British Telecom is mightily fighting to hold onto its share of the UK home phone service marketplace. With competition encroaching from all sides, BT is offering all kinds of new incentives to regain customers lost to companies such as Primus and Vonage. Recent offers include unlimited calls for nights and weekends and free broadband for three months. It all may sound super but British Telecom still insists that every customer pay £11.25 for the rental of a BT landline. This last is BT’s mainstay, as they charge every home phone service company in the nation save one for use of their copper cables. How then is the BT grip coming to an end? Two affronts are gradually placing BT in a position where they will eventually have to lower their base pricing. The first is the bundling of home phone service with low cost providers of broadband.

Companies such as the Post Office Home Phone and Primus are undercutting BT’s rates even with the added expense of having to pay BT for use of lines. Still the bigger threat to BT’s landline monopoly comes from Virgin Media and their shiny new grid of fibre optic cables.

These super speed communications lines eliminate the need for any BT association whatsoever. And because fibre optics carry data much faster, Virgin can even bundle home phone and broadband with TV. For a more complete explanation of the new low prices for home phone service visit homephonechoices.co.uk. All information from Home Phone Choices is free of charge as part of the Consumer Choices Network.

Tags: bt landline, free line rental, home phone and broadband