From today's (all right, yesterday's now!) Mail on Sunday:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=406401&in_page_id=2&ct=5

Article starts:

Quote:

A savage price war over phone call costs is expected to follow a decision by watchdog Ofcom to end 20 years of direct control of BT's consumer business. .....

Ah, so BT are keen to reduce prices then.

It's a pity they don't want to reduce line rental charges as well, since that has just gone up.

It's been 18 months since BT abolished their standard tariff, and sold us the idea of doing for our benefit, putting up the price by £1 per month and reducing their call charges.

This removal of regulation might sound good, but whats to stop BT then starting to give all our calls for free, and putting up our line rental half way between what it is now, and Option 3 and forcing us all to use it, even those who don't make enough calls.

This will mean the competitors will not be able to offer anything.  At the moment they undercut BTs 5.5p for one hour calls, with some offering free weekend calls, all for no monthly charge.

When I was on standard tariff, I was paying for a phone line, and my extra £1 charge is now for fact that calls are cheaper on Option 1, but even cheaper elsewhere!!

BT might have fierce competition on the calls, but on the line rental, BT have a near monopoly and are never going to be competitive.

I had a salesman from Telewest the other day trying to make me switch over to them, and when I said I don't make any calls on my BT line, he said that he could install a broadband connection in the home, but not require me to have a phone line.  If I did that, I could then cancel BT, and use a VOIP provider to have an incoming geographic number.  I have to admit, I'm still wary of using VOIP as it relies on the broadband connection being reliable, whereas the BT line has always been reliable (except the odd bit of crackling with messes up my dial up every so often!!)

Shiggaddi wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2006 at 4:53pm:

It's a pity they don't want to reduce line rental charges as well, since that has just gone up. It's been 18 months since BT abolished their standard tariff, and sold us the idea of doing for our benefit, putting up the price by £1 per month and reducing their call charges.

But by removing the inclusive call allowance of £2.15 per month that was with BT Standard, the increase was really £3.15 or 43% of the underlying rental charge of £7.35. Thus, the current charge of £11.00 per month means that increase is actually 50% within 18 months.


Shiggaddi wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2006 at 4:53pm:

This removal of regulation might sound good, but whats to stop BT then starting to give all our calls for free, and putting up our line rental half way between what it is now, and Option 3 and forcing us all to use it, even those who don't make enough calls.

That seems to be what it's all about. When the BT Together package was first introduced all calls were charged on a per minute basis, lower than BT Standard rates. Now, short evening and weekend calls cost more than daytime ones. Hence the reason for pushing 'free' 1571.

In 2003 the BT Together packages were 'revamped' allowing evening and weekend calls to be 6p for upto an hour, as well as reducing other call charges. They also removed the call allowance of £2.40 per month, thereby effectively increasing the line rental by that amount. The charge was £11.50, thus with call allowance was really £9.10, or £1.75 above BT Standard's £7.35.

I doubt whether people will have seen through BT's spin that it wasn't a cheaper package, per se, but a different one. It was moving the goalposts, as it were.

In 2004 BT Together was reduced by £1, and forced BT Standard subscribers onto it.


Shiggaddi wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2006 at 4:53pm:

When I was on standard tariff, I was paying for a phone line, and my extra £1 charge is now for fact that calls are cheaper on Option 1, but even cheaper elsewhere!!

As I said above, not all calls are cheaper on Option 1 and the real increase was £3.15.

Either way you look at it, it's all about creating illusions that fool the majority. This seems to be caused by the sheer number of different variables (call types) and the marketeers only talking about the good bits.

Dave, you are absolutely right about the call allowance.  I had PlusNet (until December 2003), which gave internet for 20 hours a week, which was approximately what I used, however I had their 0845 number as my best friend, and so kept within my internet allowance, and using my free allowance both in tandem.  I got the 20% discount and thus my line rental was about £27.50 per quarter.

Also, the 5.5p fixed charge is a farce when you call someone and leave a message, as daytime rates would mean you would only pay the 5p minimum charge (assuming you're using BT!!)

Perhaps when we're all paying more for line rental and getting free calls, they might start charging for 1571.

Also, the BT privacy isn't as generous as BT make out.  The adverts on the TV might say that you're stopping calls about inflatable gazeebos, but in fact most of my junk calls come from India asking if I'm the "BT line payer"  It's obvious that they're trying to sell me telecoms service to run on the BT line.  Naturally these companies would be registered with the TPS, and anyone taking up the BT privacy full package would stop getting these calls.  Savvy moneysavers would always look around for better deals on the net anyway, but alot of BT customers do switch over after receiving marketing calls from Homecall/Talk Talk etc and introductory offers, and then the same apathy that kept them with BT, keeps them with the other companies.  These are the exact customers that BT don't want to lose and with free BT privacy, no chance of sales calls to lure them away!!

I think that one of the points that has been missed in this topic is the continuing development of the Wholesale Line Rental product that BT Openreach (BT's Network) has to provide to other telecoms companies. At the moment most companies only offer discounted calls (you still have to pay BT line rental). What this product allows other companies to do is to take over the whole line so that they will be charging line rental as well as calls. A cap of around £100 per line per year is likely to be placed on BT by Ofcom.

This way BT simply can't knock down the call charge and increase the line rental because if they do people will move to another company (in theory anyway, whether or not this will work is a different matter). Get ready to be bombarded with more companies offering to cut your bills and signing you up for a service you never agreed to ;).

