BT starts charging for caller display
 

A cross parliamentary group has criticised BT of profiteering out of those who suffer from nuisance calls, after it goes ahead with plans to introduce a £1.75 a month charge for caller display.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24712206

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

Gotta pay for btsports somehow right :)

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

There is a way to avoid the charge for 12 months, although it does involve locking in to a new contract with BT for the duration. If you re-register for their Privacy At Home service you get caller display for free for the whole of 2014.

It does stink though, caller display doesn't represent any new investment in technology. They are making their customers pay for something that has been a standard feature ever since they retired their mechanical telephone exchanges and which doesn't cost them anything to supply.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

Effectively applying an increase of over 11% to the current Standard package monthly line rental charge!

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

I always get annoyed by the landlines providers charging extra for services that have been free as standard on all mobile phones for decades, even PAYG mobiles with zero monthly charge.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

BT are just money grabbing barstewards.

I am glad I dumped them.

Caller display is still free on sky talk.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

Still gets four times the upload speed of VM.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

You need to teach me this trick to quadruple caller ID upload speeds. Seeing the CLI a millisecond faster would be soooo cooool :naughty:

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

:rofl:

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

I re-registered, but they stated "From 4 January 2014, the price will be £1.75 a month." :erm:

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

Yes, that's when the charging regime begins, but you're meant to get it free for 12 months from then. Re-read it carefully and if you still think they're threatening to charge you, you should call them to confirm.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

Ah - Just found "Pre-register today for BT Privacy with Caller Display FREE for 12 months" at http://www.productsandservices.bt.co...ecallerdisplay

Thanks for prompting me to look further!

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

Isn't it free anyway? you just have to make so many chargeable calls over the month/quarter. otherwise you get charged the full or part cost?

seems they're doing away with the "chargeable call" thing.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

You get caller display included with any mobile network, maybe it's time for the landline to fade away unless you need it for ADSL, maybe the plain old telephone service has had it's day.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

It already has for me. I've not used my landline for calls for... well ever since I had my first landline.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

Fixed line phone services are cheaper. The mobile companies have got a lot of people trapped in long term, expensive monthly contracts whose only benefit is effectively unlimited voice calls, so people use their mobiles because they have the minutes, so they might as well use them. After a while, they realise they only use a mobile, never use a landline, and conclude that the landline must therefore be obsolete. You have to hand it to the mobile networks, they have played a blinder.

Nevertheless, I receive a lot of calls from Joe Public on my landline at home, where we take bookings for our B&B, and the truth is, almost all the calls we get are from domestic, fixed-line telephones. There undoubtedly a lot of people who now only use a mobile for anything, but in my experience there are still a lot more people who prefer to use a fixed line when they are at home in the evening.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

Fixed line are cheaper? Up until a few months ago the majority of mobile users were PAYG.

Zero line rental, and call costs as low as 3p per minute cross network - both of which are substantially cheaper than landline and come with *zero* lock-in.

And you still get free caller display, answerphone, and time sync as standard.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

Who is offering 3p a minute on PAYG, and is there a minimum top up in order to get that rate?

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

Three.
3p per min, 2p per SMS, 1p per MB. No minimum top-up, no tie-in. I ditched both contract mobile and landline as a result.

Here.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

No coverage ... not even outdoor. :(

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

They have the same coverage as EE, so if the UK's largest network (in terms of both customers and their >99% UK coverage) aren't in your area that's some extremely bad luck.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

Actually that's what comes of living in rural Scotland. The only reliable network at my house is Orange 2G (which shows up as EE on my phone these days).

Coverage stats are expressed as a percentage of the population, not a percentage of the territory. In Scotland you can reach a reasonably high %age by only covering the central belt.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

Indeed, coverage is stated by population rather than area, and yes most of Scotland is sparsely populated.

However if you get Orange 2G you should also get 3, since 3 roams onto Orange 2G network wherever they (supposedly) don't have 3G coverage. 3 customers should have access to *all* of Orange and T-Mobile's 2G networks except in areas where they feel they have such good 3G coverage of their own there is no need.

Personally I'm finding much of rural Scotland actually has far better coverage than I became used to expecting, having lived in it 10 years ago, where barely getting 2G was a chore - now everywhere I go that used to have borderline 2G has 42Mbps 3G DC-HSPA+

Incidentally EE still claim to be on a rampage to upgrade 99.9% of their 2G transmitters to the hilariously inefficient 3G by the end of next year, having previously stated they intend to upgrade them all to 4G and later quietly dropping that statement...

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

That's useful information, thank you. :tu: I may well look into switching our mobiles over to Three. We still need a landline mind you, what with running a business from home (and relying on a wobbly ADSL service for our interwebs).

We noticed a new mobile mast on the hillside north of here a year or so back. It corresponds pretty closely with a splash of predicted Three coverage that, according to the map, doesn't extend to us, even though we have clear line of sight. I guess the power is too low.

I have to say, I am holding out much hope that eventually, 4G will allow us to route all our calls and data wirelessly, perhaps with some decent hardware and an external antenna on the house. The Scottish govt has a plan to enable 99% of homes for super fast broadband by 2020 but to do that for us, they will have to run a very long piece of fibre up the road from the nearest telephone exchange to serve a very few homes, or else install a satellite system that will be too expensive for any of us to use anyway.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

You could look up on www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk to see who the mast belongs to and its registered output power, from there you can get a more accurate idea of the coverage. But the most reliable way is to just get a free PAYG SIM off 3 and put it in your phone. As a hark back to the topic itself, they'll send you a free SIM with no tie-in and no commitments complete with all the "optional" crap BT charge extra for.

As for 4G, as I've mentioned EE plan to provide at least 99.2% coverage with "superfast" 3G and 4G has considerably more range (if done right, but only Vodafone and O2 are in a position to provide decent service over it, yet both companies are currently taking the "lazy" approach) so having it provide broadband to remote notspots is quite economical. If 3 put in coverage there (which I suspect they will, if they've just put a new mast in recently) then it's likely it'll get 4G, and on an unlimited package with line of sight you can expect ~100Mbps which could then be shared among a few locals.

Even without the government's involvement, you're likely to get 99% coverage anyway - as I say commercial deployments are targeting 98-99% coverage by population, and unless there's a disproportionate excess of single person homes in rural Scotland that'll likely mean a similar number of properties.

Mind you, now that I think about it if that new mast is a 3 mast it should also give you Orange/T-Mobile 3G signal too, as they all share the same 3G network.

Re: BT starts charging for caller display
 

Aha. A Tetra mast. Oh well.