BT hikes call charges

Hmm

According to another article I read, customers can avoid the hike (even for charged calls) by agreeing to a minimum term contract. If true, that would be a first for BT. Normally they sweet talk us into a 12-month contract and, safely over their barrel, do the inevitable from behind.

Their model really does seem bizarre though. React to mass migration away by:

a) Offering more advanced services for comparable costs

b) Becoming more competitive (so might even win some customers back)

c) Becoming less competitive (to screw over those keeping you afloat, and not tempt a soul)

Guess which one they're doing.

Glad I moved to SKY

</nuff>

outragous

the gov. drop the broadband levy, and BT pick it up.....

Wait, what?

BT still have customers? For real? You're shi-... you're kidding me.

bt spam

his probably explains the BT business people trying to see if we are happy with out business DSL line - which has not worked for years and I keep asking the boss to cancel.

Anyway my home phone is not getting so expensive 100/pcm that I have decided to go for a competitors phone+ free calls bundle + DSL line for less than the cost of the BT Business DSL!

I strongly suspect more people will simply cancel thier fixed line or move to a (now much cheaper) competitor.

BT have no idea how to keep customers.

Jacqui

So Glad

that I jumped ship before BT jumped the shark (again)

I've just moved my phone line, and am _so_ glad i did so, all day calls for 50p less than I was paying BT now looks even better...

Timing

So they announced this on a Sunday afternoon? I'm only surprised they didn't announce it last week during the cup final.

elsewhere in the civilised World....

Should come to Finland....I get 13 Mbps over a 50yo copper wire and I'm 5km from the nearest exchange - it should be 24Mbps but given the old wiriing.....

Our government has decreed that 2Mbps is a human right and if you don't like your provider you are free to change.

<1Mbps, yep, somewhere I have a GPRS phone that'll give me those sorts of speeds.

Post your own message

I can't believe I'm doing this...

But I'd like to say a good(-ish) word for BT. I live (and work) in the sticks, and I use BT for my land line and BT Business for my Broadband. O2 do my mobile but in the sticks that's not an alternative to a landline for voice calls. There is reason behind my apparent madness. I've used a number of ISPs over the years, and ALL of them have problems now and again. I've also routed my calls via other providers. When things work, there's little to choose between providers (of phone or broadband) - it's what happens when things go wrong that interest me. With a mix of providers (and no matter who the ISP is BT are involved somewhere - Virgin won't do fibre to the house in our village for some reason) everyone always blame the other party - when it's BT end to end it's up to them to sort it - and BT Business are actually very good at shouting at the other bits of BT when things go wrong and usually get things sorted double-quick! Okay, they cost a bit more but it's basically a solid service, and for the sake of a quid or two a month I'm not fussed.

Landline calls are again a fairly good deal on the top-rate anytime packages - 0845 and 0870 calls included etc - I pay very little on top of the package each month.

But I still don't understand BT's crazy pricing, particularly for international. Standard rate to Chile f'rinstance is 95p/min - bung BT £1 a month for F&F International and that goes down to 5.3p/min - how can there be ANY justification for that sort of difference?

So only 2 cheers...

VoIP?

I don't have a real phone line phone, it is just there for the ADSL signals. My phone is VoIP, with a regular 'local' number, not some special service number. Calls to anywhere in the country are free (execept funny tariff). Calls to the UK are free (except the 08xx ones). Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Canada, Japan, New Zealand... free. And loads of other places too. I've called a guy I know in London and yacked for hours. Cost? Zero.

The power is that the telco own the lines, but they don't have the right to block other companies providing services. I just happen to use telco for my internet, but I didn't have to. Oh, and I'm not in a city, or anywhere even remotely "urban".

In this day and age, communication prices rises will surely only lose you customers.

In this day and age, the lack of LLU shows how pointless OFCOM is...

@AC getting out of it

If your contract with BT explicitly states that the fee paid by you is fixed at a price, or fixed for some length of time and BT have changed the price without negotiating you then that could constitute breach of contract.

However, I very much doubt BT contracts state that.

You can probably terminate the contract (examine the provisions contained within) by notifying them you want to cancel it but you may have to forego a penalty payment to make up for the lost revenue BT would have received from you, had you let the contract run to the expiry date.

It's a case of doing the arithmetic, how much would it cost you to cancel the contract early, and how much can you save by going to a new telephone service provider? If the latter is greater than the first, then do it, cancel the contract.

In the manner of Webwise comments:

BT has NOT increased charges

And anyone saying so will have their comments (and accounts) deleted.

So there.

Integrity? They've probably heard of it

No chatter

Like the anonymous coward earlier, I can count on the thumbs of one hand the number of calls I have actually made on my land-line, having it virtually only for internet. Like-wise, the speed around these parts is abysmal due to lousy BT lines installed in the eighties and never upgraded due to some weird covenant forbidding (along with external TV aerials) excavation for new utilities. Can't even go over to cable for that reason. Doesn't exist round these parts. Goodness knows why as the building aren't listed or anything like that. Whether fibre to the cabinet will help remains to be seen. My ISP TalkTalk aren't my flavour of the month either. They are "aligning" the prices of packages since taking over Tiscali, changing my package from a completely unlimited half a meg (lines are only good for about a max. meg, anyway, with a following wind), to an "up to 8 meg" package and charging me more for the "privilege" of this scheme, which, at present, I have not a hope in hell of achieving. Seems they have been to the same business economics school as BT. I fail to see why I should have to pay for something I can't have.

BT shortsighted

I think it is BT's problem.

We pay them to provide a poor service. It looked like prices were going to go up to allow for investment in the infrastructure. Now prices have just gone up and there is no new investment on the horizon so we are paying more for a poor service.

LLU is not available in lots of rural and suburban areas.

BT is a private monopoly in rural areas and so the rules of the market do not apply. Therefore though they do have a burden to bear from the regulators, they can take cash from us safe in the knowledge it is a line from them or from no-one at present.

Whilst I take your point that replacing copper with fibre is expensive it does provide great benefit to those at the end of the line.

By not investing themselves, BT will either end up with more input from the regulators to force them to do it or with just become irrelevant as something else takes up the slack (virgin's plans for using telegraph poles for fibre/maybe even 4G)

Gone

BTs T+Cs of a couple of years ago did for me, when they tried to use leaflet on the new terms to spin across the board price rises as a price reduction - WTF?? Now in spite of being told on numerous occasions that I wish no more to do with them, they use every ruse in the book to get round the letter of the law, referring to me as The Occupier, making a slight misspell in my name or simply missing the flat number off the address.