Phone mast rents may increase

Mobile phone customers could be held to ransom by landowners - according to the paper version. The heading in the online version is slightly different.

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... They say the lack of legislation on rent charges mean farmers have almost unfettered power to increase the rent they charge for phone companies to access mast sites. The mobile industry argues this is unfair because the landowner can charge a huge mark-up because they already have a mast on their site. ...

Hmmmmm ... all sounds very much the same as telecoms providers various charging totally unreasonable and ever increasing rental for a landline plus a crafty disconnection fee for ceasing use of the line. Similarly unfair when customers are mostly sort-of tied in to retaining a landline even if they don't actually make any significant calls on it. The seemingly annual £1/m increase with no remotely plausible justification immediately brings in £millions from a largely captive audience which is clearly being used to subsidise other areas of the business and most providers jump on the conveniently passing bandwagon driven by BT.

Telecom providers raping/pillaging customers on a regular basis as a matter of routine is apparently just fine and dandy but it's so unfair for providers to be even remotely on the receiving end of very similar treatment it seems :rolleyes: When 'line rental' returns to being a realistic and totally justified charge for doing exactly what it says on the tin and legislation prevents providers from jacking up such generic charges to subsidise new customers and/or other services provided only to certain other customers then I might perhaps have some sympathy. Until such time, farmers attempting to fleece providers in order to subsidise other areas of their business kinda seems like fair game. i.e. if you want unreasonably cheap milk then best get used to enjoying much higher mobile phone charges and all that !

Having said that, we the enduser/customer will ultimately pick up the tab of course so the above is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Charges for anything in general should in every case always be realistic and justifiably fair & reasonable with no available option for attempted abuse of a captive audience.

Edited by ambrougham (Tue 12-Jan-16 02:15:49)

Landline rental rises can potentially be explained by the change in usage.

In years gone by line rental was low as the providers would make most of their money from call charges. Now that most people are using mobiles or the Internet for their communications the amount of money coming in from calls is reducing. A rise in line rental is one of the few ways easily open to them to offset this decrease in income.

You could argue that many were making excessive profits but in order to keep the shareholders happy the money has to come from somewhere.

When Mobile Phone Masts were sited many years ago the Telecomm providers freeley entered into a contract with the land owner for access and land use normally for a period of 20 years. That period has now run its course and the contract is up for renewal. It is a free market out there and both parties will have their bargaining position. In the end both parties have the option of not renewing the contract or agreeing new terms.

Isn't that the point?

The wholesale cost of rental and of calls has decreased. Justifying the annual huge increases at the retail level by citing the reduced number of calls made doesn't hold water.

It is the broadband usage that is costing the ISP's so much. In particular the cost of TV and sports rights in themselves, and the throughput capacity to support them. Broadband charges should cover them, not lines and calls.

There is no way those costs should be imposed on people who do not require those services, through exhorbitant rental and call charges. Many such are in fact poorer members of society who either don't have an internet connection, or have one and use it only to a small degree.

However, we digress away from the original topic. I think the mobile companies have to accept that the rental they agreed twenty years ago reflected the situation on mobile phones at the time. Agricultural costs have risen and income been squeezed hugely since then, alongside mobile companies' profits growing enormously.

They need to pay up, and we need either to pay up when they raise prices, vote with our wallets, or high volume mobile users need to cut their cloth. Farmers need to make a decent living, and we need them to survive. Maybe mobile companies will have to accept a small profit fall.

I have never seen a breakdown of income against costs for the line itself. I don't know how much it costs BT to maintain the millions of lines in the UK and how much of that is covered by line rental. Without those figures it would be an assumption as to whether line rental was subsiding other areas - do you have access to the figures that would show this?

If BT are using line rental to offset costs for things like BT Sport then why are most other providers charging around the same level? Are they all just cross subsidising their broadband? Why are there relatively few providers that have cheaper line rental (such as Pulse8)?

In reply to a post by ian72:

If BT are using line rental to offset costs for things like BT Sport then why are most other providers charging around the same level?

Because they can. The eye-watering amounts paid for BT Sport must be raised somewhere, in BT's case from their customers. The other ISPs aren't going to miss this opportunity to hike their prices yet still stay below BT. I share Bob's opinion that the sport enthusiasts should pay for their viewing, it shouldn't be hard to bill their accounts accordingly. The present arrangement gives unlimited funds to feed the annual billing wars.

Openreach line rental prices (WLR3) since March 2006. (Edit - on 1 April 2016 it drops another £2.78pa).

The profit from me is being made by Pulse8, charging £13pm plus £1pm for Caller Display. That's what I call reasonable.

If you take their 80/20 FTTC, the line rental drops to £6pm, but the total is £44pm. So they are charging a realistic price of £38pm for people wanting unlimited.

BT equivalent but including E & W calls is £48pm. £4 buys an awful lot of time at 0.8ppm with no setup charges on Pulse8.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 12-Jan-16 13:58:15)

And what about all the other providers who don't have TV rights to pay who still charge in the retail region for £16 to £17.50 per month?

It is not as simple as saying BT need to pay for sports rights, a large chunk of which is covered by what the pubs pay to show the sports channels.

The data on the call and line rental bundles, shows the overall amount people pay for calls and rental has dropped over time, i.e. more people making use of bundles, delaying calls to fit into evening or weekend bundles etc.

If people want full transparency, then people will need to be billed multiple things

1. Line rental with no calls
2. Call bundle
3. Broadband service
4. A billing/support charge

and things like broadband hardware charged at proper cost not free, same for migrations and activations charge the wholesale plus a reasonable margin.