In reply to a post by Andrue:

Yes. Of course we don't know what the UK telecoms landscape would be like if BT had never been spun off but we can make reasonable assumptions based on the known performance of the Post Office. It would be more expensive. We'd probably still be in the middle of an ADSL roll-out and we'd have a limited choice of routers available to us that we have to rent.

Left in the hands of a government agency it would be an expensive, underperforming and out-dated service. They always are.

But even if you refuse to compare against a hypothetical scenario the truth is that UK broadband is still some of the cheapest in the world.

http://royal.pingdom.com/2013/03/12/broadband-prices/

The way CPs are pulling everything into Line Rental is irritating but in practice doesn't really mean much. It's unlikely it would make much difference even they chose to break the charges down in a more reasonable way. CPs are not making money hand over fist. Most are struggle to make a profit which is multi-play is so popular.

We really don't know where we would be if the telecom market was not privatised, it may have been better. The problem is line rental keeps going up and yet we get nothing for it and it is not like we we can choose another provider, ok we can, but the prices are more or less the same. The other problem is most broadband providers will not allow customers to take just broadband and then have a look at prices of line rental form other companies and the ones that do decides to up the prices.
Plusnet, one of the few that do allow you have just broadband is £17.49 a month for their lower speed FTTC without line rental, £15 more or less if you have line rental. so to save anything if I went onto their FTTC only service I have to find someone who have line rental below £14,50, which is more or less impossible.

Who one earth allowed this you must have our line rental if you want our broadband anyway?
It is like going into Tescos and they saying, if you buy bread from here you have to buy our butter to go with it.
Even with energy we can choose to have separate gas and electric, sure you may get a better deal if you have it from the same company, I say may, because not always. I know of someone who got their energy from two different companies and save money,, but you need to through a lot to get it and a lot of research. i looked at it, but it would cost me more.

It would be nice to have more of a choice, there is very little to choose to be honest between all the large providers, they all use the same network and they are more or less the same price. i think it is bull that they struggle to make a profit, if it was that bad they would close. I presume Sky started broadband because they thought it would bring more people to Sky and yes no doubt companies do use other services to try and get people to use their broadband network, but they are still making a profit out of broadband, if they think we are using too much bandwidth then they need to change their pricing options.

I really must send a email to Vodafone talking about multiplay and tell them to stop bugging me about their broadband.


Oh yes, just as a edit and after thought, 18 month contracts are too long, they also need to be reduced.

Edited by zyborg47 (Thu 30-Jun-16 11:06:51)

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

... so to save anything if I went onto their FTTC only service I have to find someone who have line rental below £14,50, which is more or less impossible..

Pulse8Broadband £13, or £6 in some bundles. Plusnet FTTC runs fine on it. All their phone and broadband contracts are monthly, though they have a higher joining charge for joining on FTTC as people were taking advantage and leaving after a month following free activation. The FTTC prices include compulsory line rental, the ADSLx ones don't. Whether you can have ADSLx from them with line rental elsewhere I don't know.

Aquiss £13. I don't think you have to take their broadband, but easy enough to ask them. All their phone contracts are monthly as well.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 30-Jun-16 16:07:54)

The main start of having to have phone and broadband together was LLU. It was cheaper for LLU suppliers if they unbundled both parts of the line so they could do better deals. Many other companies then jumped on it in order to better control things.

If they switched it so that you just paid a single amount that gave you broadband (and the phone line needed to run it) people wouldn't complain so much about it - it is only because it is split out and the feeling you get "nothing" for line rental that causes the big angst. What you get for line rental is the fault management of the physical medium, connection to services in the exchange and the ability to make and receive calls.

The costs are most likely going up because the call revenues are going down - with Internet and mobile call revenues are significantly down on what they used to be. If all the ISPs were making massive profits then there would be an argument but in general they aren't so whether they increase the charge for line rental or for broadband is largely irrelevant.

There is something of a cartel feel when it comes to line rental charges but I suspect it is that the ISPs would charge a lot me if they could get away with it but are keeping them down to the same as their competition - and so once one moves they all move (well, nearly all).

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Aquiss £13. I don't think you have to take their broadband, but easy enough to ask them.

Nope, you don't have to take our broadband. We have a large and growing customer base that just use our landline services, keeping broadband elsewhere.

Details of our phone services can be found http://www.aquiss.net/phone_line_rental.php

I was on 40/20 for £10 with line rental via line rental saver. I've got static IP and host and use VPN.

I rang to cancel as I didn't want my upload halved. My line only supports about 60Mbps down.

I'm now on 76/20 Unlimited Fibre Extra for £10 per month for the entire term of a two year contract.

When I left BT ages ago they forgot to remove my BT Sport which I still get free of charge.

Very pleased with this result.

In reply to a post by musical_uk:

I was on 40/20 for £10 with line rental via line rental saver. I've got static IP and host and use VPN.

I rang to cancel as I didn't want my upload halved. My line only supports about 60Mbps down.

I'm now on 76/20 Unlimited Fibre Extra for £10 per month for the entire term of a two year contract.

When I left BT ages ago they forgot to remove my BT Sport which I still get free of charge.

Very pleased with this result.

You have done well.

Plusnet offered me nothing.

The new speed changes start in August so, I will see how I get on.

My contract expires in January 2017 so I will check again for any deals and move-on if necessary.

In reply to a post by IanBB:

They call it an 'Activation' fee. Quidco cashback more than covered it for me.

still a rip off how can something that is already active be activated?

Edited by tommy45 (Fri 01-Jul-16 13:03:16)

That's odd - I'm just getting redirected to the splash page when I click that - and I logged in and tried again - still the same.

Is it only for fibre customers, by any chance, so PN has deduced it doesn't affect me?

If not, any chance of a summary?

Edit: OK, scrub that. I did find it under "Price Guide for Residential Customers", but still not at your link.

So basically, line rental rises by £1 a month? They may not have included me, because I'm on LRS 'til December. I assume, as in the past, it won't affect me until the time comes to renew.

I will presumably still get hit by the 50p increase for the evening & weekend call plan, though.

Edited by TLM (Fri 01-Jul-16 20:38:58)

They offered me nothing as well, they really couldn't seem less bothered that I called to talk about leaving.

The link shows the main page and this paragraph

"Our prices are changing
Our monthly line rental price will be £17.99 from 1st September 2016. We’re making changes to some other prices and products, find out everything you need to know."

if you click the words "everything you need to know", it will goto the details.

BTW the link that I've used is the same link that those words use, but does different things if used externally to the Plusnet site than when clicked while at the site.