BT's landline-only customers set for cheaper bills 28 February 2017
Ofcom plans to cut bills by at least £5 a month for BT customers that have only a landline
Landline-only customers are often elderly or vulnerable, unlikely to switch
Plans would return telephone line rental prices to 2009 levels
More than two million people who buy only a landline telephone service from BT would see their monthly bills cut by at least £5 per month, under plans announced by Ofcom today .
Ofcom has reviewed how the market is working for customers who buy only a landline service from a provider either because they do not want broadband or pay TV, or because they take these services under separate contracts, usually from different companies.
We have found that these customers often elderly or vulnerable people who have remained with the same landline provider for decades are getting poor value for money in a market that is not serving them well enough.1
Landline-only customers are particularly affected by price hikes in telephone line rental. Major providers have increased their line rental charges significantly in recent years by between 25% and 49% in real terms. This is despite providers benefiting from around a 26% fall in the underlying wholesale cost of providing a landline service (see chart).
So Ofcom intends to give customers with standalone landline contracts additional protection by cutting the cost of BT's line rental by at least £5 per month or £60 per year.2
This would mean that BT customers with only a landline, who currently pay £18.99 per month for line rental, would pay no more than £13.99 a reduction of at least 26%.3
The cut would return the cost of line rental to 2009 levels in real terms, effectively reversing price hikes for landline-only customers.
We are also proposing safeguards to prevent BT from making future increases to line rental and landline call costs by more than inflation.4
Sharon White, Ofcom Chief Executive, said: Line rental has been going up, even as providers' costs come down. This hurts people who rely on their landline the most, and are less likely to shop around for a better deal. We think that's unacceptable.
So we plan to cut BT's charge for customers who take only a landline, to ensure that vulnerable customers get the value they deserve.
Missing out on competitionCustomers of bundled' services packages including landline, broadband and/or pay TV benefit from a range of attractive deals, driven by strong competition.
By contrast, offers for landline-only customers have become increasingly limited, with a number of providers withdrawing their telephone-only products altogether.
Almost 80% (2.3m) of the UK's 2.9m landline-only customers are with BT. Ofcom has found that BT's market power has allowed it to increase prices without much risk of losing customers. Other providers have then followed BT's pricing lead.
We expect that our proposed cut in BT's prices would lead to other providers following suit and reducing theirs. This would mean savings for landline-only customers across the market.
Ensuring value for moneyOfcom is proposing, and seeking views on, a range of £5-£7 per month for the cut to BT's landline-only line rental. We will take into account the need to protect consumers, while also preserving competition and ensuring that competitors to BT can profitably attract new customers.
Ofcom also intends to require BT to trial different approaches for communicating with its landline-only customers. This is to help them better understand what they are paying, and how other BT packages or even other providers might offer better value for money.
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITORS
On average, landline-only customers have been with their provider for more than 20 years, compared to eight years for phone with broadband customers, and four years for triple-play customers. 43% of customers with a standalone landline contract are 75 or over, while 35% live in DE households on the socio-economic scale. Furthermore, 70% of landline-only customers have never switched provider, or considered doing so.
2.The planned price cut would not apply to landline services sold by BT Consumer as part of a bundle of services including broadband.
3.Line rental saver customers benefit from a 10% discount by paying for their annual line rental upfront. Currently the upfront price paid, including the discount, is £205.08. We propose to set a revised price for BT's discounted line rental saver product. Customers would get 10% off the annual cost of the new lower-price line-rental decided by Ofcom. (To illustrate: should we reduce BT's line rental by £5 to £13.99 per month, the annual cost to customers would be £167.88. For people who pay for line rental upfront, the 10% discount would be applied, reducing the price to £151.09.)
4. These proposed safeguards would cover the line rental, call charges and the call package add-ons. BT would be permitted to increase revenue for these service by no more than the Consumer Price Index (after the one-off reduction in line rental has been applied). In addition, we are proposing a specific control on the line rental charge, that would ensure BT could not increase this charge significantly more than inflation.
Ofcom publishes information to help landline customers choose the right tariff to match their use. This includes information on the low-cost services available for customers in receipt of certain state benefits. Guidance on switching landline is also available.
Wholesale and retail line rental price movements (£/month at December 2016 prices)
Source: PurePricing broadband updates
Notes: Adjusted for CPI; excludes line rental saver pre-payment tariffs
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
BT's landline-only customers set for cheaper bills 28 February 2017 
