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


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.

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


£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.

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

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/postoffice/4261228-qa-on-the-changes-underway-a...

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+off...

Here http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6286-talktalk-group-adds-110-000-new-customer... 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)."