Telephone Line Prices Up Today

Telephone Line Prices Up Today.

Three of the top telephone ‘land line’ providers have increased their line rental rates with effect from today.

• BT increases monthly line rental from £15.99 pm to £16.99 pm.  Up 6.25%.
• Sky increases monthly line rental from £15.40 pm to £16.40 pm. Up 6.49%.
• TalkTalk increases monthly line rental from £15.95 pm to £16.70 pm. Up 4.7%.

In addition, a myriad of changes or increases are taking place for the costs per call, call connection charges and more.  Some telecoms companies have quite literally been increasing costs for different aspects of calls many times over the last year.  In reviewing the three above, we saw pages and pages of changes to fees for different types of call and service increasing every month for the last 8 months.  In short, if it is call related it appears to be going up in price somewhere.

It is no surprise that price increases are largely mirrored to BT’s increase given that telecoms firms “rent” their lines from BT.  If BT increases, others are forced to follow suit.  Virgin is the exception using “cable”, that said, ultimately they are also still using BT infrastructure once the service, further down the line, leaves their “cable network” and is on the national infrastructure.

The cost of technology

Landline call volumes are falling dramatically.  As consumers, we are all using our mobile telephone packages as much as we can.  If you have 000’s of text messages each month and say 500 call minutes or unlimited minutes on your mobile package, why would you use your landline.  Research by telecoms regulator, Ofcom, suggests that we are making up to 13% less landline calls, which, putting real numbers on it is a few billion minutes.  In addition, we are becoming more reliant on broadband and superfast broadband.

Telephone calls over the internet using VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) using services such as Skype, Facetime, Messenger and other services as well as instant messages using “Chat” facilities instead of texts have also dramatically increased our use of the ‘super highway’ and not mobile phone calls, texts and landlines.  Given that telecoms companies are spending huge sums on developing infrastructure for Mobile 4G superfast broadband and on land, fibre optic, with targets to have over 90% of the population using fibre optic by 2017, is it any surprise that the basic costs for telephone lines, after all that is how broadband is delivered to your home or office, are going up?

Our view – review your bills and review you call packages regularly.  Keep records of your use and use comparison websites to source the best deal to match your service, it may just save you a few pennies.