.50 for a pint of beer I think expensive so should all the breweries be made to work on a non profit basis to suit my wants?
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#34 |
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Join Date: Jan 2002
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Well, you know, if BT did that FTTP thing they could eliminate all this - they could eliminate many of the 5500 exchanges and consolidate it into larger ones, eliminate the maintenance costs of all that ancient copper, no need for huge 20-40 year old PSTN switches with a line card for every customer, and it'd provide a truly futureproof internet service too. There'd be less of a need for complicated troubleshooting for voice/DSL issues due to RF interference or bad joints because of an aging, outdated network. Might even get quite a bit if they ripped the copper out and got someone to buy it as scrap.
Even if they do go all fibre, what about the PON splitters and associated equipment, they'll have to go somewhere? Then there's the whole trunk network to rebuild. And the TV network. And the mobile networks. And of course the military networks. Quote:
Shame then that they have decided to patch up the copper/aluminium for as long as possible before accepting the inevitable. Plenty of savings to be made, but BT and its shareholders aren't interested in the long term
They're certainly not interested in a fantasy long-term that may never happen. There's a very large percentage of internet users who are exclusively mobile, with no fixed broadband, and it's growing. Just like mobile phones are taking over from fixed lines in many cases.Sure, BT could invest billions, and in 20 years we'd have an all-fibre network. Just in time to discover that 80% of users are now on 4G/5G. Such a good investment of customers' money that would be. Quote:
Perhaps they might if Openreach didn't get to maintain its stranglehold on poles and ducts...
They'll rent duct and pole space if you want it. Unless you're suggesting they give that away free? Hey, why not give the line rental free as well, after all it apparently costs nothing to run, as we're regularly informed here.Competitors can install their own ducts and poles if they want. They don't. The reason is that it's too expensive to do so. It does not cost peanuts to maintain such a network, as some people seem to think. Quote:
But as myself and others have pointed out, Openreach themselves charge only a small fraction of BT Retail, who chuck on a huge amount to the price themselves. So what Openreach has to do is of no relevance here. If I could pay about £9 in line rental and not have a phone service I'd be okay with this. Paying double that, plus even more if you don't pay in the BT Retail approved way, just to fund their expansion into sports and mobile is a bit much.
Well, pick another supplier then.Oh look, they all charge about the same. I wonder why that is? Maybe because it's a reasonable commercial rate, and broadband suppliers aren't charities? |
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#35 |
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 91
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Why on earth does the OP choose to moan to DS rather than shopping around for a different provider?
![]() I'm with Fuel Broadband (formerly Primus) and paying £7 per month which includes free 90-minute evening calls from 6pm as well as all weekend. Daytime calls are via 18185, geographic calls costing just 5p regardless of duration. For calls to mobiles, I use Three PAYG at just 3p/minute with no connection charge. For unlimited broadband, I use Sky at £7.50 per month (no other services). Beat that ! If the OP willingly chooses to keep patronising the most expensive provider and pay over the counter or whatever, them I'm afraid they will indeed be taken to the cleaners. |
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#36 |
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Join Date: Jul 2009
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remembering why I stopped using these forums again. There always smart Alecs who like to point out the obvious.
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#37 |
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Join Date: Jul 2012
Posts: 65
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I feel it's overpriced but they somewhat hold a monopoly.
I'v been thinking about ditching line rental and BT by switching to VOIP using Virgin internet. You can get some pretty low cost deals. |
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#38 |
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Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,436
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There always smart Alecs who like to point out the obvious.
![]() Smart Alecs pay LESS ! BT know full well that there are millions of people like you that can't be bothered to switch, don't know how to switch, don't know they can switch, or think that the sky will fall in if they change their daffodil telephone or leave their beloved GPO. So they keep raising their prices ever higher and laughing at you, all the way to the bank. By condoning BT's high prices, you're making it more expensive for others as well as yourself...
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#39 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
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Really? And what about all the non-phone users of the copper network, the traffic lights, ATMs, burglar alarms, etc. Who's going to pay for them all to be retrofitted with fibre equipment, battery backup, etc?
For the vast majority of users who have nothing more esoteric than a phone line and broadband, there is no explicit need to keep the copper going - BT's own FTTP network proves that. Quote:
do you suggest ripping out all the working, amortized exchange equipment and replacing it with smaller systems to handle only the non-fibre customers? That'll not save any money.