From the linked article

Quote:

One analyst said: 'Many consumers think that price controls are there to stop BT jacking up prices. That is incorrect, they were there to stop BT from undercutting competitors that did not have the wherewithal to resist.'

Now that is very odd indeed, as I'm sure I remember listening on the radio a couple of years ago to a BT spokesman explaining the line rental increases and compulsory migration to BT Together .........

...... he said that BT were fed up with seeing price comparisons by their competitors such as BT rate 8p, our rate 3p - but he omitted to mention the huge line rental increase that Dave rightly points out, and which taxes other companies customers. So I think people are right to be sceptical about BT's future behaviour on line rental.

How generous of BT to allow upstart minnows like Energis and Cable & Wireless and others to survive until then by only charging two and a half times as much, sustaining 8p rates well past any justification for the price and leaving the historical overhang of 0870 numbers

BT itself was sceptical about introducing broadband, or its managers took a lot of convincing by their engineers, as they were worried about losing pstn revenues.

A savage price war? Hee hee. BT has been complacent and not subjected to proper competition in the 20 years since privatisation. What was it Denis Healey said about being attacked by Geoffrey Howe?

grimp wrote on Jan 24^th, 2006 at 3:31pm:

I think that one of the points that has been missed in this topic is the continuing development of the Wholesale Line Rental product that BT Openreach (BT's Network) has to provide to other telecoms companies. At the moment most companies only offer discounted calls (you still have to pay BT line rental). What this product allows other companies to do is to take over the whole line so that they will be charging line rental as well as calls. A cap of around £100 per line per year is likely to be placed on BT by Ofcom.

But the problem is that the BT Wholesale Line Rental charge Ofcom has agreed to is quite exorbitantly high so none of BT's comptitors can possibly afford to offer line rental for any significantly less than BT ripoff price in the long run.  This is because Ofcom continue to accept the ridiculous costs that BT claims it incurs in running its old copper wire phone lines.  Yet my water company only charges £5.25 a quarter for the pipe and water meter and my whole bill per quarter including the water is only around £20.  Also why had Ofcom not insisted on BT offering  a lower cost line rental for those who do not want to make any calls with BT but need it for broadband - how can they call it Option 1 when there is no Option about it - BT Standard was the correct description.

Because TalkTalk is so aggressive and have CarPhoneWarehouse shops to sign up new customers they now have over 1 million users but they are scarcely any cheaper than BT.  Ofcom WLR section awards themselves a big pat on the back for this but in reality they have actually made the cost of BT line rental much higher for those who would be perfectly happy with just a broaband connection (using Voip for calls) with no phone line facility.

Unfortunately Ofcom depends on politically correct spin to claim it has achieved something rather than looking at reality.  Also since they have made so many staff changes and staff switches it seems that many of them have no clue of the long term position or the big picture that we consumers so clearly see.  Or at least that was my impression from some of the comments made by Sean Williams (that they are all quite new at Ofcom and so don't feel responsible for many of the unpopular historic OFTEL and early Ofcom decisions that give us such a negative view of their organisation) when I attended the NTS Consumer Workshops.

andy9 wrote on Jan 24^th, 2006 at 5:56pm:

A savage price war? Hee hee. BT has been complacent and not subjected to proper competition in the 20 years since privatisation. What was it Denis Healey said about being attacked by Geoffrey Howe?

For once we can agree andy9.  The fact is that BT is still a grotesquely overstaffed and inefficient monopoly and that is why the cost of phone line rental remains so high to prop up the whole creaky state monopoly style enterprise.  Then because it would not be politically expedient to see BT go bust (especially with their commitment to the government a couple of years ago to roll our near universal low speed broadband) Ofcom/the government agrees to BT's totally inflated valuation of their copper wire network which underpins all the disgracefully high charges made for BT Wholesale Line Rental.

It is an utter disgrace that a customer who just needs the BT wire for a competitive broadband connection with lots of competition, even in a rural area like mine, is forced to take the BT Option 1 line rental at its totally excessive cost even if no PSTN phone calls are made.

The big mistake was not to create a Telecoms Transco that was completely separate from BT Retail and then make BT just compete as another call carrier.  You will notice that in the gas and electricity markets there is far more variability on the cost of the standing charge and even plenty of no standing charge products to choose from but not with telephone line rental because the BT WLR charge is so disgarcefully high.  And my water company has no competition but delivers by far the best of value of all on standing charges.

I have just bought a VOIP phone. In order to make 'phone calls to non VOIP subscribers it is necesary to create a credit.

I chose BTClick, seemed very secure, (after all I was parting with a tenner).

When I had done this they replied, advising me that if there were any problems I should ring 0870 ....

I promptly cancelled the account, they were quite put out!

Perhaps I am reading more into this than there actually is but I wonder if the end is nigh?

Incidentally, the non subscriber VOIP calls are incredibly cheap, even 0870.

juby

A happy New Year to you all.

juby wrote on Jan 28^th, 2006 at 8:32pm:

I have just bought a VOIP phone. In order to make 'phone calls to non VOIP subscribers it is necesary to create a credit. I chose BTClick, seemed very secure, (after all I was parting with a tenner).

This BT Click seems to make no reference to a Voip service - www.btclick.co.uk

Why didn't you use www.voipcheap.co.uk Juby?  They don't charge anything for 01/02 calls other than the initial credit you have to put down.

Anyhow by the way its good to see you back on the site.  I can remember a time when you were one of the site's top posters but I think that must have been more than 1,000 of my own posts ago.  I expect you have probably been using your own time far more constructively during the interim.

I wonder what became of dorf? [smiley=undecided.gif]