Quote:..Ofcom have plenty to hide though including the disgrace of their allowing BT to increase the cost of basic phone line rental by letting them abolish BT Standard line rental and making BT Option 1 compulsory for 8 million customers...
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but BT are expected to increase line rental again shortly. It was meant to be around the beginning of this month but the dates were subject to change as this was the email I received from them:-
Quote:As per your query, I would like to inform you that the charges are to be in effect from 1st august 2005 as per the press release is concerned and these dates are liable to change. Moreover, you will be informed of the proceedings when it comes in to effect. You will receive these updates with your bill...
This was discussed in more detail over on the MSE forum
here
(pricefigher started the thread after noticing the BT press release).
According to the press release which was issued shortly after our wonderful(!?) OfCOM decided that BT has to widen the margin between the line rental charged by themselves (BT) and those of OneTel, etc (using Wholesale Line Rental) to more than the 50p it is now. Now because our wonderful OfCOM didn't think things through properly, BT released a press release to say they were reducing the WLR charged to the likes of OneTel, etc by 50p and shortly after increasing the line rental charged by themselves (BT) by 50p as well. This would effectively mean about £1.50 a month (currently 50p a month) saving assuming OneTel, etc pass these savings on to their customers and for which it would satisfy OfCOM.
Personally though, I think OfCOM should have insisted on BT reducing the cost of WLR charged to the likes of OneTel, etc but at the same time telling them they couldn't increase the cost of line rental charged to their own customers. Due to this lack of forward thinking, BT compromised by decreasing WLR and also increasing our line rental by 50p a month - making it £1 a month difference. As OneTel's line rental is currently 50p cheaper now anyhow, this extra £1 means that OneTel could possibly do line rental for £1.50 a month cheaper than BT.
This is why I think BT have done Caller Display free to all their customers including those using CPS providers. They probably hope this will make people think twice about moving their line rental over to the likes of OneTel, etc because for those that use Caller Display (a lot I would have thought), it probably wouldn't be worth moving line rental just yet as the saving is balanced out with BT's free caller display.
This would all change if OneTel, etc decided to do free caller display as well as BT which none of them have yet decided to do.
Update:
For those interested the press-release from BT that I've mentioned above can be found
here, the relevant paragraph of this is quoted below:-
Quote:WLR operators are also set to benefit from greater margins for consumer line rental. BT is to cut the monthly price other operators pay by 50 pence per line from August 1 2005 before raising the amount its own retail arm charges (including VAT) by 50 pence later in the financial year. The price other operators pay for WLR will decrease further next year giving an overall margin increase of more than 10 per cent