Just Interested

I see offers recently being made in the communication world of offering many services, Broadband, Telephone,TV all bundled together, without the necessity of have a Landline.
Are these companies Totally FREE of BT or is it purely All Smoke and Mirrors.
Curious.

Can you point to any of the offers? Virgin obviously can do this. There are some parts of the country that could do this via wireless or fibre providers.

So, give us links to some offers and maybe we can give a reasoned answer.

Except, of course, VM cable is even more "landline" than Openreach overhead cables. It is 100% underground - land-bound. Maybe BT Group should report that to the ASA .

But most don't associate VM with "landline" as much as they do Openreach. And VM do supply services that don't include landline charges - at least not as a separate charge (hidden in the broadband charge).

It all depends what you mean by "landline" as a necessity.

To different people, it can mean
- The physical connection, which you can't really do without
- The monthly payment for the physical link
- The monthly payment for a voice service

At a retail level, where the "line rental" payment is increasing massively, it is really a mix of
- The monthly payment for the physical link, as wholesale payment to BT
- A monthly payment to help cover the broadband network

The communications companies are nowadays getting used to reduction of money from call volumes, so more of their income if currently focused on this "landline" element ... but it isn't really going to pay for the voice service.

In the future, you could forego a "landline" voice service, but don't expect your monthly outlay to be markedly cheaper. Not a lot of the current "landline" monthly payment actually covers voice.

So ... it is all a game of marketing smoke and mirrors. What names to call things, and how to make things appeal to regular switchers: how to persuade people to leave BT. But what matters is the same as it always was - the total monthly cost.

Went past a store window one of the Mobile Phone Companies, appeared to give it 'ALL'( as per my original post) without a landline.
Simply curious, no other reason.

If that was Vodafone they now just quote an all-in cost for landline and broadband. Anything else in the bundle is irrelevant to that.

In reply to a post by helpoort:

Went past a store window one of the Mobile Phone Companies, appeared to give it 'ALL'( as per my original post) without a landline.

Which Mobile Phone Company exactly?

Read today 26 Aug: Vodafone 'Scraps' line-rental fees'.Vodafone has become the second ISP after Talk Talk to scrap separate line-rental-fees.
The article continues: this does not mean cheaper bills, instead line-rental will be included in the overall monthly cost.
ASA has ordered ISPs to include these charges in the price they promote from 31st October.
Why the Big announcement by the ISP.
Again 'Smoke and Mirrors' or attempts to pull wool over eyes.

Just Ofcom getting it wrong, again. I'd rather know which ISP wants to rip me off most with line rental. Openreach charge them at most £7.23 per month, plus Vat would be £8.67 compared with what we are charged.

It has fallen nearly every year since 2006 and is now the lowest since then.

Which makes annual or more often rises in line rental costs more than a little suspicious.

I pay £13pm line rental, plus £1pm for caller display. 1471 and 1571 are included.