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AirBroadbands Social Tarif

Anth

Super Pro Member
Someone said this on the news articles comments section and it has got me thinking to the extent I wanted to start a discussion thread to see what people think on it.

But the idea was suggested that AirBroadband being the only provider on CityFibre offering a half decent Social Tarif. This was what directly caused their bankruptcy.

If that is true, its worth the ISPs raising as a warning to the government about the whole social tariff schemes they are pressuring everyone to implement they are causing companies to go bankrupt as a result.

It was £20 per month for 100mb/s up&down. Which is not a fantastic deal. But it is a very good deal if you have low usage needs.

Do people think this deal played a part in their downfall?
 
Social tariffs are interesting 🤔.

Voxi is owned by Vodafone.
Smarty is owned by Three.
Virgin and BT are big enough to offer a Social tariff.

Imagine offering a tariff that barely covers the connection cost to use your wholesale suppliers backhaul.

It doesn't cover staff costs, doesn't cover investment, doesn't make a profit and if your users heavily use it you go bankrupt.

If you look at ofcoms list, air broadband are the only provider who don't own infrastructure offering a social tariff:

 
Virgin and BT are big enough to offer a Social tariff.

Whilst the size of Virgin and BT may be able to support social initiatives they cannot long term if the percentage of actual claimants becomes a high proportion. It creates a distortion in the market with other players not similarly obliged.

My view is that Ofcom should be encouraging a low cost entry product from ALL ISPs and that the government can then use in consideration in the household income test (more robust) for Universal Credit and other allowances.

The current arrangements create a lot of anomalies with with those needing assistance not getting it whilst others where some of the household income is hidden (cash) can claim.

"Voluntary Enforcing" social tariffs is a form of tax on the broadband users and only those on the participating ISPs.
 
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@Meatball agreed, if you look at the Community Fibre Essentials Tariff, anyone can apply as they do not want the overhead of validating the individual is eligible.
 
Assuming it didn't actually cost money for the ISPs to implement, I'd be in favour of retaining the existing throughput limits on the social tariffs but also adding data caps. Keep them generous rather than prohibitive but say 1TB per subscriber each month should more than cover the usage (it's double the fixed line average), and it keeps the costs that the ISP is exposed to under control.

Other than that, there needs to be actual government support for such an initiative other than "please can you do a social tariff". Allowing ISPs to zero-rate the VAT for example.
 
Assuming it didn't actually cost money for the ISPs to implement, I'd be in favour of retaining the existing throughput limits on the social tariffs but also adding data caps.
You're essentially punishing people for things that may not be in their control. You have to remember its a choice to be on that tariff, they can go to a lower tier of tariff if they want it.

The "Correct" way to get Social Tariffs is to scrap them, and actually pay those on low/no income enough to get by as is. That's never going to happen especially with how pitifully low things like disability allowance is.

Slower speed is fine on social - you're giving them a slower tier of service for a reduced cost, but IMO datacaps etc. are unnecessary restrictions, and likely will increase support overhead (system changes, monitoring capability, phone calls because no data left etc.)

From a ISP perspective, slower speeds is bad - because it pulls down your average speed for when you want to be high up on the comparison tables / advertise (VM I seem to remember doing this?) unless they start being selective on package choice for the marketing material.

ISPs should be zero-rated tax for residential, regular for businesses, like other utilities.
 
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