Home Phone price changes - October 2012

[#1]

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I can't understand the delay in notifying me when others have received the email at least a week ago.

We spread the sends over a period for this type of email to minimise the impact on our support centre. Sending to everyone at once really isn't feasible.

[#2]

@Chris:
I see, so you were expecting a lot of flack then.
Can you please answer my question at reply #113.  I don't want to pay earlier than is absolutely necessary but I still want to pay £113.88,

[#3]

You can renew at any point prior to the price change and will pay the current rate of £113.88. To avoid the potential for problems to occur I would suggest allowing a few days berth just in case.

[#4]

Thanks Bob for clearing up that point.

[#5]

I paid for my year's line rental upfront and only have the £6.49 broadband and calls package so assume this price increase won't impact me until I come to renew next year. Although I appreciate plusnet offers me good value in comparison to the "landline" competition, the mobile competition is fast catching up (both on speed and price) so I'm not sure if the industry knows what it is doing with these price increases.
For example Three are doing a £18.99 15gb package (includes mi-fi) dongle
This compares favouroubly with my what my Plusnet package would be without paying upfront for line rental:
13.99 + 6.49 = £20.48. Pay up front for line rental and it works out at £15.99.
So Three is cheaper, has 5gb more download capacity and although I haven't tested Three at my house, 3g via O2 and Vodafone is consistently between 2-3mb speed so providing the signal is good then Three might be fair bit faster (advertised up to 21mbps). My distance from the exchange means I only get around 2mbps on my ADSL.
Appreciate that there's no included calls with that, but to be honest have minutes coming out of my ears from mobile providers these days so this isn't much of a factor.
When 4g becomes mainstream next year then this will provide serious competition to the fixed line business model.
Maybe fibre should be rolled out discounted (maybe with a restricted speed) to those of us in ADSL "notspots" or we will be off!

And one more thing, why are the call charges so expensive? Outside of the included allowance we never make any calls from our landline, when they charge like 11p connection and then like 7-15p per minute, it is always cheaper to use a PAYG mobile like giffgaff, Tesco, Orange etc.

[#6]

My experience of Three (or rather my girlfriend's experience) is that reception is terrible at her house, my house, her parents house and my parents house.  All of which (barring my parents house) I get full reception with O2.
They also seem to get somewhat negative review from a CS point of view.
I accept what you say regarding speeds and usage though - but it's hard to compare (from my point of view) due to being entirely separate technologies.

[#7]

My download speeds on 3 on my Ipad and Iphone are often much faster than PlusNet plus the upload speed is 4-5 meg as well.

[#8]

Quote from: Petard

It seems to me that in those 6 years both line rental and call charges have well outpaced inflation. This is a puzzle, because we're talking about the Plain Old Telephone Service, which technological advances should make cheaper, one might hope. Over the same period, in common with many other households, we here at Petard Towers have been using POTS less and less, since other channels have taken over.

You've answered your own quandry.
The reason line rental has to increase is for the very reason that the income received from actual calls had dropped. The books have to balance at the end of the day and, for UK calls at least, the cost of routing calls is probably little more than the cost of providing the *capability* for routing calls hence your line sitting there unused is most undesirable for the telecoms providers. It's a standing charge for the service, and its capability. Furthermore, if broadband has a dependency on you also paying line rental then there exists the capability to advertise low headline broadband costs whilst offseting these with 'boring old line rental that noone reallys talks about' hiding in the background.
Mathew

[#9]

Quote from: Ado16

It's interesting.  Back in February I was reading that BT was lowering the price of what it charged for other companies to use it's lines.  The article stated that consumers should see a drop in prices, perhaps even a mini price war by April.  Bearing in mind Plusnet's connections with BT I'm wondering A: Why we haven't seen a drop in price at all

Perhaps we've just seen less of a price rise than otherwise 
This is the downside of Ofcom playing with wholesale prices - there is just no way they can force them to be passed on to consumers; they can merely "hope" for that price war between the large companies. But if those companies are having their costs stretched in other ways (eg by bigger usage allowances), then they might just use the money to rebalance the books.
Last year Ofcom did something similar - forcing a wholesale price cut. But only to market 1, and only on the broadband component, and only where it was still 20CN. That choice made it impossible for ISPs to pass on to their customers, so you have to expect that Ofcom does these changes for business-to-business reasons, and not just consumer reasons.
All you can do is compare the offering from the different providers, and work out who offers you the best value for money.

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and B: As Plusnet is part of BT whether we are (perhaps)  paying for everyone else to have a price cut?

I guess that would be seen if PN's charges are significantly worse than other operators, after all the adjustments take place. If so, Ofcom gave you the means to change...

[#10]

Quote from: glloyd

... plus the upload speed is 4-5 meg as well.

That's almost as fast as it gets so your reception must be pretty flawless

[#11]

I still haven't has the email for this price rise - are they still going out? Anyway, I'm off to renew my Line Rental Saver.

[#12]

As far as I'm aware they've all been sent, I'll take a look at why you've not got this yet.

[#13]

Pretty sure I've not had it either. I only know about it from visiting the forums recently about my fibre upgrade.

[#14]

I haven't seen one either.
I'd assumed that was because I got the LRS when I did.

[#15]

I've asked our marketing team to find out why some of you haven't received emails, I'll get back to you once I know more.