HISTORY

Once upon a time, not many years ago, in fact within living memory, if you wanted a telephone at home, as opposed to going out to the public phone box at the end of the street (if you were lucky) you could get one installed. But the choice of company was limited .... BT, BT or BT. or THE GPO actually as it was known then, in "The Good Old Days" . ie no choice at all!

The author can remember being dragged to the next street when staying with Nanna to go to the phone box to ring Mummy and Daddy back at home. It involved having the correct change in pennies (d) inserting the coins, dialling the number (Round dialling which cranked around) then pressing button "A" if connected or button "B" if engaged tone.

Then in Maggie Thatcher's reign things began to change. Not long after Busby was seen in TV adverts telling us "Talk is Cheap", it began to get cheaper! The Government told British Telecom to allow other telephone call providers the use of the UK network of phone lines. Customers could purchase a box to plug into the phone socket, and in turn plug the handset into the box. If this worked the customer was billed for the cost of calls by the "new" company, but still pay the line rental to British Telecom. There were many problems to begin with. Either it didn't work, or there were numerous crossed lines and interference. The billing was haphazard, sometimes duplicated, sometimes late, or sometimes never.

British Telecom was unhappy. Their customers were trying to save money. No wonder. Line rental was high, calls cost 10p/min at peak time (08:00 till 13:00) then 5p/min off peak (13:00 till 08:00) plus a connection charge.

After a few years of trying boxes, BT has it had become, were forced to accept/admit that there was indeed a demand for this sort of competition. They admitted that the technology had been available all along to divert billing without the need for a box at all. So it became even easier for customers to choose an alternative company to "provide" a landline phone service. "Provide" is a term used loosely because the majority of landline calls are still carried along BT wires. Other systems do exist like Kingston in Hull and of course the fibre optic systems used by cable companies.

So now there is a huge choice of which company to use to PROVIDE THE BILL for telephone calls. BUT ...... Don't worry .... It is now simply a question of

1.  choose how the call is actually transmitted, either a cable company a BT landline, then
2.  choose which company to pay for the line rental
3.  choose which company to pay for the calls.

You do not have to pay for the calls from the same company you pay for the line rental.

eg. You could choose to have a BT line and pay BT FULL PRICE for the line rental OR pay the line rental to/via another company. Then you could pay BT FULL PRICE for the calls OR pay another company for the calls. By doing this you will usually get a discount price.

Line

This really is easy. Much depends on the house you live in. You might have a BT landline already. You might have a cable line already. You might have both. Whichever you have got, if you want to use it then you will have to pay a line rental. This can either be paid direct to BT or the relevant cable company (probably Virgin) OR via a "new" company who will have an arrangement to collect the line rental on behalf of BT or the cable company who are thus effectively like a wholesaler. The new company is the retailer.

Calls

This is more tricky because there are now hundreds of companies vying for your business. This is good news because the competition has really brought the cost of calls down. So much so that it is now easily possible to get most, if not all calls for FREE.  yes FREE.

For example they will offer a discounted rate of line rental, or subsidised call cost, or a mixture of both. Many telephony companies are part of, or linked to, other groups offering other types of service such as television, mobiles, utilities, internet, postal, car breakdown, insurance etc.etc.

So they offer "packages" to tempt their target customer.

The number of companies in this market are too numerous to list here.  So the oft repeated mantra on this site is again.......

SHOP AROUND SHOP AROUND SHOP AROUND SHOP AROUND SHOP AROUND SHOP AROUND

How?

By getting Gas, Electricity, a Mobile and Broadband Internet from the same company.

This company then offers a DISCOUNTED LINE RENTAL AND FREE CALLS. See below for the link to this company.

By using an internet site it is quite easy/possible to avoid having to ring expensive 0845,0870 numbers. here is the link. saynoto0870

Their service is FREE. You look up the company by name or number and find the Geographic number of the company and simply use that to ring them.

By using a computer to access the internet to make "phone calls". If the person you want to contact at a computer with access to the internet then it is again quite easy to both logon to services such as Skype, MSN, YahooMessenger, AOL to send instant messages to each other. Or to speak to each other and, if you have webcams, to see each other as well.

On a daily basis the author and his wife "see and chat with" family members in the Philippines and Australia .... for FREE, (if you don' t count the cost of the internet subscription because we pay that anyway to access the internet)

Disclaimer: The author uses Skype, MSN and Yahoo, the links are provided only, this does not imply a recommendation. The author does not use AOL so can neither recommend or warn against. The reader must decide for him/herself if these are appropriate for download.

Click on this link then navigate to the Home Phone section for full details