Maybe other BR's have had this through the post today.
BT have sent me the offer to reduce the cost of my monthly bill (£7 off) if I don't have broadband.
I heard about this on the radio a while back and thought 'great!, I only have a basic line through BT 'just in case' as our mobile coverage can be a bit iffy' and a price cut would be welcome.
But when I've read the offer it now says you are only eligible for the money off if you don't have broadband at all!
I get my internet through VM and it's fibre door-to-door so BT aren't involved at all.
It even mentions that I could get the reduction if I use mobile internet!
So I rang BT... I've been told 'yes' you only get the offer if you don't have any broadband regardless of whether BT are involved... I said how's that fair... it's the rules apparently.
So I said I could lie and say I got my internet through a mobile signal and qualify.... 'arr' says the BT lady 'we have ways of finding out how you receive your internet to check!'.
Really!!
I feel cheated!
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>>>BT have sent me the offer
So rare that any pro-active marketing on behalf of any company helps the consumer.
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Err, and BT know you have VM cable how? They dont of course, Just lie.
(well you could have done, but you told them now!)
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Yes of course I could but as I said the CS adviser said that they have ways of checking where/how I get my broadband... she even said that they would check any negative replies as they expect most households these days to have broadband in some way.. and this was aimed at very low income families.
As I only have a landline as a back-up I just feel I'm subsidising anybody who uses BT in anyway to receive their BB/TV packages and £7 a month off would be nice.
As far as I know this is supposed to go to all BT customers as it's been prompted by an Ofcom request.
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I cannot for life of me see why it matters to BT if you've got broadband via your mobile or another providers cable/fibre network as far as your door.
OTOH if they can relieve themselves of any need to provide you with ADSL or fibre to cabinet then maybe there's a bandwidth saving on line to local cabinet/your house or at exchange.
At home unless you're prepared to rely on mobile signal then you're on BT infrastructure.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Tue 27 Mar 18 at 22:15
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>> At home unless you're prepared to rely on mobile signal then you're on BT infrastructure.
Unless you can use Virgin Media's network.
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>> >> At home unless you're prepared to rely on mobile signal then you're on BT
>> infrastructure.
>>
>> Unless you can use Virgin Media's network.
At home meant 'where I live'. With hindsight I should have said 'here' and ignored fact I'm on holiday this week.
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>> Yes of course I could but as I said the CS adviser said that they
>> have ways of checking where/how I get my broadband...
Absolutely not. No way at all of checking. If its not on BT infrastructure, they are not allowed to know or find out how you get your internet.
>> As far as I know this is supposed to go to all BT customers as
>> it's been prompted by an Ofcom request.
Because if you are not using any BT infrastructure in any way for your internet, you are not incurring any infrastructure or investment costs to BT
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Which was my point to them...
Apparently the wording of the Ofcom ruling (according to the BT adviser) was that you only got the £7 off if I had no access to any broadband at all, mobile internet was excluded but she couldn't explain why or why pure fibre (VM) was included.
That's why I'm asking on here... doesn't seem right to me.
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BT Revenue has been used to build out the infrastructure. Thus someone who does not use broadband has been subsidising those that do. Especially since wholesale voice calls have been reducing in cost but landline only bills have not reduced in line.
Whether or not they are BT customers, they benefit from that investment if they are using the infrastructure, whoever they pay for it.
Thus, non-broadband infrastructure users warrant a reduction.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Tue 27 Mar 18 at 23:28
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>> Apparently the wording of the Ofcom ruling (according to the BT adviser) was that you
>> only got the £7 off if I had no access to any broadband at all,
>> mobile internet was excluded but she couldn't explain why or why pure fibre (VM) was
>> included.
>>
>> That's why I'm asking on here... doesn't seem right to me.
I'd be pretty sure it's about whose infrastructure you're using. If it's mobile signal that's clear cut. If I've got 'Virgin Broadband' at my home address the last bit, whether ADSL or fibre to cabinet it's using Openreach. If I were closer to Northampton town centre I'd have possibility of Virgin fibre to my door.
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If you are landline only, then satellite, cable and cellular should all be excluded from their questioning.
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I just read the documentation.
BT have to discount landline only households.
Other providers should provide a similar discount if you buy landline only from them.
Bundled packages are obviously excluded.
It would appear that if you have any Broadband service you are excluded. The cellular service is not Broadband. Virgin *is* Broadband.
It is clear that Ofcom were targeting landline only households irrespective of where Broadband was obtained from.
[Edited after I found another document]
Last edited by: No FM2R on Wed 28 Mar 18 at 00:31
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>> If I've got 'Virgin Broadband' at my home address the last bit,
As you say it might be Virgin you pay buy BT that provide the service, and therefore you might get better price elsewhere.
