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.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

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.

I don't have a problem with it. Most people take both services from one company, and there's no justification for ISPs requiring customers to take their line rental for their BB to split the prices up when both services must be taken together as a unit.

It's a meaningless split which allows ISPs to splash "free broadband" across the screen while saying it actually costs £18 in smaller print.

It's the fact the cross-subsidy is what is paying for all the "free" services such as (mainly) sport, cloud space, and so on that really bugs me.

The idea of being ripped off or not on the line rental is surely not relevant at all. The wholesale cost of a line is just one of the cost inputs, along with back-haul.MSANs or whatever. There is no rational sense in which individual markups on particular elements of the input costs make any real sense at all for a bundled package. It's simply a presentational issue. What matters is the total cost of comparable bundles. The ISPs just simply massage those individual elements to emphasise the particular element they wish - it has absolutely no meaning to apply an arbitrary markup figure to just one element when a bundled supplier doesn't sell it individually.

It's a bit more sensible with partially unbundled lines (such as choosing voice from one supplier and BB from another), but that's the minority case. In any event, it exposes that ridiculous fiction of Ofcom's that the voice element essentially pays for almost all the physical line costs (which is just a hangover).

So, no. That "ripped" off bit over the line rental element is meaningless. It's just an arbitrary way bundled suppliers present their bills.

Heard a quick advert on the radio today Saturday 27th August.

'WE HAVE DONE AWAY WITH LINE RENTAL'.

To which audience is this advertisement aimed.
Not people with whom I associate or is it a SUB CULTURE.

(missed the beginning of the advert suspect it was Vodafone but cannot be certain)

Aimed at the gullible.

(missed the beginning of the advert suspect it was Vodafone but cannot be certain)

http://blog.vodafone.co.uk/2016/08/09/huge-news-voda...

Edited by Apprentice (Sat 27-Aug-16 18:32:26)

However, putting aside the silly marketing and acknowledging that line rental is bundled into the price, £25 a month for line rental and unlimited 40 meg fibre is pretty impressive considering that's not a special offer. Vodafone therefore undercuts Plusnet's already very cheap price by £8.

Do they undercut Sky and TT though?

If you compare standard prices yes, but will Vodafone be this price in 18 months?

I did wonder about it being a market share grabber, and possible mobile bundles or discounts like we had with O2. Just too many other things in my head at the moment to go and analyse their website.

Retired life gets so busy .... As you are overworked now, don't retire! It gets worse if you do .

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Do they undercut Sky and TT though?

Yes. Although TalkTalk undercut Plusnet slightly on ADSL2+, Plusnet were the cheapest fibre provider available prior to Vodafone.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

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.

Isn't it at least that cost since some providers, inc BT, pay more for premium line rental or maintenance options. I would suggest that most people want to know the total price and make a value judgement based on the whole. To only focus on gross profit of line rental and ignore the rest is a bit... eccentric. As you yourself point out, the margins are not spread linearly across the components, hence the crazy prices on LR both ways.... so where's the logic in your method?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

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

A very good reading on the Roberto-o-meter. How much do you pay for your broadband, must be cheap as chips?

£35 as of 1 September. Was £40 but the price has been reduced.

Ouch. 100GB limit too?

Finale!!!!
My Sunday Newspaper carried a half page advertisement.:
It showed three Males jumping in the Air (one Holding a ripped in half 'Line Rental Invoice).
With falling pieces of paper, from ripped up line rental invoices surrounding them in the air.
And now the punch line of the advert:

NO MORE LINE RENTAL CHARGES WITH HOME BROADBAND.

VODAFONE POWER TO YOU.

The small print of the advertisement contains the words:' No line rental charges available on new and upgrading fibre broadband products only'.

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

Can I ask who that's with Bob?

Pulse8.

That page defaults to the Business tab, so click the Home one.

There aren't any call packages, but with per-second billing at 1ppm peak and 0.8ppm off-peak, with no call setup charges, that is cheap! Bog standard WLR3.

Thanks Bob. You have a PM.