Digital Voice Charging

[#1]

I was prompted, by my neighbours’ tale about being moved to Digital Voice (DV) by BT and the associated pricing, to investigate the subject as I assume PN may follow a similar model one day.

Until recently he had  ADSL service with BT. The same as I have currently with Plusnet (PN). We share the same cable. No FTTC or anything fancy.

Looking at BT.COM it majors on broadband and how DV will not cost you. However in a couple of places it says that BT broadband customers can add a home phone service for £23.05 a month and the PAYG call package is £5 a month.

This corresponds to my neighbour’s description of being charged £23.05 for the DV phone service as well as broadband.

If this is so, then the combined Broadband and DV charges appears to be a huge increase over the pre existing ADSL broadband and phone service, for the same facilities, (which is what my neighbour was complaining about), and I am surprised I have not heard more about it in the media.

It means, if PN pushed me onto BT in the coming rearrangements, my monthly bill would go from the current £18.75 a month, to something like £52 for the same service.

I would like to be clearer about how pricing of DV and broadband will work in the post PSTN era, for when PN gets around to making changes.

Does anyone have a better insight into how DV is/will be charged, that they would be willing to share?

Regards.

[#2]

Plusnet hasn't released anything about if or what they'll be doing about voice packages once the PSTN is decommissioned.  

Looking at BT though if I select a package with Digital Voice it adds on £5 a month on top of what the broadband package is, not £23.05.  It may be different for ADSL though, as it won't show me that, so I can't check.  I'm in a Fibre First area, so can only change to FTTP packages now.

[#3]

BT are not cheap, and their VoIP only works with their supplied router. There are other VoIP suppliers - I have a free (as in no monthly charge, a few pence a call) sipgate account which unfortunately is no longer available to new customers. However, AAISP offer VoIP for just  £1.20 per month with landline calls around 1.5p/min and mobiles around 4p/min. They offer more features than most people will ever need. You may need to buy a suitable VoIP adapter if your router doesn't support VoIP, but they are relatively cheap, and it is a one-off cost.