Phone charges increase

[Clive]

Dear Customer

Thank you very much for choosing IDNet to supply your telephone line.

We are acutely aware that everyone is suffering with the cost of living crisis. Prices for everything are rising all the time. Here at IDNet we are tightening our belts and resisting price rises as best we can. However, BT Openreach have now imposed an increase on our buying price for telephone line rental ahead of the national phone system switch off, scheduled for 2025. We have tried as hard as we can to absorb as many cost increases as we can, but unfortunately we are unable to absorb this one.

We are writing to give you notice that we will have to increase the price that you pay for your phone line rental by £4.50 per month (£5.40 inc VAT) for invoices dated 1st July 2023 onwards.

We really do appreciate that this is unwelcome news and if we could force BT to back down then we would. Thank you once again for choosing us to supply your services.

Regards
Tim Davies

[stan]

Price increase on phone line from July 2023.

Received the notification from IDnet today ... increase of £5.40 per month including VAT.

Got to be honest I've been thinking more and more seriously about jumping ship and joining Andrews and Arnold on their FTTC (with their VOIP phone service which costs peanuts).

Maybe this is the nudge that pushes me over the edge after 15 years with IDnet. It's a shame that the IDnet Centrex phone offering is so expensive compared to AAISP (£1.40 a month). A landline is less and less obligatory but I still think it would be handy to have a landline number for the foreseeable.

I've contacted A and A and, as was expected, their tech support is excellent and as personal as IDnet and I feel confident in applying for FTTP and getting them to port my landline number over to them. Their router (Technicolour) serves as an ATA and I'm assured I'll be able to plug my analogue DECT cordless phone into the back of the router and should expect it to work (after, maybe, a bit of tweaking with advice on the phone from AA tech support.

AAISP told me they have no plans to increase prices (in fact their last change was a DECREASE). but, that could change in an instant.

I haven't done anything yet .... and maybe I'll stay but my experience is that IDnet won't be making any offers to retain me, despite 15 years with them - I did ask a year ago and felt like I was just a number and that my leaving wasn't going to keep anyone awake at night.

I have no justifiable complaint ... I can stay and pay the increase and change to full fibre when circumstances dictate it becomes necessary at some point in the future .... or take the bull by the horns and move to another provider. 

[sparky]

Yes, a massive increase from the £12.60 that I am currently paying. But I'm sure that its still cheaper than BT?

Hopefully won't affect me for long as I am waiting on a FTTP install from an ALT Provider and our last real contact on LandLine has recently said that they are ditching it. So although mobile in our area is not great, between my wife on one network and me on another I think we should always be contactable. Transferring my landline number to the Alt provider  (and VOIP) would only cost £7.95 a month, but I think that I might give it a miss and go for for an unlimited broadband package.

Times they are a changing..............

[sparky]

Think i'll be on the move to soon, but more to do with FTTP,

https://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,34218.msg764035.html#msg764035

[stan]

Bit of a duplication here ... apologies if I started a different thread instead of seeing sparky's.  Perhaps a mod will see if they need merging or somesuch.

BUT .... It just sunk in that, as sparky has said, the phone rental was £12.60 and has gone up by £5.60 .... that's one hell of a jump!!!!

[Simon]

It does seem a steep increase (about 40%), but maybe this is because there hasn't been an increase for a while?  I have to admit, it's been years since I explored the competition.

[Simon]

I've merged the threads, Stan.   

[stan]

Right you are, ta.

[zappaDPJ]

That is a huge increase and perhaps one of the reasons a million households have cancelled their broadband.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65622403

[stan]

Just to confirm, IDnet Centrex phone service (VOIP) has a set up feeof £24 and a monthly fee of £15 which includes UK landline and mobile calls. And the set up fee seems to include them sending you a phone (presumably a digital one).

There are lots of facilities that come with the Centrex service. When I look at the digital phones that you use with VOIP I admit that I'm taken aback at the complexity of them. They need configuring and goodness knows how long the training course is before you can call yourseld qualified to use one.

[Simon]

Pardon my ignorance but, assuming it's in addition to your broadband cost, why do you need to pay an extra £15 per month to use a VOIP phone through your own broadband connection?

[Simon]

And, of course, no matter how many bells and whistles these new digital phones have, they still don't work in a power cut. 

