BT Make Home Essentials Broadband Plan Available on High Street UPDATE

UK ISP BT has today announced that they’re making their home broadband social tariffs – ‘Home Essentials‘ –  available to sign-up for on the high street for the first time, which forms part of their response to today’s affordability report from Ofcom (here).

BT and EE share a sizeable number of retail shops on the high street and, as a result of today’s announcement, the operator’s in-store colleagues will now be on-hand to raise awareness of their social tariffs and are “trained to spot those who could benefit from Home Essentials and may need extra support“.

Home Essentials is a “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) and call package exclusively available to everyone receiving Universal Credit (and certain legacy benefits), which offers unlimited data, 700 minutes of included phone calls and speeds of 36Mbps or 67Mbps for just £15 or £20 per month respectively (detailed package summary).

Tania Caporaso, Director of BT Customer Care, said:

“We know fast, reliable and affordable connectivity has never been as important as it is today. We’re urging anyone who qualifies for our at-cost, social tariff to get in touch, whether that’s on the phone or in one of our stores, to take advantage of BT Home Essentials, which has become a lifeline for many who want to stay connected for whatever reason that may be while they are out of work or unable to work.”

However, we have asked BT whether they will be making any other changes, such as by placing the Home Essentials tariff as an option directly alongside their regular broadband packages or making existing customers aware of the tariff in any future communications about their annual price hikes (the latter is an Ofcom recommendation). We are awaiting their response.

UPDATE 2:50pm

Tania Caporaso, Director of BT Customer Care, told ISPreview.co.uk: “We know fast, reliable and affordable connectivity has never been as important as it is today. We’re urging anyone who qualifies for our at-cost, social tariff to get in touch, whether that’s on the phone or in one of our stores, to take advantage of Home Essentials.”

BT informed us that their customer service and retail staff are trained to proactively recommend their social tariff, Home Essentials, to all BT, EE and Plusnet customers. But it seems a bit odd to recommend this to EE and Plusnet customers, as they’re different brands and should ideally have their own such tariffs.

However, they didn’t specifically clarify whether being proactive in this way includes mentioning such tariffs on future price rise notifications. Likewise, BT did not give a direct answer to our question about how the packages should or could be presented on their website.