Yes, it's just over £52 per month for the rental and broadband. I think people often overlook the cost of the line rental when calculating their broadband costs because "I have to pay it anyway".

Broadband is the only service or product that I can think of that the Government is encouraging every household to buy whilst hitting them with the full VAT rate.

It is the principle that annoys me more than the costs; as most Government services move online then one has to pay the "luxury consumption tax" to access them. I don't have to pay VAT on a stamp to submit a form to HMRC by mail, in contrast.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

It is the principle that annoys me more than the costs; as most Government services move online then one has to pay the "luxury consumption tax" to access them. I don't have to pay VAT on a stamp to submit a form to HMRC by mail, in contrast.

But if I can play devil's advocate here - a lot of people think the only way we're going to get a proper NGA rolled out nationally is with government money. Removing or reducing the revenue they get from connectivity is hardly going to encourage them to spend vast sums upgrading.

It's the same problem for the private sector: People claim they need a fast connection but then sign up for the cheapest deal they can find.

It's bad enough trying to find applications that enough people really want in order to justify NGA. The fact that most people just don't want to pay extra anyway makes the whole exercise futile.

Your annoyance would perhaps reduce if you regarded VAT as a tax on value added rather than as a tax on luxuries.

You'll pay VAT on the envelope to send your forms in, and on whatever you use to fill the form in.

Im on a Market One Exchange (as Im sure many of you are sick of hearing lol) so the pricing of services available to me (or those that are not contended to a crawl) are controlled by the pricing stitch up between BT and OFCOM. I don't recognise a £50 expenditure even before moving my line rental to the Post Office, even with "Callsign" and Caller Display services on my line. That would have to be one really expensive ISP surely? The price hike imposed on IPSC data a couple of years back was well over 20%, and yet we are still seeing ZERO investment in the areas paying this unfairly inflated cost, my exchange has never had a WBC RFS date and the 3 they did announce about 16 months back vanished about the same time as FTTx rollout started.

Enta is as near as dammit £20. Thats an upto 8 meg service with a 30 gig peak allowance. I think thats a pretty good ball park figure for a non LLU service. I just had my phone bill, line rental is just under £31 for 3 months, so leaving out the "phone related services", to rent the basic line and pay my ISP is at most only £31 per month.

Id happily pay a few quid a month more for a better service, The joke is ISTR seeing an Infinity package for a fiver a month more than I pay for 30 gigs of a chunk less than 8 meg! I see people complaining bitterly about o2 raising prices and I wonder if they fully appreciate how lucky they are to have LLU - let alone the pretty good price for a higher speed service that has the bonus of being free of Btw's profiling nightmare.

Having said that, I wouldn't now go with o2 due to the new TM stuff, and as a result I'm moving all the family to a different network as I can see no reason to stay, they have not unbundled here in time for me to take up the "old packages". I moved my phone line from BT for the same reason - once the RFS dates for WBC in other parts of the county were withdrawn it was obvious that my own exchange (despite being the largest in the county) was a long way down their list of priorities... and probably deferred in favour of yet more investment in other areas which mostly already have faster services, and I could not see any reason to remain with them, yes I know my line is still generating revenue for BT group but the retail margin has gone, small as it is - they didn't deserve it - they have invested nothing here in terms of 21cn broadband, and even getting a line stability issue sorted has proven to be a battle.

Not everyone expects bargain basement high speed services, we need a dose of reality in the UK and an end to the ridiculous £9.99 tariffs that stifle investment and create unrealistic expectations of "all you can eat forever for a few pennies", they are a major part of the reason for the growing digital divide in the country.

Just My Opinion YMMV

In reply to a post by warweezil:

Im on a Market One Exchange (as Im sure many of you are sick of hearing lol) so the pricing of services available to me (or those that are not contended to a crawl) are controlled by the pricing stitch up between BT and OFCOM. I don't recognise a £50 expenditure even before moving my line rental to the Post Office, even with "Callsign" and Caller Display services on my line. That would have to be one really expensive ISP surely? The price hike imposed on IPSC data a couple of years back was well over 20%, and yet we are still seeing ZERO investment in the areas paying this unfairly inflated cost, my exchange has never had a WBC RFS date and the 3 they did announce about 16 months back vanished about the same time as FTTx rollout started.

Enta is as near as dammit £20. Thats an upto 8 meg service with a 30 gig peak allowance. I think thats a pretty good ball park figure for a non LLU service. I just had my phone bill, line rental is just under £31 for 3 months, so leaving out the "phone related services", to rent the basic line and pay my ISP is at most only £31 per month.

