No more ‘landline tax’? BT trials broadband without a phone line - You may soon be able to get broadband without also having to pay for a monthly rental fee for a phone line - the so-called ‘landline tax’ that many customers resent paying.
BT Openreach says it will trial a service this autumn that separates the phone line from its fibre broadband. This will let the internet service providers (ISPs) that use Openreach’s cables – Sky, Vodafone, TalkTalk, EE and others – offer broadband without also charging customers for a phone line, potentially leading to cheaper deals overall.
At present any broadband service that uses BT Openreach comes with an active phone line, whether you use it or not. Monthly fees to rent this line can be as much as £18.
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Around one in five homes don’t use the landline for voice calls, according to recent estimates. As a result the number of landline calls is falling. Ofcom says that 17.7 billion minutes of calls were made in the UK in the third quarter of 2015, down from 19.8 billion minutes in the same quarter of 2014.
The biggest factor in this decline is the rising popularity of smartphones and internet services such as Skype, although customers are also abandoning landlines because of the amount of nuisance calls received on them. Another regular complaint from customers is that the line-rental cost is hidden when ISPs advertise their broadband deals. In March, culture minister Ed Vaizey called for TalkTalk, Virgin, Sky and BT to be more transparent in how they market their offers.
It’s not yet known where BT will trial the service, nor when it may become widely available to the public. But the company has said that it expects to end all voice-call services by 2025.
Around one in five homes don’t use the landline for voice calls, according to recent estimates. As a result the number of landline calls is falling. Ofcom says that 17.7 billion minutes of calls were made in the UK in the third quarter of 2015, down from 19.8 billion minutes in the same quarter of 2014.
The biggest factor in this decline is the rising popularity of smartphones and internet services such as Skype, although customers are also abandoning landlines because of the amount of nuisance calls received on them. Another regular complaint from customers is that the line-rental cost is hidden when ISPs advertise their broadband deals. In March, culture minister Ed Vaizey called for TalkTalk, Virgin, Sky and BT to be more transparent in how they market their offers.
It’s not yet known where BT will trial the service, nor when it may become widely available to the public. But the company has said that it expects to end all voice-call services by 2025.