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>> If I've got 'Virgin Broadband' at my home address the last bit, whether ADSL or fibre to cabinet it's using Openreach.>>
Not necessarily...:-)
My road and others in the area were cabled by Telewest around 30 years ago and have been in Virgin's ownership for a number of years now.
But it was always too expensive and I've stuck with BT (followed by Worldonline, Tiscali and TalkTalk since) throughout. But an OpenReach engineer did tell me recently that anyone who just wanted a BT phone line and didn't need broadband did/could get a reduction in the cost.
I'd mentioned that the only reason I still had a BT landline was for fibre broadband as my GiffGaff mobile phone £10 monthly Goodybag now has unlimited minutes as well as unlimited texts and up to 4Gb of 4G data. That would cover all my phone requirements if it wasn't for broadband.
Last edited by: Stuartli on Wed 28 Mar 18 at 00:01
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>> If I were closer to Northampton town centre I'd have possibility of Virgin fibre to my door.
Virgin Fibre is a Broadband service. A cellular service is not. I know they both call themselves broadband, but that's just marketing and laziness.
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>> Virgin Fibre is a Broadband service. A cellular service is not. I know they both
>> call themselves broadband, but that's just marketing and laziness.
Yeah I get that now we understand the Ofcom background to this.
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>> If I were closer to Northampton town centre I'd have possibility of Virgin fibre to my door.
Virgin does not offer fibre to the premises. It is fibre to the street cabinet and then coax to the house.
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>> Virgin does not offer fibre to the premises. It is fibre to the street cabinet
>> and then coax to the house.
OK, I didn't know that distinction. But it's still completely separate from BT/Openreach infrastructure yes?
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>> >> Virgin does not offer fibre to the premises. It is fibre to the street
>> cabinet
>> >> and then coax to the house.
>>
>> OK, I didn't know that distinction. But it's still completely separate from BT/Openreach infrastructure yes?
yes completely different infrastructure (mostly) Dont use DSLAMS in BT Exchanges, have their own switching/mux centres. Its also a different signal architecture.
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>>Absolutely not. No way at all of checking. If its not on BT infrastructure, they are not allowed to know or find out how you get your internet.
The information exists. Whether or not BT can access it is another matter. I would think that BT must have some level of access to the data, but I'm not sure to what granularity.
Edit: I just noticed your words "not on BT Infrastructure". I should have read it more carefully.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Tue 27 Mar 18 at 23:33
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Just to be clear, where I am my borough made it a condition that separate cables were laid to every household as part of the old NTL contract. I get 150 mbs (or whatever the units are) it might not be fibre into my house but the VM cables along the roads are separate from the BT network.
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Mine is cable to a small patchng panel on the street corner, cable from there to a larger MUX 4 streets away, fiber from there to a another mux/switching centre. No BT poles holes or wires, no link to the local BT exchange, calls are switched at a central hub a gazillion miles away.
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>>..it might not be fibre into my house but the VM cables along the roads are separate from the BT network. >>
It's fibre cabling under my road's pavements in the case of Virgin (originally Telewest as I mentioned earlier) and its cabinets are quite separate from those and the underground access points of BT. It's easy to spot those who are with Virgin as the cabling is connected to properties via protective dark brown plastic structures fitted to garden walls.
However, like TalkTalk, Sky etc Virgin uses BT Infinity for areas where it doesn't have its own cabling.
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>> It's fibre cabling under my road's pavements in the case of Virgin (originally Telewest as
>> I mentioned earlier)
You have virgin fibre to your house and a virgin fibre Modem?
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As you well know, he doesn't :-)
The coax cable over which the digital TV services and the broadband travels is superior to the twisted pair cable from the BT cabinet. But BT will soon offer much faster Internet using FTTC and then the old phone line. Some lucky people willing to pay a lot will also have the option of fibre to the premises (FTTP).
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The problem with BT, and mine is fairly typical, is that bit to the house.
I have a thick gauge copper shotgun pair cable terminated in my house, strung over the road to a wooden pole where it terminates in a not very well weather proofed plastic box with about 60 others crammed in. Inside this box of not very tidy knitting the thin cables are bent at incredible angles using rubbish crimps where they disappear in twisted pairs (if Im lucky) to a BT termination street cabinet where they make another knitting ball again. Only from that point they might make up a proper TTP or shielded connection to the fibre switch.
at least with Virgin cable its shielded with a known impedence to the house
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 28 Mar 18 at 20:49
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The cables around here are run through a green corrugated tubing to the side wall of the house and then drilled through, all houses have a small triangle access cover outside each house on the boundary (often accidentally covered by old tarmac) and this is used if the household decide to sign-up to VM.
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I had Virgin cable laid recently. I have a small round access port in the pavement outside, a cable was pulled from the connection cabinet about 40 yards away on the other side of the road, under the road to a 90/180 degree manhole 20 yards away on my side of the road, then to my access port and through a freshly dug trench and installed corrugated conduit.