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Even if they do go all fibre, what about the PON splitters and associated equipment, they'll have to go somewhere?
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Then there's the whole trunk network to rebuild. And the TV network. And the mobile networks. And of course the military networks.
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They're certainly not interested in a fantasy long-term that may never happen. There's a very large percentage of internet users who are exclusively mobile, with no fixed broadband, and it's growing. Just like mobile phones are taking over from fixed lines in many cases.
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Sure, BT could invest billions, and in 20 years we'd have an all-fibre network. Just in time to discover that 80% of users are now on 4G/5G. Such a good investment of customers' money that would be.
This is some fantastic mental gymnastics from you. Quote:
They'll rent duct and pole space if you want it. Unless you're suggesting they give that away free? Hey, why not give the line rental free as well, after all it apparently costs nothing to run, as we're regularly informed here.
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Competitors can install their own ducts and poles if they want. They don't. The reason is that it's too expensive to do so. It does not cost peanuts to maintain such a network, as some people seem to think.
It certainly costs BT a lot less to maintain the network built and maintained courtesy of the taxpayer, than it would for a new operator to build from scratch. Quote:
Well, pick another supplier then.
Oh look, they all charge about the same. I wonder why that is? Maybe because it's a reasonable commercial rate, and broadband suppliers aren't charities? The point here is that BT Retail's pricing is hilariously bad, and this has nothing to do with any of Openreach's maintenance costs. |
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#40 |
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Join Date: Jun 2008
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Of course there is a revolutionary idea that has been bandied about for many years and it's called nationalisation. Take all the telecom companies under Government control and they can set the same price for everyone. Then all we would need to do is to vote every few years for the party who gave us the best prices. It would seemingly work for all other utilities and transport too. Well at least you would only need one point of contact and one place to lay the blame.
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#41 |
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Dredge up niche corner cases if you want, but you appear to be missing the point - many of the things you mention have alternatives - you can do POTS or ISDN over fibre (or better yet, eliminate the cruft and go IP), ATMs are slowly moving to some form of IP transit (ADSL or 3G/4G or whatever),.
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Sounds like a BT shareholder's version of "what about my dividend".
No really, I think I only got about £15 last year My pension fund probably gets a lot more, though.Quote:
Even BT, at one point, thought that this wasn't the best way to go - that's why they started the 21CN project - and that's why it can handle voice - because at one point they were going to do a mass migration from the old TDM kit onto the MSANs that now get used primarily for broadband access.
And then they stopped doing it, because it didn't work very well, and wasn't seen as a useful way to go.Quote:
The military might well be a case (but also one that could be eased off of copper in time), but I'd be interested to know what TV distribution and what bits of BT's trunk network are exclusively copper.
I didn't say the trunk network was copper. It links those 5500 POTS exchanges that you want to get rid of. If you replace them with different technology you'll have to redesign and rebuild the trunk network that interconnects them.All perfectly possible, very expensive, and giving no practiacal advantage to the vast majority of users. Quote:
Very large? Doubtful. There are indeed people dumping fixed-line telephony for mobile, but I'd like to see some facts on whether people are dumping wired broadband for mobile. Can't see it - it costs more than wired internet, is slower, and is capped.
If they don't have a fixed line any more, how would they be getting their ADSL? Cable companies like Virgin don't cover much of the country. Lots of those people you see glued to facbook on the mobile don't use the internet for much else. As for speed, I can get faster 3G at home than I do wired broadband, and the cap doesn't matter since I don't download huge amounts.Quote:
This is some fantastic mental gymnastics from you.
Not really, it's pretty obvious stuff
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#42 |
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Join Date: Jan 2002
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Of course there is a revolutionary idea that has been bandied about for many years and it's called nationalisation. Take all the telecom companies under Government control and they can set the same price for everyone.
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#43 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
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I'm well aware of the alternatives, I've worked on some of them, but it's you who are missing the point. You can replace anything with different technology, but someone has to pay for it, and in general they don't like to do that. Running a pair of wires to an ATM is cheap, whether they run X.25 or IP/ADSL. Fibre is unnecessarily expensive, no ATM needs an 80Mbit/s connection!
