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 .