BT have announced that they are increasing the cost of line rental by 7% and daytime calls by 23%, but will give 10m customers free weekend calls. From today line rental will increase from £11 per month to £11.75, while the cost of daytime calls will rocket from 3.25p per minute to 4p per minute.

Inevitably now that Ofcom has given BT carte blanche to increase its prices without any sanctions this is going to be the continuing trend. They will hold consumers to ransom with line rental rather than competing on a commercial basis. This means that if you have another CPS provider for your calls and/or broadband this new dirty commercial trick by BT gives them an unfair commercial advantage, because they are moving some of the contribution from call charges and broadband provision on to line rental. This is all a continuation of the dirty tricks of BT, due to their inability or unpreparedness to compete commercially in call costs; their strategy condoned by Ofcom is to increase the line rental charges but reduce corresponding call charges to attempt to blackmail customers they have lost (solely due to their high call costs) back to them. This was why they originally forced all those on line rental only to their Option 1 - and Ofcom let them do it!

This it seems is the only way which BT can think of, with their ongoing Civil Service mentality, to compete  - by dirty commercial tricks! With their continuing virtual monopoly and economies of scale they should in fact be able to offer the lowest call charges, if they were run as a true, efficient commercial enterprise. The problem is that they do not seem to have any competent senior staff who understand the world of commerce, and their mates at Ofcom just encourage them to continue with their virtual monopoly and SMP mindset, and do nothing to protect the Citizen Consumer!

I remember several of us concluded this would be the future scenario when Ofcom had yet another of their supposed "consultations" concerning removing price controls on BT. Ofcom deliberately overlooked the fact that BT still controls almost all of the PSTN, and critically of course the "last mile connections". Oh for when we have real wireless national broadband. Goodbye Mr. BT for good!

I am confused.   Obviously, any price rise is a bad thing, I do not use BT for calls or line rental, using instead UWDC/Telecomplus and their anytime inclusive calls package.   However, I am also trying to write some notes to explain to Essex County Council WHY their use of 0845 is wrong and will cost more for many if not all customers who call them from residential landlines (& who have an inclusive package) and mobiles (I exclude those who use their employers' phones!)   My understanding has been that only those who use BT Option 1 might not be worse off calling 0845 as opposed to a geo no.   Please, someone help resolve my confusion so that I can formulate a killer argument as to why they should abandon 0845 or, at very least, comply with COI guidelines and supply with equal prominence a geographical number.

PS  I have suggested previously that a summary of arguments for such cases, regularly updated to reflect changes, posted in a particular section of the site would be useful but it hasn't happened.   It is not that I am lazy just that I want to ensure that any representations I make are accurate and complete so they carry maximum weight.   It would also be a useful way for people to refer "offenders" to the site to read for themselves.  I appreciate it would cause work for some people but might really assist in advancing the campaign(s).  I should probably have posted this separately in "Site Related" but thought it might br OK here.  Any comments anyone?

Barbara wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2008 at 1:15pm:
I disagree. You seem to have the situation well understood. What we both (all) struggle to find is the "killer argument" to present to those who are not acquainted with the facts.

The comments of the COI and Ofcom are helpful, but cannot be mandatory. We need some authoritative source of reference, perhaps to state the proportion of users of public services delivered by telephone who call from mobiles, BT option 3 and other landline tariffs that currently charge more for 0845.

Any conclusive determination would be subject to change. The balance of cost for BT options 1 and 2 will shift in April, but it is very likely that the proportion of BT customers on option 3 will increase as a result of the set of changes. I would contend that the net effect will be to increase the aggregate marginal cost to the public of calling 0845 numbers over 01/02/03. I cannot however offer any evidence, which to be relevant, would have to reflect the particular population of callers to any service.

It is accepted that many of the "less financially advantaged" use PAYG mobiles and inclusive landline packages because they cannot obtain credit or are well advised to avoid the possibility of variable bills. This is hardly a killer argument, but can carry weight in some politically sensitive contexts.

I hope this is helpful. I have other ideas and intend to start a new thread in Govt and Public Sector shortly.

If it is of any help Barbara quite a number of people have evidently already complained to Essex County Council about their use of NGNs for contact and their publication of a booklet listing these. A letter sent to them by someone complaining has also been posted and you may be able to use some of that if you choose? See http://0870abuse.myfastforum.org/Essex_County_Council_about10.html

The other thing I forgot to mention at first Barbara is that many (if not most) subscribers who are forced to have BT Option 1 are not using BT for their calls. Lots of them have a CPS provider for calls and another or the same provider for Internet, so the call rates for BT Option 1 are not applicable to them unless they remember and make a point of connecting a particular NGN call back through BT by dialing the required prefix digits to do that (I forget the exact digits - something like 1280 I think?).

dorf wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2008 at 5:51pm:
It would seem then that Ofcom and I are even more out of touch than I thought. Its latest published statistics show BT having 68% of exchange lines and 51.2% of calls. The total number of indirect access calls is said to be half that made directly through BT. Given that some indirect access calls would be from the other 32% of exchange lines, and subscribers who make many calls would be more likely to be using indirect access, this suggests a very different picture from the quoted statement.

Although always ready to be corrected, I had assumed that those of us who post here were unusually well aware of alternatives and thereby better able to take advantage of the market than most. I had also believed that Ofcom was inclined to present a more rosy picture of how effectively the market was working than was actually the case. I am surprised to find that the latter assumption is false.

I had wondered about Ofcom surveys as a source of information to support Barbara's argument, but had feared that the data would not be sufficiently helpful. If it understates the effectiveness of market mechanisms then the argument itself is called into question.

Unless I have mis read the new charges on BT's web site, the Broadband Talk charges seem unaffected, unless you go over the 60 minutes limit when making a call. Broadband Talk allows you to make telephone calls via Broadband fo nothing. As far as I can make out the only change is to the line rental. Am I right in my assumption? One other thing, I know of someone whose BB contract was coming to an end and BT phoned them to take out a new one, the guy said he was thinking of changing provider at which point BT reduced the monthly subscription for him!

I think with this latest further outrageous cross subsidisation change to BT line rental prices following Ofcom's pathetic and unjustified deregulation of their prices that the ammunition now exists for several of us to lodge complaints with the Parliamentary Ombudsman via our MPs that Ofcom is failing in its principal duty under Section 3 (i) of the Communciations Act 2003 to:

Quote:


See www.ofcom.org.uk/about/sdrp/

This is the only way that the overpaid fatcats at Ofcom will ever be persuaded to do their public duty instead of commercially cosying up to important New Labour friends in the hope of receiving a knighthood or peerage (not to mention a further pay rise, bonus and/or enhanced pension rights) in due course.