Id happily pay a few quid a month more for a better service, The joke is ISTR seeing an Infinity package for a fiver a month more than I pay for 30 gigs of a chunk less than 8 meg! I see people complaining bitterly about o2 raising prices and I wonder if they fully appreciate how lucky they are to have LLU - let alone the pretty good price for a higher speed service that has the bonus of being free of Btw's profiling nightmare.

Having said that, I wouldn't now go with o2 due to the new TM stuff, and as a result I'm moving all the family to a different network as I can see no reason to stay, they have not unbundled here in time for me to take up the "old packages". I moved my phone line from BT for the same reason - once the RFS dates for WBC in other parts of the county were withdrawn it was obvious that my own exchange (despite being the largest in the county) was a long way down their list of priorities... and probably deferred in favour of yet more investment in other areas which mostly already have faster services, and I could not see any reason to remain with them, yes I know my line is still generating revenue for BT group but the retail margin has gone, small as it is - they didn't deserve it - they have invested nothing here in terms of 21cn broadband, and even getting a line stability issue sorted has proven to be a battle.

Not everyone expects bargain basement high speed services, we need a dose of reality in the UK and an end to the ridiculous £9.99 tariffs that stifle investment and create unrealistic expectations of "all you can eat forever for a few pennies", they are a major part of the reason for the growing digital divide in the country.

Just My Opinion YMMV

There are a substantial number of people that would pay the price for HS Internet. Virgin for example proves that.

Some posters here seems to try to exagerate the costs of HS Broadband by costing in the Line rental but the line rental is a cost that is already there if as most people do and have a fixed line phone.

The cost of HS Broadband is not a major obstical for most people if they want it. It can at present costs as little as £20 a month which is not excessive. There will of course be those that dont want to pay more then £7 a month who will presumably not take it but there are enough people who would pay £20 a month. The numbers would increase as more uses came on stream for it and as costs fell with competion and lower costs for the technolgy.

The major problem is BT is always unwiling to invest in new techonlogy at any real pace it was the same with ADSL the rollout was slow and they got their marketting totally wrong and mostly enabled the wrong areas early.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

There are a substantial number of people that would pay the price for HS Internet. Virgin for example proves that.

Really? The last take-up figures from VM I heard about suggested the opposite. Take-up of their top packages has been quite poor. They even have to force customers to take a faster package by getting rid of the lower speed packages.

BT's Infinity isn't exactly taking the country by storm either.

Edited by Andrue (Sun 13-Feb-11 18:30:18)

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

There are a substantial number of people that would pay the price for HS Internet. Virgin for example proves that.

Really? The last take-up figures from VM I heard about suggested the opposite. Take-up of their top packages has been quite poor. They even have to force customers to take a faster package by getting rid of the lower speed packages.

BT's Infinity isn't exactly taking the country by storm either.

another thing wrong with how we got it here.

takeup in the uk is substantially higher than other countries for 2 prime reasons.

we have higher broadband coverage, particurly in rural areas (this is why I keep saying urban are paying the price for this). and the prices are at artifically low levels due to ofcom.

Is this a success, I think not, O2 are fighting with customers to try and charge prices that are perfectably reasonable. VM have people crying over one off £30 fees for a massive speed bump and new equipment, and BT are underselling FTTC at prices barely higher than what VM charge for 10mbit. This is a broken market, it stifles investment and encourages oversubscription practices. It will remain broken until prices go up, and it has to be across the board, just one isp selling at silly prices breaks it as customers of other isps can use that to threaten to leave for retention deals. I think the key to that is increasing the BT wholesale price for adsl ports and reintroducing price premiums for port speed. But no chance with ofcom they are obsessed with takeup and keeping retail cost down.

Ultimately profit margin is much more important than takeup, if you making 10p profit per month per customer there is no headroom for unexpected costs and investment.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sun 13-Feb-11 18:57:31)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

Is this a success, I think not, O2 are fighting with customers to try and charge prices that are perfectably reasonable.

Which is an education in itself - comparing Be pricing with O2 pricing. As a Be customer I hope they are charging enough to keep going but I have my doubts. Maybe their wholesale product is covering any shortfall.

VM have people crying over one off £30 fees for a massive speed bump and new equipment, and BT are underselling FTTC at prices barely higher than what VM charge for 10mbit. This is a broken market, it stifles investment and encourages oversubscription practices. It will remain broken until prices go up, and it has to be across the board, just one isp selling at silly prices breaks it as customers of other isps can use that to threaten to leave for retention deals.

Yup. I do think that our national take-up is a good thing - but somehow Ofcom and ISPs need to progress beyond that. Somehow they need to persuade people that it's worth paying a decent price :-/