I support your cause, but im lucky enough to live in Denmark, which by standards is fairly free now... Until 10 years ago we only had one ISP/Tele company, namely TeleDanmark, which was owned by the state.. Then it went private/stock with a namechange. The name is now TDC, and they still own all the cables laid in the ground, which means i still pay for TDC to service my lines too.. I pay around 39£ a month for this, even though i have chosen a different ISP than TDC, because they have to rent the cables throughout the country.. I'm glad that in a few months, we will have optical cables laid in by the power companies in some of the bigger cities here... Then i get 10mbit in/out for the same price that our current 8mbit/512 DSL line supports..
Wow, £39 a month is quite high! Does that include the line rental and your broadband service, or are there additional charges? I guess if it includes uncapped 8mb/s broadband and line rental then it's not a bad deal - still, maybe we're not being ripped off quite as badly as I thought here in the UK.
I dunno, I pay $52.95 a month for 8Mb / 512Kb cable service. THey bend me over a little more because I don't get cable TV, but it's still the fastest thing availabe here outside of a T1 line at $600 / month. I want my fibre!!!
Sounds pretty good. Generally in the UK you can get 8Mb uncapped broadband for about £20 a month. You then pay line rental of about £11 a month to BT on top of that. What gets to me, though, is you can't just pay the basic line rental - you have to get a call bundle from BT as well. Because I have a good mobile phone deal, and I have a phone at work that I can use, and I don't actually use the phone that much (and in any case I have Skype), I don't see why I should have to pay BT for a call bundle I don't use.
seems rather unfair to me... i pay my $20 a month to verizon to get my measly 768/128 (I'm rarely on the web) dsl... line rental is included in that, but my line is not a valid callable number (meaning there's no phone service), so my costs are limited to just that.... basic local phone service would have been another $5 a month
BT Together Option 1, right? You are paying for a deal which gets you any call for up to 1 hour for something like 5p. There are "light user" deals with MUCH lower line rental (IIRC about £10 a quarter, rather than >£10 a month), but you can't get broadband over those lines. What I would love is what cderalow has, i.e. no PSTN line at all (I only get sodding sales calls anyway, so I've put the ringer on silent!), but a line which would let me have broadband - aka "naked" (no PSTN line) DSL
The state of ADSL in the UK is rather dire. It's very expensive, whilst also being incredibly crippled and inefficient. Compared to cable, BT and other ISP's are effectively flogging a dead donkey - especially with bandwidth limits. I've recently cancelled my ADSL to go over to cable - because I realised just how silly my ADSL arrangement was - £16.99 per month for 512/256, albeit unlimited download. Rung NTL and found out I could get 2048/150 for £1 extra per month with unlimited download. Whilst I lose the upstream, my ADSL provider is pretty naff, the web seems to slow down a lot, email is unreliable... and ADSL still needs to "dial up" or whatever to connect... so being kicked off is also quite a regular occurance. It's a crying shame. BT could do so much better.
Right erm aint posted here for ages and forgot password (User SmileyMan) and changed email enyway. I am in a unique situation here to comment being. 1. I am an ADSL User who as the phone line mainly for this (I do make and recieve calls but don't need it could use mobile) 2. Work for BT or more accurate OpenReach First explain who OpenReach are cos it's not like its been advertised. OpenReach is basicly the field engineering side of BT. We are the ones who supply and maintain the cable (Local Loop) from the main socket in the house (The NTE) back to the MDF (Main Distribution Frame) back at the exchange. OpenReach was created due to regulations brought in by OFCOM which required a seperate business entity to manage the Local Loop for all service providers including BT (Which is now classed as any other service provider) Basicly we are the Engineers you see about. Right OpenReach as seperate financial accounts to BT Group and is run has a seperate business (OFCOM Regulation) as such our income comes mainly from Line Rental which all Service Provides (Including BT) pay us for (Think it's around £7-8 a month) for this we maintain the Local Loop. Right what I need to make clear is Telecoms are very expensive to maintain it is not unusual for a repair of a End Users line (End User as the Service Providers are our customers now) to be in 4 figures. So you could not expect the Local Loop (wire from exchange to you) to be supplied and maintained for free could you) Next point is comment about monopoly. Most of the Local Loop is now unbundled which means any Service Provider can rent the physical line from MDF to NTE from OpenReach just like BT can. Yes BT still own the exchanges but other Service Providers are free to install thier own equipment in unbundled exchanges. The site about BT offering free ADSL Linky This is part of 21CN which is a fully digital telephone network and which everything including the phone line will run over a DSL connection (Phone lines will become VoIP). This will replace the PSTN system currently used that is analog from the exchange carried on 50v. Yeah I don't wanna pay for a Phone line just to have ADSL but even if Service Providers offered Naked DSL the savings would only be £2-3 a month at most which I would turn round and say "May as well have the phone line as well then "
Thanks for that mate. Interesting reading. If you offered me a saving of £2-3 a month on my line rental, I would definitely take it. My problem is that BT offers (or used to offer) so-called 'light user' rates for people who use their phone very little, where they pay much less (about £10 a quarter, rather than £11 a month) for their line. Just because they are light users, their line is still just as likely to break and need expensive repairs, so if the main cost of the line rental is in actually maintaining the line, why do they get it so cheap? All I want is a basic line to hang my ADSL on, I don't need voice and I certainly don't need BT Together. As such I don't see why I can't benefit from a light user package. The other beef I have is that the cost of maintaining MY line (in a fairly densely populated region of west London) must be considerably less than the cost of maintaining someone's line in, say, the Outer Hebrides. Why then do they get their line for the same cost as I do? If, as Ofcom seem to want, the telecoms market is to be pushed further towards a free market economy, then there is no reason to keep the fixed line prices the same for everybody. Each person should be charged based on how much their line actually costs to maintain, which I suspect would make my cost much lower.
