Undoubtedly I'm not the only one who is absolutely sick and tired of all these way above inflation rises that we've been seeing in the last couple of years. BT Retail stuff up the price and the big Cartel follows suit. Competition not. Especially as Wholesale prices haven't risen like this.
Modern technology has had the effect of reducing the cost of all the Hi-tech we use these days (especially once in volume production) and costs associated with it's use.
So I see no justification whatsoever for the increase in UK call charges, especially that abomination of the connection/setup fee which so many people don't realise they get charged (along with the first minute) when they call an engaged line which has 1571 - it goes straight to answer service. It's even more ridiculous since there are now so many mobile deals that are cheaper than a lot of LL services. The best place to start and look at most of the possible options and good deals is the
mse website.
The "problem" with line rental is of course the cost of "maintaining" the "copper" network!!
Now why all the "" you may be wondering. Let's deal with that in reverse order -
"copper" network? Many moons ago, generally the greater problem with a lot of phone lines with high attenuation and when they went noisy was the deterioration in crimped joints. Since the invention of silicon jelly filled crimps and the gradual replacement of most crimps with these, most issues now come down to the quality of the cable. There is a lot of aluminium cable out there which tends to deteriorate at a faster rate than even older copper. Is it being replaced at a fast enough rate - NO.
This is where the "maintaining" issue comes in. These days, most of us have broadband. When we have problems with it, a lot are reporting broadband faults when in fact it's often the phone line to blame. There's a surprising number of people who don't report phone line problems when they have a crackly line - even when sometimes it almost drowns out the conversation!
What do BTw & OR do when such BB faults are reported.- Most times, a "tech" (I refuse to call them engineers in most instances) sits there with a lappy on your line for upto 2 hours trying to reproduce the BB issue - and most times if the Target SNRM hasn't already automatically been raised (or the speed Banded (capped))- they do it manually - ah, there we are, the line is stable now
Most times, do they make any serious effort to check for poor joints and replace the crimps (even jelly filled crimps don't always give perfect joints especially if hurriedly done or are constantly disturbed in a Cab) or test to see of there are any sections of your cable pair that have significantly deteriorated - NO!
Often only when a fault is pursued to a 2nd, 3rd or more, engineer visit. might they look to see if there is a better "spare" pair in the cable. What happens if there is not a better spare, or no spare at all. Well you got service haven't you? You might think that they'd replace the cable, especially if it were aluminium. NO! Only if it's got to the point that several customers have virtually no service (or someone has none) do they maybe start thinking about replacing the cable.
And this is where the "problem" arises. The actual cost of all the to-ing and fro-ing between the Service provider, BTwholesale and OpenReach and all the BS given multiple times by OR & BTw, usually exceeds the cost of checking/repairing/replacing joints or the cable at the outset, especially when several end-users have been having problems (often over various providers).
In most cases the Service Provider has to pay BTw/OR for those subsequent "engineer" visits to attempt to resolve ongong problems, and they of course want to try and recover those costs through income. This will no doubt be the "justification" for the increase.
Well, I am now certainly going to look at all the options for my phone service.
As Reed has mentioned "Unless Ofcom intervenes then we are all in the grip of the current fashion."
And OFCOM will NOT intervene until many more people complain to them about these increases - by all providers - (and the way OpenReach and BTw operate).
@theoddbot
You should NEVER "cancel" your phone service (unless going to cable) otherwise you will lose your broadband service, get charged a cessation fee and probably have to pay to get the broadband reconnected! ALWAYS migrate any service.
