Sky joins providers offering new phone line installations
Thursday 06 March 2008 19:20:35 by Andrew Ferguson
The ability to have your telephone line rental through another provider is not exactly new, but all too often this has only been available at properties where you had a currently working BT line.
According to leaked news on SkyUser.co.uk Sky is to offer the option of a brand new phone line for £124.99, with the on-going line rental paid to Sky which costs £10 per month and a 12 month minimum contract on the telephone line.
The line rental is 50p to £1.75 cheaper than the cheapest BT line deals. BT Retail charges £124.99 for a new line and also has a 12 month minimum contract. Further differences emerge once you start to look at the call elements too, though comparisons become harder. For example to get the same basic calls package from BT you can pay £3.45 a month extra or opt for a 12 month contract that automatically renews every 12 months. Add the variations in price depending on whether you pay by Direct Debit/credit card or cheque and you can see why many people just stay with their current provider.
Of course other options for new telephone lines do exist and some don't come with 12 month contracts either. As always do check for things like the cost of services like caller ID since this can easily make a cheap deal not so cheap.
- Madasafish: Offers a line rental of £9.99 (includes free evening and weekend calls) and will install a new line for £115 with a monthly contract.
- Plusnet: Home Phone service will provide a new line for £105 and line rental is £9.99 (includes free evening and weekend calls). If you opt for a 12 month contract there is an offer running that gives you line rental for £4.99 per month for three months reverting to the standard £9.99 thereafter.
With the providers mentioned you can get your broadband from any other provider that uses a BT Wholesale or shared LLU service. This is the advantage of wholesale line rental since it does not tie you into a specific provider for both telephone and broadband. If there are others who will install a new telephone with a one month contract let us know so we can let others know about it.
Naked DSL is not yet available in the UK, the closest at this time is a service from Andrews & Arnold where you can pay the line rental of £10.99 a month and have a new line installed for £116.32. The line is closer to naked DSL since it will not allow you to make out-going calls.
Naked DSL if and when it is properly launched in the UK will mean no payment will need to be directly made for the voice side of the telephone line. The cost of the DSL based broadband is likely to increase but overall should save people a couple of pounds a month if they do not need a working telephone line for voice calls.
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I suspect the Sky service is Wholesale line rental based, so you might be able to get the minutes provider changed using CPS if Sky permit it.
It's good to see slowly more providers offering new line WLR, it makes for a more competitive market if you don't have to rely on BT-Retail to put a new line in.
Meanwhile, I wouldn't expect to see mass-market 'naked' ADSL with no dial tone any time soon. The fault rate is just too high as you need a tone and/or a whetting current to stop the line being taken for some other use.
Excellent news another choice to pick apart from the dominent BT :) cheaper prices also, good news all round :)
"cheaper prices also" - that depends what options you have for call routing. If you have a BT line you know you have access to the full range of death-rate carriers to pick the best one for the calls you make.
I imagine if you really want to dial silly prefix numbers to save a few pennys per call you will be able to. A lot of these call routing organisations support virgin phone lines and others so i dont see why sky will be any different. Nice little saving on line rental also which is over 20 quid a year, good news for consumers IMO
erm... it is not 'just a few pennys'(Pence / pennies) ... most prefixes will get the USA for 1p a minute anytime!
The BT cost is unsure - one says 15p, this list says 54p a min... a saving of 53 pence, *really* saving your pennies!!
http://www.payphones.bt.com/callingcards/prices/callcharges.htm
and no, YOU find a clearer page!
That's with a Chargecard.
See http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=23704
^^^ above 2 links, first one is as stated charge card rates, second link is for an ADD ON and its only from April (IE not current pricing). Also considering charges for international calls have not been announced from sky yet, its a bit silly to start comparing prices on things where one side have not announced what they will charge, atleast not from what i have read. I also doubt realistically people regular ring the USA and i would suspect most persons phone bill is made up of local rate and national rate calls inside the UK.
"Local rate" calls stopped years ago (0845 is "lo-call" rate and is often more expensive than 01xxx).
When Bulldog did LLU voice, they didn't do prefix access to the cheap carriers, iirc; what stops Sky doing the same?
Some prefix companies are still offering UK landlines at 0p per minute (5p or so connect charge). That's a bit more than "a few pennys per call" saving, especially now BT's "new improved free weekend calls" tariff has changed weekday evening landline prices from ~5p max to ~5p plus over 1p a minute).
^^^ As stated we dont know prices sky will charge for calls on the new service yet. Also i think everyone knew what i meant by local rate. Wouldnt know about Bulldog and to be honest dont want to know about any pipex linked company. If we start talking prices of calls and prefix services then we are getting into the "depends how you use your phone" territory. Ignoring prefix services and basing things on what we currently know, sky is likely to be cheaper than BT. Comparisons of call rates and prefix services is something we will have to wait for to compare.
It still seems expensive at £124.99 - But then I would say that when UW only charge £99 for a new line (min 12 months + homecall), and , although not relevant - calls to US and others 1p a minute :-)
From what I remember, my step-daughter has gone for cable in every property where she's had the choice, purely as they have either done the connection for a tenner or completely free, as opposed to well over £100 as above. Mind you, ongoing charges are relatively high, unlike for my TalkTalk line+calls+ADSL (and it's really reliable!).
I gues as ever, work out what you want ahd how much it costs and go for it....
Wanting to switch back from Cable to Sky, I spoke to sky (last week) to see if I could get my line reconnect directly to them rather than to BT 1st but I was told this was not yet possible. However, Sky did offer to pay the £124.99 BT bill for me via a 'BT Reconnection Pack' :-)
My concern with this whole subject is that by switching my line to Sky will BT treat my line as disconnected & try to charge £124.99 again if I ever want to move back?
Is it possible to move from one LLU company to another without having to pay a reconnection fee or moving back to BT first?
It is my understanding that Openreach is responsible for this £124.99 charge. It is up to the service provider if they pass the charge onto the customer or not.
Will users be able to use alternative call carriers with this service or only have the option of using Sky for calls without CPS or prefix dial alternatives ?