The easy guide to understanding Telephone Line Rental, Call Costs and Broadband
When OFCOM ordered the break-up of British Telecom (BT) a few years ago, what did it mean to the average person?
It meant that companies such as Virgin, Pipex and TalkTalk and a whole raft of other companies could provide you cheaper telephone calls through their systems and save you lots of money in the meantime.
Despite this, many of these company were not making this clear in advertising campaigns and it was still as clear as mud for the average person.
Although they didn’t necessarily have their own equipment in your local telephone exchange, you could prefix the number you were dialling with their “code”, for example “1615” (e.g. Tiscali) and then follow this with the number you were dialling. Your call would then “route” over the companies' telephone system and you would be billed accordingly - for your callsonly, as BT at this time still had the monopoly on line rental and you still had to pay them.
Several years later, this changed once again when OFCOM ordered that BT must also relinquish control of their monopoly on line rental. This added the further step of allowing the average person to also have the option to move their line rentalaway from BT to another company.
The confusion with Line Rental and your actual Calls
Even today, do you know that many people (possibly even you as you read this) do not realise that they are not tied to BT for their line rental?
Many people pay their line rental to BT every 3 months or so, unaware that they could be getting this line rental for free - or at least heavily discounted from other providers.
There are 2 distinct differences between line rental and call costs. You can have any combination of your calls and\or line rental with a company other than BT.
More confusion explained
So now you know that you can have your telephone line rental and calls with completely different companies, surely this cannot be true for your broadband provider as well? Yes! Unfortunately (or fortunately if you save money in the process) this is true.
You can have:
1. Your line rental with one company
2. Your calls with another
3. Your Broadband with another
This means you could in effect have your broadband provided by Orange, your calls by Tiscali, and your Line Rental by Virgin!
It practice though, this wouldn’t be the most cost effective method - and you will probably find that you get a discount if you sign up with one company to provide all three services.
Organised Chaos
Let’s face it – all most people want to do is make simple telephone calls and have the ability to surf the Internet!
At least now we hope you can start to understand how so many people are confused with all bombarded with all these options and plans offered to them.
Why pay a premium for your phone services when you could change this moment? It couldn’t be easier.
If you want to do a direct comparison of how much you could save, click here visit the well-known www.uswitch.com website and you could switch right now. |
