In reply to a post by vinnym70:

My major reason for moving was to stop paying for the traditional line rental that services reliant on Openreach can't detach themselves from.

That's a misconception.

Openreach now sell broadband without the voice element.
It's almost the exact same price as with voice/line rental.

Take an example price of £29.99 a month for phone and broadband on Openreach...

A lot of people assume because they pay £19.99 a month line rental and £10.00 a month broadband that if they had no line rental the broadband would be £10.00. It wouldn't be/it isn't.
The line rental subsidizes the broadband in that scenario.
In reality standalone broadband without voice/line rental costs £1-2 cheaper, or the same. There's still a line being rented for the broadband.

Your People's Fibre/Swish Fibre connection also has line rental. They simply show your bill as a single price rather than breaking it down in to 2 parts.

Many Openreach providers now show a single price for phone and broadband with no mention of line rental. It isn't any cheaper.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by jpm:

With another six months to a year of cashflow they would probably have made it.

I'm not so sure about that.

Even taking the above in to consideration (people in contracts etc), 150 active subscribers from over 5000 properties passed is shockingly low.
That's under 3% take up

Yeh 3% would have been a kick to the nether regions for the investors who were no doubt promised much, much more…

Interesting though the variation in takeup across the UK with Openreach this year which varies from 28% in England to a low of 11% in NI - the latter no doubt pushed down by the rapid network expansion there this year.

I may live to eat my words but who wouldn't take up 900mbit FTTP for £30/month?

The landscape of how OR line rental is charged now is too skewed to make much sense and often hidden in introductory offers and the like. I've never been too keen on providers who bundle services together as it makes life way harder when you want to leave.

As you've pointed out, whether you take the voice element or not the price isn't much different. I 100% accept that OR have a network they need to maintain.

For me, an alternative provider just selling FTTP makes life a lot easier. A basic VoIP provider does all I need to replace my copper voice line and costs nothing bar the number porting costs.

In reply to a post by vinnym70:

For me, an alternative provider just selling FTTP makes life a lot easier. A basic VoIP provider does all I need to replace my copper voice line and costs nothing bar the number porting costs.

I don't see why it needs to be an Alt-net to get that.

I'm with Talktalk FTTP over Openreach. Data only, no number no calls. A single item on the bill. No line rental.
My landline number was ported to VOIP around 7 years ago.

As I mentioned above Openreach sell data only variants now, both FTTC and FTTP.
Many providers sell these. It costs around the same as line rental + broadband bundled, with the flexibility to move your number to VOIP.

I can't disagree with you on the price though. £30 a month for a gigabit is excellent.
I pay £30 a month for 550/75 but that's a promotional offer that will need haggling at the end of my contract.
To upgrade to gigabit would cost me another £20 a month.

Edited by j0hn83 (Fri 31-Dec-21 23:08:39)