I have seen reports that PO Homephone are now  blocking indirect access services like 1899/18866/ 18185,now Talk Talk have started providing the service instead of BT. I dont know if this applies to just lines delivered by LLU or all PO Homephone Lines.

You can still use these suppliers via there 0808 or 020 access numbers.

bigjohn wrote on Jan 10^th, 2014 at 7:39pm:

I have seen reports that PO Homephone are now  blocking indirect access services like 1899/18866/ 18185,now Talk Talk have started providing the service instead of BT. I dont know if this applies to just lines delivered by LLU or all PO Homephone Lines. You can still use these suppliers via there 0808 or 020 access numbers.

I have a Post Office Homephone line that has been with that company for about the last six years and I checked just now and I can still use 18185 with no problem.

My exchange does have a TalkTalk LLU that became operational a couple of years ago even though it is a countryside exchange serving only villages but quite a large one by country exchange standards (1900 lines).

However due to a recent difference of opinion with the Chief Executive of www.ovivomobile.com when I called him at 11am one Sunday morning on his mobile (when his customer service department were closed all day) about his repeatedly defective mobile internet service (as in for the last four days and when my home broadband has also just gone down) I recently changed mobile provider to Tesco Mobile on a one month contract SIM with 2Gb of data and 750 minutes of calls a month for £12.50 per month. 

So I have now started making all my daytime landline calls on my mobile instead of using 18185 as I always used to make nearly £5 worth and this allows me to immediately recoup several pounds per month of the Tesco Mobile line rental.   If Post Office Homephone does go down the indirect Access blocking route for some or all of their customers, at the behest of Opal Telecom the wholesale arm of the TalkTalk group, I suspect many people may consider getting a cheap contract mobile instead with lots of minute rather than paying £5 or so per month for Anytime calls to PO Homephone.

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 15^th, 2014 at 9:52pm:

However due to a recent difference of opinion with the Chief Executive of www.ovivomobile.com when I called him at 11am one Sunday morning on his mobile (when his customer service department were closed all day) about his repeatedly defective mobile internet service (as in for the last four days and when my home broadband has also just gone down) I recently changed mobile provider to Tesco Mobile on a one month contract SIM with 2Gb of data and 750 minutes of calls a month for £12.50 per month.

He may be the Chief Executive but I do not think it is right to call him at the time you said you did. The fact that your home broadband has gone down is nothing to do with Ovivo Mobile and any issues with the Ovivo Mobile service, or any mobile service for that matter, should be reported to the appropriate department.



NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 15^th, 2014 at 9:52pm:

So I have now started making all my daytime landline calls on my mobile instead of using 18185 as I always used to make nearly £5 worth and this allows me to immediately recoup several pounds per month of the Tesco Mobile line rental.   If Post Office Homephone does go down the indirect Access blocking route for some or all of their customers, at the behest of Opal Telecom the wholesale arm of the TalkTalk group, I suspect many people may consider getting a cheap contract mobile instead with lots of minute rather than paying £5 or so per month for Anytime calls to PO Homephone.

Opal Telecom changed to TalkTalk Business quite some time ago.

I don't quite understand the Tesco Mobile SIM Only packages. That page says that for £12.50 one can have 750 minutes, 5,000 texts and 2GB of data. Yet for £15.00 one can have the same number of minutes, the same number of texts but 1GB of data. Both these options are on 1 month contracts.  :-?

Dave wrote on Feb 19^th, 2014 at 8:34pm:

I don't quite understand the Tesco Mobile SIM Only packages. That page says that for £12.50 one can have 750 minutes, 5,000 texts and 2GB of data. Yet for £15.00 one can have the same number of minutes, the same number of texts but 1GB of data. Both these options are on 1 month contracts.  :-?

£15 per month is the previous long term price for that tariff.  £12.50 is a new lower price that may or may not be available only for a promotional period until Tesco Mobile have acquired enough SIM only customers.  It is unlikely they will increase the monthly cost for those who have joined at the lower promotional price but they reserve the right to increase it back to the higher level for any further new customers once they have acquired enough new customers at the promotional price.

The same dual pricing at £7.50 and £10 per month is true of their 250 minutes 500MB package, which is broadly equivalent to Ovivo's current free (apart from the one off £20 SIM cost) product offering.   The only difference is that Tesco's data always seems to work and Tesco Mobile does not keep making you look at adverts until you click a Continue button every few MB of data use.

As Tesco's out of bundle charges per minute and per MB are quite high (although probably no higher than most of their rivals) it is important to take a package that always covers the highest possible extent of one's monthly use so as not to have to pay out of bundle charges.   750 minutes and 2Gb of data currently seems to be more than adequate for my needs in that regard.  If I ever became a really high mobile data user I would probably switch to Virgin Mobile although they do not currently have a 4G data speed option, unlike Tesco.

Dave wrote on Feb 19^th, 2014 at 8:34pm:

He may be the Chief Executive but I do not think it is right to call him at the time you said you did. The fact that your home broadband has gone down is nothing to do with Ovivo Mobile and any issues with the Ovivo Mobile service, or any mobile service for that matter, should be reported to the appropriate department.

The internet non availability issues were reported to customer services several days earlier but nothing was done to resolve them.  This appears to be because customer services do not properly pass on the issues reported to them to the CEO and instead simply try to fob customers off by wrongly suggesting their own telephone has a fault with it.

I personally do not feel it is right that Ovivo is marketing its product as being suitable for Smartphones when the current quality of its data service is now such as to be near unusable.

How the Post Office service is now delivered is discussed here:

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/postoffice/4261228-qa-on-the-changes-underway-at-post-office.html#Post4261228

Here in post 24 poster says indirect access to 1899 has been blocked in his case.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?p=62886802&highlight=post+office+homephone#post62886802

Here http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6286-talktalk-group-adds-110-000-new-customers-in-the-last-quarter.html it says

"Old Post Office telephone and broadband customers have been worried about being dumped onto full LLU connections, but the figures from the interim statement show a mixture, 81,000 fully unbundled customers (both phone and broadband on the TalkTalk platform), 3,000 partially unbundled (broadband on TalkTalk platform, but telephone with another provider) and 19,000 off-net (using WLR and a BT Wholesale based connection)."

bigjohn wrote on Feb 22^nd, 2014 at 2:42am:

"Old Post Office telephone and broadband customers have been worried about being dumped onto full LLU connections, but the figures from the interim statement show a mixture, 81,000 fully unbundled customers (both phone and broadband on the TalkTalk platform), 3,000 partially unbundled (broadband on TalkTalk platform, but telephone with another provider) and 19,000 off-net (using WLR and a BT Wholesale based connection)."

Perhaps on smaller TalkTalk LLU exchanges like my one (1900 lines) it is a low priority to transfer phone lines in isolation across to TalkTalk.

Ironically my broadband is supplied through TalkTalk's LLU but the underlying broadband beyond the exchange users another supplier via http://www.vivaciti.net/packages/home-internet/premium-packages and the LLU offering.

Beginning to think £21.99 is way too much for a copper connection that should have become fibre long ago but hasn't due to BT's duplicity over its Race To Infinity project.

Actually the fact my broadband is using TalkTalk's Commercial LLU connection but not TalkTalk retail broadband may be another reason why the phone line hasn't been moved to TalkTalk's equipment?