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BT pressure regarding BSTN cut off

Tony Gamble

ULTIMATE Member
With the help of the wise folk on this forum I have moved from my BT Broadband to Lebara - and find it excellent.

I have left my analogue 'landline' operational. Paying £55 a quarter has not given me the impetus to move but I have had a letter today saying that from 24th September it will go to £55 a month. I am not in a contract as mine expired years ago.

Is this the sort of increase they are imposing to non contract 'business' customers?

Whilst I await comments I will apply to A&A for their service, with a plan to getting the landline ported over from BT. When I was frequenting this forum almost daily it seemed they were well respected and good value. We will not be making outgoing calls as we get so many free from our two cellphones.
 
If you really wanted to save money, you could switch your landline number to A&A's VoIP solution, which costs just £1.20 per month. But you'd need an ATA adapter for your router, unless the router already has a port for phone services and can handle VoIP settings to that.
 
Thanks Mark,

I already have a Grandstream that I used to test it would feed our Panasonic Hub. We have one of those hubs that also connects by bluetooth to our two mobiles.
 
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BT continues to make strange decisions regarding pricing but I have to be on BT’s side here. Each BT division is a separate commercial unit and has to streamline to profitable products

BT Business really only wants now to offer Cloud Voice Express to SMEs and remove legacy products. I am surprised you have lasted on a business account to this point. Especially as you are aware of the alternatives.


BT Consumer have different obligations and will retain landline for a bit longer but both need now to accelerate the demise of PSTN and only retain customers where there will be a profit (call plan). It’s the only way to take the PSTN costs out.

We really need to stop thinking of BT as having any more obligation to us as do their competitors.

The only issue really is the way they are doing it which in my view does not reward loyalty or likely to retain custom.
 
I have left my analogue 'landline' operational. Paying £55 a quarter has not given me the impetus to move but I have had a letter today saying that from 24th September it will go to £55 a month. I am not in a contract as mine expired years ago.

Is this the sort of increase they are imposing to non contract 'business' customers?

They are probably proposing a move to a broadband service and a Cloud Voice package, with the intention that you get in touch to discuss that if you object, but don't lose any features if you just let the 'upgrade' happen.

If you only want to retain the number for a rare inbound call then as mentioned, port to A&A and either connect it to an ATA or a mobile app, or a divert and pay per minute for the calls you receive.
 
With the help of the wise folk on this forum I have moved from my BT Broadband to Lebara - and find it excellent.

I have left my analogue 'landline' operational. Paying £55 a quarter has not given me the impetus to move but I have had a letter today saying that from 24th September it will go to £55 a month. I am not in a contract as mine expired years ago.

Is this the sort of increase they are imposing to non contract 'business' customers?

Whilst I await comments I will apply to A&A for their service, with a plan to getting the landline ported over from BT. When I was frequenting this forum almost daily it seemed they were well respected and good value. We will not be making outgoing calls as we get so many free from our two cellphones.
I say a very good idea to leave BT pronto and take your landline with you, as a price increase of £440 a year (from £55 a quarter to £55 a month) for effectively the same service is just plain ridiculous.

You should also look at OnSIM

With OnSIM you can port in your existing landline numbers and by so doing get in effect a SIM card for your landline.
 
Last edited:
@Tony Gamble it's probably time to think about what you actually need from the "landline" service.

If you need physical phones, either your existing Grandstream to adapt to the existing equipment could do or you could get something new from (say) the Gigaset range.

Alternatively, if it's just "answering the phone" a VoIP app on your mobile registered with (say) Andrews & Arnold might do what you want.
 
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I say a very good idea to leave BT pronto and take your landline with you, as a price increase of £440 a year (from £55 a quarter to £55 a month) for effectively the same service is just plain ridiculous.

You should also look aat OnSIM

With OnSIM you can port in your existing landline numbers and by so doing get in effect a SIM card for your landline.
Strictly speaking it's not the same service. A&A's VoIP will be subject to different regulations than the BT services, especially those intended as the PSTN replacement (digital voice for consumer, presumably cloud voice for business).

For a little used incoming only service these differences may be acceptable, but possibly not for people or businesses who rely on their landline.

Without knowing the details of what is included in that £55, we can't critique if that price is reasonable. I'd doubt that it is solely the price for Cloud Voice though.
 
Strictly speaking it's not the same service
I think you misunderstood, by 'the same service' I meant the same BT service before (£55 per quarter) and after the increase to £55 per month, so wasnt comparing the BT service with A&A's VOIP.
 
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