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>>... all houses have a small triangle access cover outside each house on the boundary...>>
It's the same in my area as I've mentioned before - you know who is (most likely) a Virgin customer....:-)
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>>But BT will soon offer much faster Internet using FTTC and then the old phone line. Some lucky people willing to pay a lot will also have the option of fibre to the premises (FTTP).>>
At least you don't take the Michael....:-)
We've had Virgin speeds from around 50Mb to 100Mb or more for years down my road but, as I've said before, it was (and still is to a large extent) very expensive. You can get a broadband only deal ( tinyurl.com/y7jc2td5 ) but it's expensive again, despite having no phone line rental; much more than it costs with TalkTalk and with line rental included.
BT's broadband speeds from ADSL, ADSL2+ and fibre (via TalkTalk of course in my case) have always been excellent as the cabinet is only about 75 yards from my house.
I get virtually the full (Infinity) fibre speed of 38Mb (didn't see much point in having "Up to" 76Mb) with TalkTalk - it currently costs £22.50 a month including line rental.
Current average figures are 9ms ping, 37.70Mb Download and 9.55Mb Upload using speedtest.net. TalkTalk uses the same speed test on its website, but the figures are invariably slightly higher....:-)
A key advantage with TalkTalk is that if and when it offers new and improved rates for broadband you can upgrade quickly and easily on-line; originally I paid £29 a month for broadband, phone and line rental, but this has been reduced cost wise on a regular basis over the past two years plus or so.
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I have Virgin, 150 meg at the moment I think, and every year I go through and re-price to see if I can do the same cheaper. I mean the whole package, not just the broadband, and I never can. There's always at least one major compromise.
I've asked them what-if's, like what if I took off the phone, which is never used. As I'm on a package, the overall price goes up.
I've priced up getting Freesat or similar plus a few Humax boxes but the service simply wouldn't match what I get from Virgin, even with the old TiVo boxes which I have, let alone the new ones which record 6 channels at once (I don't want 6 channels in total though!!).
It is anniversary time again shortly so we'll go through the annual dance of negotiating my price for the forthcoming year, They have usually been pretty reasonable plus I get a discount on a mobile phone SIM for being a Virgin customer.
Virgin's service is usually excellent, broadband speeds consistently exceeding what I've paid for and I've not been aware of any faults on the TV or phone for some time.
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I have Vodafone Fibre38 at a very modest twenty quid a month. This replaced BT Infinity basic fibre which, while good and speedy just got too pricey.
When the Vodafone router came I unplugged the BT Home Hub 5 and, using the existing BT set-up, plugged in the Vodafone router.
Initially speeds were not great, but after a chat session with an on-line help desk, I changed wireless channels and used both frequencies available.
Things got better, but obviously not to BT speeds, where the quoted maximum is circa 52Mbps.
I was getting in the mid 20s Mbps, but I was OK with that, given I was paying a much cheaper price.
Recently though, speeds have dropped substantially - down to 10-12 Mbps during the day and as little as 3- 5 Mbps during peak periods of use. Obviously a poor contention ratio, due to overselling a service without having leased enough Openreach infrastructure
I made an attempt to deal with this by the on-line chat service, finally giving up when the operator wanted me to take off the cover of the BT splitter box and look at the connections (this at 23.15 hrs!)
I then made a more formal complaint under Vodafone's on-line complaints procedure, which resulted in a phone call this morning, basically admitting that there was not enough leased capacity locally, promising to resolve this within the next two or three weeks and rebating 50% of my bill for two months, because of their failure to provide the service for which I have paid.
Now, I know Vodafone have been shredded for poor customer service, but if these promises come to fruition, I will dare to say that they have done well by me.
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I'm not sure that price of any service alone is a good enough reason to change.
For me, customer service is often worth paying that little bit more for.
I have recently left Vodafone after over 15 years to go to Plusnet for two phone contracts which were cheaper anyway but had an English speaking person I could actually discuss the problem with without being told to do exactly what you were told Roger.
I have left Co-op Energy after one year and gone back to Eon who I had been with for 15 years purely for their flexibility and cost and overall I may pay £50 more per year.
I will shortly be leaving Talk Talk for phone/TV/ Broadband to go to Plusnet at a saving of £18 per month but the main reason is I have experience of Plusnet and how they deal with customers. I have years of experience of Talk Talk and being told that because I don't use a Talk Talk router the problem (whatever the problem is) is with my router.
I have stayed with Axa for car insurance for 3 years now because they dealt excellently with a claim and the cost was just £30 a year more than any other firm.
Ant business providing a service can do well, but it's when it all goes t*ts up that the difference becomes apparent at how they deal with it.
Pat
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Is this fair (BT price reduction) - Fenlander