[Simon]

And, you'll need to remember to hang up and redial if you've been talking for an hour:

All call packages have a call limit duration of 1 hour per call after which you would be charged for the time period after the initial hour at 1p per minute for landline calls and 5p per minute for mobile calls.
Setup fee includes handset delivery, activation of service and number porting.

[nowster]

I was going to suggest sipgate, but they seem to have become business-centred and expensive nowadays. 

I still have a free account with them. I wonder how long that will last.

[Tacitus]

Pardon my ignorance but, assuming it's in addition to your broadband cost, why do you need to pay an extra £15 per month to use a VOIP phone through your own broadband connection?

You're getting a DECT phone and base station (Yealink) together with unlimited calls to landline and mobile.  If you're a heavy user it's not that bad a deal.

For someone like me who doesn't often use the landline, it's a poor deal.  I currently have three relatively new Gigaset S700 handsets and an N300IP/A base station which covers both POTS and VOIP.  Using iDNet Centrex, I would need to rent or buy two additional Yealink phones at significant cost.  Alternatively iDNet could supply an ATA for use with the current setup. 

The alternative would be either to jump ship and go somewhere like A&A, maybe Zen, or simply swallow the addtional cost.  I think many people will find the cost equation no longer adds up.   

[gizmo71]

I obviously picked the right moment to go FTTP and dump the landline.

[Tacitus]

I obviously picked the right moment to go FTTP and dump the landline.

I'm on FTTC as FTTH/FTTP is a long way off.  Were the latter available I would probably use a separate VOIP provider and stay with iDNet for the Broadband as I have no complaints whatever on that side of things.

At present I'm constrained by the phone number being attached to the copper line.  Fair enough A&A have a workround, but it seems a lot of faffing around for what should be a simple matter.  Then of course there's still the fact that a power cut means complete loss of service, something which nobody seems to be addressing in any practical way.

If iDNet supported Gigaset kit then it would make things a lot simpler.  Centrex has the appearance of iDNet being a reseller and having little flexibility in what is offered. Makes things simpler for support but for the end user it's that or nothing.

[sparky]

At present I'm constrained by the phone number being attached to the copper line.

I know some one with FTTC IDNET Broadband but has no landline number and never had to order a PSTN connection when he ordered the Broadband, is this SOGEA?

So if traditionally, you have always had both, is it not possible to drop the landline but keep the broadband connection? Or does the canceling of the landline automatically cancel the broadband and you then have to create a new order?

Am I making sense 

[nowster]

So if traditionally, you have always had both, is it not possible to drop the landline but keep the broadband connection? Or does the cancelling of the landline automatically cancel the broadband and you then have to create a new order?

Certainly it used to be the case that cancelling the telephone service would automatically cancel the DSL attached to it.

[peasblossom]

What residential VOIP providers are there? I was reluctantly thinking of switching when the change over happens in 2025, but it would have to be with a company that had a customer service team as good as IDNet's. So none of the larger operators.

[zappaDPJ]

I obviously picked the right moment to go FTTP and dump the landline.

I did that around 10 months ago after a degree of protest which quickly fizzled out once she realized that for us at least there has been no downside, just positives.

[Simon]

I've not received the email Clive posted.  Would that be because I still have a normal landline?  Are my charges also being increased?

[robinc]

Basically you cannot win. BTW I pay line and BB annually in advance

From email:-
"You would not get charged anything additional before your next billing period.

You would see the increase in your next invoice.

New line rental cost per year £198 Including VAT (NOTE this was £139.33 last year)
Broadband cost per year per year £283.80 Including VAT

Total £481.80 Including VAT

Unfortunately Full Fibre is not yet showing available at your address but we can provide the broadband service without the line rental by converting this to SoGEA (please see below).

SuperFast Basic SoGEA 40/10 (broadband only service) £468 per year Including VAT
No charge for conversion."

The saving hardly seems worth the effort. I'll just wait and see what happens in 2025 on the Great Switch Off.

[peasblossom]

I've not received the email Clive posted.  Would that be because I still have a normal landline?  Are my charges also being increased?

Define normal. (Mine's PSTN and I got the email.)

[Simon]

Well, a normal old fashioned copper landline.