Not if the moment the contract is up you switch to someone else.
DE regulation means BT the customer retail cant make a profit on you to cover BT openreach the connector.
so you get cheaper calls, more expensive installation.
Probably with a two year contract or somesuch.
Just as a matter of interest, what do you find wrong with the way that BT handles its billing ? I have always found mine to be totally concise and clear to understand, especially the on-line version, which allows me to examine the cost of every item, in detail, right up to last night.
Arfa
"More fool them ..." seems like a bit of an odd sentiment. How else do you imagine that the real commercial world does, or *could* work ? If every physical line had to be put in on an 'as required' basis, the cost would be a lot higher than 120 quid ... I don't suppose that customers would be too happy at having a retrofitted cable strung all around their nice new house, either.
Arfa
There would come a point above which the amount of installation work going on "went critical" and would never be finished because new installations were being requested faster that existing ones were finished. I.E. The BT vans would always be continuously on site.
AFAICS the water co's and "gaspipes-R-us" or whatever they call themselves this week, work like that already round here creating their ubiquitous holes in the ground, and are pilloried by the public for their trouble.
Derek
well basically I had two accounts, they had to be accesses separately, and they weren't itemised, and I was paying a fortiune, and BT people kept pestering me with incomprehensible deals, and if things went wrong it was a 27 layer switch board 'press one, press 2' and then I got cut off. Or put to to someone incomprehensible. Probably in Galashiels. Or Bombay. Hard to tell.
My personal complaint is the very tight deadline they give for paying the bill. It's just enough, if there are no postal delays in either direction. Even paying online, one has to initiate the payment almost on receipt. Fine unless one is away for a few days...
The thing I hate about BT right now is that they are trying to lock everyone into a auto-renewing 12 month contract. To get F&F or discounted call package you have to take one of these contracts.
The only good thing about BT is that they are less slow than other companies in dealing with voice faults IME.
Did you pay for your own education?
Arfa Daily wibbled on Wednesday 11 November 2009 09:31
Agree totally.
If you look at where the cable co's lay TV and phone cabling, it's not where TNP lives! It's not where I live either. It's only in the lucrative densly packed towns.
Same with the PO. Like BT and the electric co's, they have a duty to serve, as near as dammit, every household in the British Isles only to lose out when deregulation comes and allows the "others" to cherry pick all the profit centres and conveniently forget about the rural locations that depend on being cross subsidised by the easy to serve towns.
Also, regarding the PO, it's hardly "green" to have 10 different couriers driving around when one PO van could be doing all the work.
I'm not saying allowing competition is a bad thing - it has helped bring down prices and LRU unbundling is quite possibly giving BT a kick up the arse technology wise, but it's hardly fair the way it's being done.
If competition is to be allowed, it should be on the same terms - duty to serve. So if TeleWest or whoever want a license to supply, say, Kent, they should be allowed to do so on the basis that the provide a service to
*anyone* in Kent who wants it, for the same basic installation cost. Just like BT - that would even things up a bit.Might make the lot of them think about providing a common ducting infrastructure too, so they can stop digging up the bloody roads everytime someone new wants to pull a cable.
IMO, the only benefit has been lower prices. But there have been a lot of disadvantages to deregulation that are not so easy to assign a cost to.
Cheers
Tim
Many times over, in taxes.
The problem is it all got bound up in dogma from both sides of the House.
The final solution is not too bad: As I understand it Open reach manages the physical infrastructure, and is a de facto monopoly, run under tight regulation.
BT the retail company, buys calls off Openreach, and BT the internet provider buys bandwidth off Openreach as does everyone else, some using more or less of their own infratstructure to provide the services.
That's fine, since I can select from the packages and suppliers those that fit my profile.
Its the same with rail, power and so on. The network itself has to be run my a single monopoly, but that doesn't mean you cant choose which train company, which power generation company etc. etc.
What it does do, however, is make it nigh on impossible for a competitive infrastructure to develop except in areas of very high usage.
NTL as was, now Virgin Cable IIRC, is basically up to its ears in debt.
BT simply lowered its prices as soon as they started making any money.
I am fully in favour of national infrastructure being run under regulation: As to whether its run privately, or publicly, my gut instinct is the less government has to do with any business, the better it usually is.
Because the other one is ISDN....
I doubt that. Education only receives a small percentage of the overall tax revenue. It's only slightly more than servicing government debt.
Not in may case.
How terribly last century :-)
Whatever. If it's free, it's free.
Si
No BT Retail buy from BT Wholesale and the other providers also buy from BT Wholesale (if they haven't got their own infrastruture). BT Openreach purely maintain the BT infrastructure.
Nothing is free, especially if a big corporate advertises it as such.
It's really about manipulation of perception, and different ways to make you pay.
OK thanx for that. So one more layer in the pile.
Anyway the main point is that IMHO the dross is in BT retail. The actual infrastructure and bulk call rates are pretty reasonable and any ISP CAN buy calls and numbers wholesale.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.