The retail telephone line rental price has resolutely increased over the
last few years even when the wholesale cost has decreased, so with the
announcement of price rises for 2014/2015 we can expect even larger increases
in costs at the retail level.
The Ofcom Fixed Access Market Review is not expected to be published until
July 2014 but Openreach is pre-empting this based on the proposed charges that
were announced back in 2013. As we noted back in 2013, the big
change is that full LLU rental will increase to be broadly in line with WLR
pricing, and this is likely to hurt TalkTalk and Sky and their customers the
most.
| Existing Price per year | Revised Price | Monthly Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| WLR Basic Rental (excluding VAT) | £93.32 | £96.17 | +£0.24 |
| LLU MPF rental (excluding VAT) | £83.92 | £96.37 | +£1.04 |
The price rises are set to take effect from 1st April 2014 and are described
as taking place so Openreach can ‘our customers certainty on pricing during
the period between the current charge control ending’. There is a promise
that if the Ofcom charge ceiling is lower that prices will be reduced and
communications provider will receive a rebate in August 2014 – though the
chances of a consumer seeing any of that rebate is near to zero.
Update Friday 21st February Ofcom has released copies of
the confidential exchange between themselves and BT regarding the pricing for the Openreach WLR/LLU products
for the months where there are no price controls. In theory it was possible for
Openreach to charge whatever they like during that 3 month window where no
controls exist.
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i wouldn’t mind if i had decent copper instead of aluminium!! 1100 metre line and 14mb on infinity and 750k upload 🙁
Yeah I doubt TT and Sky aregoing to take this lying down. Especially the MPF increase !!
prices should be coming down, everyone is paying for the prem and champions league rights.
If TalkTalk, Sky or anyone else were to show that the revenue from WLR/MPF rental was subsidising the BT Retail BT Sport then once exposed a total collapse of BT Group share price would be very likely.
I don’t want to see my line rental increasing because I don’t join BT Sports TV nor Sky TV.
I am glad I don’t have a phone line.
Heh like BT are stupid enough to allow the accounts to show that Openreach are subsidising other business units by making higher profits than permitted by regulation.
A Crown guaranteed pension fund gets you considerable latitude; the deficit has to be filled in one way or another and BDUK / some regulatory forbearance are as good a ways as any to permit it.
IMHO I don’t think we would be any better off if Sky or Talktalk were swapped round with Openreach and the rest of BT Group. Sky are extremely good at saying how they are ‘improving services’ while bumping up the average price on packages each year. I have no idea about TalkTalk but I would hazard a guess that they would give it a try if they thought they would get away with it. The big 3 are all the same to me!
balb0wa1973 the speed of 14 meg at 1100 metres from the cab is absolutely consistent with the distance from the cab (- aluminium not affecting it and may not even between between the cab and you
dixinormormous that would be unequivalent and outside of the regulation each CP is deat with the same that is why openreach was created