I can see your points. Yeah you want to save your £2-3 a month but thats based on the Service Provider not marking it up for profit (Which would and basicly is what happens) Light User plan. Not heard of it used to work for NTL (Will get to that in a min.) but the new OFCOM regulations would have killed it for sure. BT would have balanced to cost of offering cheap rental on these lines against rentals of other lines where as it is now OpenReach get a fixed rental per line. Has for cheaper repairs in London against rural areas. I work in lincolnshire (Very rural around here). And find repairs in rural areas don't take much more time/resouces to fix just longer to track down. Also in london they have to pay Congestion Charge, Parking Fines, London Weighting also pay for more road works / traffic lights as in a rural patch traffic lights / major road work setups are really needed. This all adds to repair costs. I said I would get back to the fact I worked for NTL. Without getting into bashing If I moved into a cable area I would still get a OpenReach Line (Line not BT now) and ADSL. Yeah cable cheaper but trust me you get what you pay for. Yeah it is now a OpenReach line and the new branding is comming out for the master sockets which will say OpenRech not BT from now on also so will box lids etc in the streets. Not that most people know about this change.
I'm just really happy that local phone calls are free and there is no service charge except for Broadband fees, obviously which are owned by the same company.
Hey... I have to say a total of 25 pounds per month is really not a bad price. I can't argue with wanting it lower, but realize that 8 years ago I was paying $300 a month for the same level of service through a cable provider to my apartment. I was one of like 7 people in the US with that service through Level3. It then started dropping drastically. I don't know about in the UK but here in the US those subsidies are paying back what was loaned out to pay for the line installations in the first place. For example: If I want to bring high speed wireless internet service to an area 30 miles outside of a metroplex it costs me $1,500 a month just to bring the line out and have reliable service. Then it costs at least another $10,000 to put up just one tower (not including land lease costs and prices) to transmit a wireless signal and we really need at least 3 to go up. So... if that area has at least 100 subscribers and they pay for their local equipment on setup and pay $50/mo we will just break even. In many cases the state, federal and local governments will pitch in to help expand the technology and then expect to be paid back with interest over a period of 10 or more years through taxes. A bit oversimplified but it should make the point. In comparison we could pay a total package of $25/mo of a base phone plus basic level DSL, but I like having the backup and reliability of a land line phone so we pay a little more and have all of our IP, Land based and mobile phones ring each other and pay for the highest level DSL service all at $90/mo including taxes. If you want to drive it lower get together with your friends and start up a competing company. I would suggest wireless. The country of Georgia skipped right over land lines. Matthew Cloud
Well free ADSL (well in a fashion) is comming to the UK due to the 21CN network which is planned to be rolled out everyware by 2011 (Bugeted costs are £10 Billion). So your rental of line will include the ADSL as all other services including voice communications will be piggy backed on it. Savings are ment to be in the region of £1 Billion a year with the new network So in away naked ADSL is on the way The PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) used today is mainly powered by a switching system called 'System X' (Yeah that is what its called) and in fewer places the slightly newer AXE10 Known as 'System Y' but 'System X' was installed in the eighties. Right now ADSL is piggy backed onto the PSTN at the MDF Piccy But with 21CN it will be fully intergrated which will allow greater speeds. Also BT are looking into 'Fiber to the door'. Which is running optical fiber to the customer which would over come the problems with metalic paths and resistance but this is quite a long way of I would say but another idea is 'Fiber to the kerb' which is running optical fiber from the exchange to the green boxes in the streets (Cabs or PCP's) (Point of note NTL network is 'Fiber to the kerb' Mainly cos how new it is) this is to reduce the lose on the metalic path from Exchange to Customer. The speed of ADSL you can get is based 'Mainly' on line loss due to resistance of the metalic path. Cables to 'CAB' called 'E-side Cables' are normaly quite thin (Down to 0.32mm) and come in sizes upto 4,800 pairs so big losses are made for ADSL here. So while distances are quoted has to what distance you can get what speed this is just a guide if you lucky to be feed on 0.9mm copper you will get maximum speed quite far from the exchange and if feed on 0.5 Aluminum then Oh well thats life The other thing that affects ADSL is balance of the pair which while not very important for voice 'Will hum if out of balance a lot' kills ADSL so now jointers have to keep has much twist as posible on a pair while jointing cables. Some pic's for anyone interested what a exchange looks like inside http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/exchange_inside.htm
Heres a question. What is the difference between ADSL and Broadband, aren't they practically the same types of technology with small differences?
Change your supplier of phone, one example if paying by direct debit Post Office Homephone is only £9.50 a month. There are other companies that are even cheaper! and you dont have to use BT, infact you wont even get a bill from them!
ADSL is a technology used to deliver high speed data connections over standard copper telephone lines. 'Broadband' is a wide term covering all 'high speed' data connections, and can in principle be used to describe anything above dial-up (aka narrowband). So ADSL is a technology capable of delivering broadband internet, as is cable DSL, fibre to the home, satellite, WiMAX, even 3G mobiles at a stretch.
