Vodafone bins line rental charges as it moves onto TalkTalk's turf Vodafone has scrapped line rental charges as it tries to muscle into TalkTalk's lower-end market – and comply with imminent regulatory changes for an all-in-one price for broadband and phone services. Under the move, rental charges will no longer apply for new and upgrading fibre optic home broadband customers, which means …
Last time I subscribed with them, about 1 year ago, it was still cheaper to take a line rental and not use it, than to take their "no line" package (BB only, no TV, 12 months). Even cheaper if you paid 12 months of line rental upfront.
Hopefully Vodafone's move will put an end to these stupid pricings. About time.
My virgin bb is an old 'no line rental' package. It is £25 for 60mb. I also pay 8 for a 2gb data 2000 min sim card added onto it.
Virgin took over our old fibre provider and kept the contracts rolling (was originally 20mb line back in the day, then 50 now 60 soon to be 80 i think)
How do you mean Talk Talk is in the lead? If you mean by the number of users then yes, but then they have been around a long time, still useless but been around a long time. vodafone have not that long started doing home broadband.
Talk Talk is not cheap, £35 a month, that is for fibre up to 38Mb/s or to the proper term, fibre to the cabinet, and line rental, Vodafone was cheaper even before they changed the prices.
I have no idea what Vodafone broadband is like, but if it was a choice between Talk Talk and vodafone then I would take vodafone.
The problem these days are the stupid 18 months contract, far too long and also the connection fees, while Talk Talk do not do that for existing fibre users, other providers do.
With Plusnet at the moment, and i am now out of contract as from yesterday so I can move when ever I want, but staying put until I see something that suits me, so far nothing does, even the service i am on now is really what I want.
This is really a racket on the BT side; they keep telling you how WONDERFUL the FREE features you get with your landline package are, knowing perfectly well nobody use them. There isn't even a phone plugged in the socket anymore at my place, hadn't had one for years.
This is literally a racket, and they know it perfectly well.
on cheapest VM package (true fibre) - 50Mb/s
No one else can get within 10% of that (after a very long call with BT, they confirmed I would be lucky with 3 Mb/s from them).
In general your BB supplier is a function of geography - much like your water supplier. Not sure how national reporting helps ?
Exactly. All they've done is combine the line rental aspect with the rest of the charges into a single monthly price, and they'll be obliged to this soon anyway. Also they haven't suddenly decided to provide Naked DSL.
Come on El Reg - even Auntie Beeb was brazen enough to call them on this rather than regurgitate the Voda press release verbatim: "However, some experts said the charge is being merged, rather than abolished. "To be clear, Vodafone isn't really abolishing line rental charges, it's simply combining the charge into its fibre pricing," said broadband expert Ewan Taylor-Gibson from uSwitch."
"The move means customers will not be billed the current £18 ($23) monthly charge but only if they commit to an 18-month contract."
I know the BBC are blatantly behind Hilary Clinton but why quote the price in dollars for a UK product?
Maybe the BBC will bugger off to their favourite country after Brexit .......
They will probably offer it. I may or may not have seen one of their streaming boxes in action / crashing / generally not working.
It may or may not be utter garbage. It may or may not be a generic lower end box of tat.
The network capabilities and reliability may or may not be shit.
Obscure because. Corporate bullshit.
"Ewan is the newest addition to the uSwitch team, and is a whiz-kid analyst able to demystify the communications market with his encyclopedic knowledge of tariffs, price plans and all the latest handsets."
How does he qualify as a broadband expert? He has some price plans on his computer that he can easily compare.
“Compared to other fibre deals on the market, Unlimited Fibre Broadband 38 is competitive,"
And this is the summary of an expert in the field of broadband? A sentence that says pretty much nothing but takes up a whole line of an article.
And Vodafone, a pat on the back, really? Pointy sticks in orifices would be more appropriate.
Aiming to be slightly better than Talk Talk is a really low bar.
If the price is all in one then the line rental which is total rip off as it keeps going up in price and we get less, then it it is not really getting binned, anyone who gets fooled with that deserves all they get.
I have looked at Vodafone but they offer nothing more than what I am getting Plusnet and they are more expensive. As for not having TV content or the lack of it, it is not that important, plusnet offers TV, i do not want it or need it, all I want is an internet connection at a decent price and get rid of the rip off line rental.
The Plusnet 76Mb costs £36.98 per month inc line rental. £37.98 after sept 1.
The Vodaphone 76Mb costs £28 per month inc line rental (there is no line rental).
Looks like they really have binned line rental unless they overcharge on modem delivery and 'activation'. Site says its £49 one off.
I meant Plusnet was more expensive now, I can only get up to 38 anyway.
Binned the line rental? not really, they may have reduced it a bit and stuck it under a all in one price, but it is still there and that will not change until Bloated Toad closed reach (BTOR) reduce their line rental prices for broadband only.
The £49 payment would reduce the savings a fair bit, what they do not make clear is if that £49 is also for consumers who are already on fibre.
Their router is a big problem for me, I prefer to use my own, but Vodafone will not give any usename and password details to do that.
I've never understood why there is such a huge complaint about paying line rental.
The cost of the copper/fibre infrastructure, and the ISP end equipment has to be paid for somehow, whether it be by a broken out line rental, or by having it wrapped into the monthly package.
The cost of the voice component of the phone line is minimal in this day and age, and probably most data only lines still have the hardware to do analogue calls anyway. Just think, I can buy outright a whole mobile phone, with radios, batteries, displays and everything for £10. How much does the A-D and D-A converters cost at the exchange? And the amount of digital information generated by an analogue voice call is trivial.
This means that it is extremely unlikely that a data only line with the infrastructure costs wrapped into the costs will work out any cheaper.
I'm all for making the eventual costs more transparent, however.
""I've never understood why there is such a huge complaint about paying line rental:""
The issue is both the size of the charge, and the fact that you have to pay £17.99 in the small-print after you have been told that you are getting a FREE introductory offer. Instead you are paying a fee designed to move BT profits to OpenReach (ubiquitous charge for DSL consumers) from Retail (significant market share but not ubiquitous).
. The cost of the copper infrastructure has been paid for a long time ago.
. The cost of the voice component of the phone line has been paid for a long time ago.
All that remains is the cost of the FTTC (which you are paying the Broadband Fee for) and OpEx.
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