Broadband only price changes - June 2013

[#1]

Quote from: x47c

Seems all pretty normal to me. ( I have my phone with BT) You take two products from the same company you get a cheaper price than if you ordered only one. Gas/Electric companies do the same - you get a dual fuel discount if you take both Gas & Electric from one supplier. Have two cars with the same insurance company and you'll get a discounted price from the normal quote on the second one So the company has one admin charge for two products sold rather than one admin charge for one product sold. Exactly the same in practice as a quantity discount - the more you buy the cheaper it gets per unit. Try going on a skiiing holiday as a single person and see how much more you are paying/person than the couple next to you.  Go as a group of 5 or more and you can really get some serious level of discount on the price/person.

It depends on how it is marketed.
Here it is a case of "Why not have both phone & broadband from us?  If you don't then you'll pay more".  British Gas offer "Why not take our Gas & Electricity - if you do then we'll give you a discount".  Same net effect; but looks better if you advertise the Broadband price as £x and the phone line price as £y and then say take both and we'll give you £z back.
Now we are just moving into the territory of unclear/confusing pricing structures.

[#2]

Quote from: geofftswin

Here it is a case of "Why not have both phone & broadband from us?  If you don't then you'll pay more".  British Gas offer "Why not take our Gas & Electricity - if you do then we'll give you a discount".  Same net effect; but looks better if you advertise the Broadband price as £x and the phone line price as £y and then say take both and we'll give you £z back.

Agreed - sort of!
It would have looked better if PN had gone the British Gas way in your example above and reduced the price for people wanting to take both services.  Perhaps they should have done that instead of throwing all their money at half-price for X months etc. deals.  They probably need to recoup some of those "losses" somehow.

[#3]

Another thing - AFAIK people not taking the PN phone service already have to pay an installation fee for the FTTC service, something which is not payable if you do have PN phone service.  Fair enough, but don't hit us twice!

[#4]

Quote from: glloyd

Surely it would make far more sense to stop this non stop price cutting for six month war and offer cheaper all round charges. Increasing charges when everybody else is cutting there's does not make sense. The broadband + phone market is now getting as bad as the mobile phone market --- Confusing!!!

i agree,all it seems to do is distort comparison sites.sky did this with free broadband for six months,then the hikes started,on top bt wholesale cut prices and others including sky raised their line rental on top.what it does do is give rise to the likelihood cancellations later on and contract opt outs in some cases.
£2.50 is a bit of a hike,many will be on bt basic and low incomes.broadband in every home by 2012 is a long while back and this hasn't happened,there's no social obligation and only low cost options "may" be affordable to some such as £5.99
the government seems to expect everyone to use computers and afford a connection for jobseeking,clearly this isn't always possible for many.

[#5]

I hope this price hike hasn't been imposed in order to fund some unwanted "free" streaming sports TV service ! 

[#6]

I suspect they may make more profit from line rental and call packages than perhaps the broadband on its own.

[#7]

Hi I would like to ask if I could get broadband without having a landline. I hate having to pay a landline price on top of broadband when I never use, or hardly ever use the phone.? Is there another way I could get just broadband?

[#8]

@carrieplusnet - Welcome to the forum !  
It seems many people would like the option of Naked DSL as can be seen in this recent poll - http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5861-poll-results-three-quarters-want-a-naked-dsl-option.html
For now the only practical alternative is 3G/4G mobile broadband if you are lucky enough to live somewhere with a good enough signal strength.
There are quite a few routers these days where you can plug in a 3G/4G USB wireless dongle to be the internet connection for your home network.

[#9]

Because mobile DSL is so much cheaper than wired DSL?

[#10]

Sorry to report No is the answer.
Naked DSL as it is called in other countries is not permitted in the UK
Naked DSL is broadband without a dial tone
OFCOM have said no.
Here is the reason(s)
Think of it as your "service" is comprised of three parts.
1. Rental cost for the physical line to your house/upgrades/maintenance etc
2.  Cost for the voice service on that line
3. Cost for a data service on that line (Broadband)
In the UK items 1 and 2 are lumped together and sold together while we pay for 3 as a seperate item.
Now you could equally lump 1 and 3 together - and our broadband price would rocket skyward. We wouldn't like that.
Additionally
Items 1 and 2 are in effect paying for the upgrades to the infrastructure and in part improvements to the broadband and you are getting 3 on the cheap.
There are more voice only lines in the UK than voice plus ADSL activated lines so the voice lines are acting as a considerable cross subsidy to the voice+broadband lines.
Remove that cross subsidy and BB prices would have to go up even more.
So you and me are getting a cheap broadband thanks to OFCOM making the voice side subsidise the broadband side which works due to the excess of voice only lines.
This is deliberate to encourage uptake of BB by keeping it cheap.
The people who should be hopping mad are those without a broadband connection but paying voice+rental phone charges and are thus subsidising mine and yours broadband.
If you permit naked DSL you will get some sky high broadband prices as everyone dumps the voice side - which is paying for the upgrades and broadband costs would then have to reflect the full real cost of the service plus pay the full weight of the infrastructure repair/improvement.
You can see this elsewhere - for example Comcast cable only broaband in the USA offers a 20Mbps broadband service for $64.95 per month  - plus taxes of course...... yikes!  (you do get the first 6 months "cheap" at only $35/month - isn't that nice of them!)

