Q wrote on Nov 13^th, 2013 at 6:29pm:


I suggest your best course of action is to vote with your feet and move your business to Post Office Homephone as they have just made CLI free of charge (probably in response to BT's latest dastardly move in trying to blackmail people in to paying a year up front via Line Advance to get so called "Free" Caller Display).  They also only have a minimum one month contract period for new customers, unlike most other landline phone companies where it is one year.  They also have other interesting packages such as one with free calls to mobiles at the weekend and very cheap basic broadband.

Your phone number will not change and the actual line will still be delivered and maintained on behalf of Post Office Homephone by BT Openreach.  Post Office HomePhone also does not restrict use of Indirect Access call services like www.18185.co.uk and www.1899.com

As to BT's top brass the following email addresses may be of assistance although I doubt you will get them to change their mind.  These email addresses definitely work.

Chief Executive -  gavin.e.patterson@bt.com
Chaiman - michael.rake@bt.com
Finance Director - tony.chanmugam@bt.com

Interesting - I didn't know about about Postoffice home phone I shall have a look into that thanks!

It's going to take me a couple of weeks to fully read through & digest everything before I might fire off an email to the top brass. I'm not expecting any sort of climb down but I will be looking forward to a few answers as to how the justify the charge at all (given its part of the 'system' and costs nothing to actually present), why they still insist on only passing the 'international' flag with off-shore calls (when most if not all mobile providers pass the CLIR as received) and what this does for my elderly relatives who rely on CLIR  and already get robbed for not paying by direct debit and who do not want to take out 12+ month contracts...

1571 has its own problems as well... Call someone from a mobile & hit the answer phone yay you get charged for the call & have *no* control over it. Call someone without 1571 from a mobile and get 'engaged' you pay *nothing* for the call. Same thing stands for payphones etc...

Dave wrote on Nov 14^th, 2013 at 2:52am:


After your question I checked and found this article about the swap to TalkTalk, Fujitsu and Capita dated 25th May 2012 at www.information-age.com/technology/mobile-and-networking/2105193/post-office-dro... Yet at the moment, 18 months later, my line is still with BT Openreach judging from various short codes and features that only normally work on a BT Openreach provided line.

As it happens my internet connection is actually underlyingly through Opal Telecoms (the business division of CarPhone Warehous) LLU equipment (the same LLU equipment as TalkTalk's) but my internet service provider is www.vivaciti.net and I have never had any problems or outages with it.  This business product gives me a much higher priority for downloading in peak hours than TalkTalk's own cheapest broadband products.

I wonder if the new ability of Post Office Homephone to offer CLI without charging any extra is connected with the switch from BT Openreach to Opal/CPW's network?

At the end of the day Post Office Homephone's contractual terms are considerably better than those of TalkTalk's but and if indirect access disappears I will probably just take an Anytime calls package as I think 18185 generally costs me about the same but is always a nuisance when hunting for a new alternative geographic number.

BT certainly do not deserve to be supported in view of their disgraceful behaviour in vastly ramping up the cost of line rental over the last 10 years and in bringing in massive connection fees and widely rolling out "free 1571 voicemail" in order to blackmail everybody in to taking Anytime calls packages.  This policy is hugely discriminatory against single person households who get far less economic benefit from such packages than families.

Trying to force people to take Line Advance is all just part of their latest disgusting Accountant led quest to guarantee the entire value of their expected annual revenue stream.  Leaving this leaching company is the only way one can stop this.

I believe Primus have probably already blocked Indirect Access on their lines so the days of Finarea's UK telecoms provision may be limited.  I also currently have huge issues with my 18185 service where calls are taking up to 30 seconds to connect and I am getting some overseas call misrouting messages.

bigjohn wrote on Nov 14^th, 2013 at 9:33am:


TalkTalk installed an LLU in my country village exchange 22 months ago but so far I can continue to use 18185 and 1899.  This suggests that at the moment the Post Office Homephone line still uses BT Openreach's main telephone exchange equipment and not TalkTalk's LLU setup.

However it appears this may change at some point.   I am on Post Office Homephone's evening and weekend plan that also gives free calls to UK mobiles and international fixed line numbers at the weekend.  Strangely the Anytime calls upgrade costs the same from this package as their other cheaper line rental package that only gives weekend calls to UK landlines free and not calls at the weeekend to UK mobiles or EU landlines.

Logically PostOffice Homephone should charge less to upgrade to Anytime calls from their more expensive package that includes weekday evening calls and calls to UK mobile and European landlines at the weekend.  Their Anytime calls upgrade for this plan ought in my opinion to only be £2.99 per month.

If and when any kind of useful 4G service ever arrives here I may consider ditching my landline completely but for now most of the networks around here are still only 2G or 3G with a very poor signal strength.  Having said that we are supposed to be getting 100Mbps FTTP at this address due to our exchange being a winner in the BT Race To Infinity competition but so far BT are two years late in delivering on their commitment to provide this and we still only have ADSL2+

Hmm.

So if Postoffice are now using TalkTalk Wholesale service is that for dial tone?

I am with Zen and and can't have anything happen to my ADSL service as I need it for work. What happens if I want to move my dial tone to them.

Also is there CLIR standard V23 FSK (aka what BT use)?

ISTR it was (is?) 50p per code.

Heinz wrote on Nov 15^th, 2013 at 9:21am:


Clearly OPAL/CPW/TalkTalk group have found the 50p per customer is more than worth it to enslave their customers to ripoff rates for 084/7 numbers and for fixed line and mobile overseas calls.

My exchange is quite unbundled so the dial tone will be provided by a 3rd party... (CPW, TT or whoever they actually use)

Long as they don't break the adsl I don't care. I shall post to another forum and see what there track record is like for not breaking things (unless anyone here has direct experience)

Also still need to confirm which version of CLI they use.