You're right, an ATM probably does not need 80Mbit - but I fail to see why this matters - BT could just as easily offer a lower bandwidth product over FTTP for those situations where it isn't necessary. On alarms, even BT themselves think that IP + mobile backup is suitable for monitoring - http://www.redcare.bt.com/Products_services/Secure.html - suitable for the most highest grade of risk, apparently. Quote:
And then they stopped doing it, because it didn't work very well, and wasn't seen as a useful way to go.
If an AXE10 or System X has a catastrophic failure, they're probably not going to get Ericsson or Telent to make them another... Quote:
I didn't say the trunk network was copper. It links those 5500 POTS exchanges that you want to get rid of. If you replace them with different technology you'll have to redesign and rebuild the trunk network that interconnects them.
All perfectly possible, very expensive, and giving no practiacal advantage to the vast majority of users. No practical advantage? There are huge cost savings from not having to maintain thousands of exchanges and in some areas, possibly some profit from building/land sell offs. Plus all that unnecessary copper. Quote:
If they don't have a fixed line any more, how would they be getting their ADSL? Cable companies like Virgin don't cover much of the country. Lots of those people you see glued to facbook on the mobile don't use the internet for much else. As for speed, I can get faster 3G at home than I do wired broadband, and the cap doesn't matter since I don't download huge amounts.
I don't know anyone who has voluntarily moved to mobile broadband on the basis that they can eliminate a landline, other than those who find that 3G can provide better speeds than their crappy ADSL. I'll concede that Virgin are probably a bit worse than BT in this regard, because they make their pricing such that phone and broadband is only slightly more expensive than broadband on its own. I think BT Retail still requires you to buy a phone line to have FTTP broadband though, which makes little sense The people I see using Facebook on their phones are either outside of their house (where the landline is irrelevant) or at home, on wifi, through their home broadband connection. |
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#44 |
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Join Date: Jul 2008
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A rip off! I couldn't agree more.
I don't know if you've heard, but the independent 'Co-operative Phone & Broadband' are still doing their line rental for £15.50 with a discount for paying a year in bulk. Their broadband is also £4 for six months and then £8 theraftere. It's just a good deal from a good company to deal with. I've been with them for a while now and their customer service is second to none too! http://thephone.coop |
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#45 |
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Join Date: May 2006
Location: Scotland
Posts: 2,246
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I just got my email about my 12 month line rental saver running out this month. £169.90 for 12 months. Just renewed, think my broadband is on contract till august/September. Just waiting to see what the deal with champions league footie will be come then.
Phoneline £14.16 1571 - £1.85 Caller display - £1.75 Infinity 2 - £24.10 Tv entertainment - £7.45 HD bolt on - £3.00 Bt sports for free I grudge paying these |
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#46 |
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Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Hull
Posts: 707
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I don't miss getting those extra suprise charges, Thankfully I don't get them since I switched away...
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#47 |
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Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,436
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1571 - £1.85
I grudge paying these It's anti-social: people calling you when the line is busy can be charged just to be told you're on the phone, and if it's urgent they can't even set a callback. It's also incompatible with Call Waiting. Just get an answering machine instead. Much friendlier, you can record your own greeting, and most have a Call Saver facility that lets you check for new messages when you're away from home without having to pay for the call. |
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#48 |
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Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: In Gods Own County
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I am a BT customer who talk Infinity and land line I begrudge paying £16.99 for line rental whilst making no phone calls
Surely its time we were given the option of paying the full wack and getting voice calls or say a fee of around £8.99 pm simply to access fibre broadband |
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#49 |
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Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Scotland, Dunfermline Area
Posts: 10,698
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I renewed all my BT contracts for another year this evening and the woman on phone tried to get me to change to DD saying you will save £2 a month I told her no.
Im happy paying £15 or £20 a week towards the BT bill with there payment card. I got the BT bill online last week and as I thought line rental for the 3 months was over 4 times the cost of calls we had made in the same 3 months. I was getting a £5 a month discount on Infinity 2 and although they are now giving us a £6.15 a month discount im still paying nearly the same price as I was when I was getting the £5 a month discount due to the BT price increases. They did give me BT TV entertainment for £5 a month for 12 months. I still have the HD extra and the BT film/box set bolt ons and I cancaled the BT music bolt on. Over all with all the new 12 month BT contracts I will be making a saving on my old BT contracts but not really by much after you add on the cost of the 1571 answer service. Darren |
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My pension fund probably gets a lot more, though.