The only other real workable option for truly landline less broaband is satellite Broadband - I'm told it is expensive and has low monthly allowances so it only really used in deeply rural areas where the nearest exchange is 10 miles away and a Broadband service as such does not exist at the property in question.

[#11]

Quote from: vilefoxdemonofdoom

Because mobile DSL is so much cheaper than wired DSL?

Quote from: purleigh

@carrieplusnet - Welcome to the forum !   It seems many people would like the option of Naked DSL as can be seen in this recent poll - http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5861-poll-results-three-quarters-want-a-naked-dsl-option.html For now the only practical alternative is 3G/4G mobile broadband if you are lucky enough to live somewhere with a good enough signal strength. There are quite a few routers these days where you can plug in a 3G/4G USB wireless dongle to be the internet connection for your home network.

Hi and thanks for the welcome. I have just found this when I looked up on your comment re; above United Kingdom[edit]
Naked DSL service, excluding SDSL, is not available in the United Kingdom, but it is possible to get a POTS and DSL from different service providers.[citation needed]. The incumbent network, BT, has claimed there is not sufficient demand from ISPs to provide a Naked DSL service.[6][7] Virgin Media provides broadband services without the requirement for a telephone line in cabled areas only, but this is not naked DSL as the service is provided via a coaxial cable from the street, rather that over a telephone line, active or otherwise.
So can someone tel me in plain english what it means. Can  BT tell me why they think there is no demand, I don't remember them asking me lol. Thanks to x47c for that wonderful explanation as I was writing this post. I now understand it a whole lot better.

[#12]

@x47c -

Quote from: x47c

There are more voice only lines in the UK than voice plus ADSL activated lines so the voice lines are acting as a considerable cross subsidy to the voice+broadband lines. Remove that cross subsidy and BB prices would have to go up even more. So you and me are getting a cheap broadband thanks to OFCOM making the voice side subsidise the broadband side which works due to the excess of voice only lines. This is deliberate to encourage uptake of BB by keeping it cheap.

Not by as much as you might think !
According to Ofcom, in this summary - http://media.ofcom.org.uk/facts/
[quote=Ofcom]
Number of residential fixed landlines in the UK  =  24.4m (End 2012)
...  ...  ...
Number of fixed residential broadband connections in the UK  =  21.7m (End 2012)


@vilefoxdemonofdoom -

Quote from: vilefoxdemonofdoom

Because mobile DSL is so much cheaper than wired DSL?

Although mobile data IS more expensive, you have to allow for the £131.88 annual landline rental that would be saved by no longer requiring a landline cable for either voice or broadband.

[#13]

It would make it difficult to receive a phone call though!
As a matter of course I never make calls to mobile phones, as it costs a fortune.

[#14]

Quote from: vilefoxdemonofdoom

It would make it difficult to receive a phone call though!

What are you going on about ?
The question was "how can I get broadband without paying for line rental as I never use the phone for voice calls"
As Naked DSL is not available in this country, then wireless technologies are the only options available.
These wireless technologies include -
          3G or 4G mobile broadband.
          Satellite broadband.
          WiFi hotspots.
          Wireless broadband provided by alternative radio links.

Quote from: vilefoxdemonofdoom

As a matter of course I never make calls to mobile phones, as it costs a fortune.

Not having a landline for voice calls DOES NOT mean that your phone calls are restricted to using expensive mobile rates.
Anyone with a broadband connection can have a VoIP phone to make and receive calls at lower cost than landline tariffs.

[#15]

I think you misread the last bit, he was on about the cost of calls to mobiles. However, none of that is relevant to the fact that a line needs to be provided for conventional broadband and it's maintenance has to be paid for as well.
There will no doubt be an element of cross-subsidy in the phone line rental costs as I seriously doubt that the wholesale LLU rental charge covers the true costs, especially when you consider that in a number of instances the engineer costs have to be paid for by the ISP (LLU or not). On the phone side the cost of actually providing the call connection is tiny in relation to everything else.
What hasn't been mentioned in this thread and what people who go on about Naked DSL seem to forget, is that part of the maintenance of a line involves testing, the great majority of which is remote and automatic. The equipment for this is part of the conventional phone side of the network.
Obviously FTTP is a different matter, but with FTTC, there is neither the room in a cabinet for such test equipment, nor the provision of the extra power requirement and back up that would be needed. The cost of sending out an engineer to test every potential line issue would be significantly greater. Even if you ignore the power & capacity issue, there is the design, development and installation costs of such equipment to run remotely . This latter aspect would also apply for "naked" ADSL if not connected to the conventional phone network.
Those that think that naked DSL would be considerably cheaper are mistaken.
Although all this is relevant to the cost of broadband, I fear we are drifting seriously off-topic. This thread is about Plusnet's price increase for Broadband.