Price rises. We’re all experiencing them.
Whether it be electric, gas, council tax, national insurance or fuel… unfortunately in 2022 they all seem inevitable and unavoidable.
In the telecoms sector, we are no different, each telecoms supplier purchases services from a wholesale supplier such as BT Wholesale. They in turn are charged by Openreach for supplying the telephone infrastructure in the UK.
You may have heard from your home telephone and internet provider that they are raising prices, and passing the full cost of increases onto their customers. Certainly the likes of BT Retail, Virgin Media and TalkTalk were very quick to pass on all increases to customers a few months ago.
Here at Nxcoms, we have also been subjected to wholesale price increases, but for the most part we have absorbed these and not increased the prices to our end users.
Unfortunately, we have now been notified of a further price increase to PSTN Analogue line rental. However as the vast majority of our clients are using VoIP services this doesn’t have too much affect on their phones.
Where it DOES affect is when you have a broadband line. The majority of broadband lines require a PSTN analogue line to run on, so if you have a copper-based broadband service there will be a line rental charge to pay on top of the broadband service charge. If you have an internet connection of 80Mbs or less then its likely you are running on a broadband line that requires a copper-based telephone line to run on.
We have always supplied the PSTN analogue line rental charges at cost-price to our end users. Most of them dont actually use it to make calls, but it has to be there for the broadband service to sit on. For the past five years we’ve mainly absorbed any price increases and not passed this onto our clients. However, with the latest increase we are no longer able to do that without making a loss.
What does this mean for you?
Well, if you have a PSTN analogue line you will see a small increase in the monthly price of £2. This is to cover the cost of the increases passed down from Openreach who supply them. Unfortunately there is no way around it and in order to still supply the lines at cost price, we have to make the change. This will take effect from 1st June, so your June bills onwards will show the increase. Please note this only applies to the analogue line rental, and all other charges remain the same as before.
Its not all doom and gloom though….
As you may have heard from us previously, full fibre optic connections are being rolled out across the UK and wherever it becomes available we are advising our clients to upgrade. Not only can full fibre into your premises give you speeds of up to 1000Mbs, its much more reliable as well! There is no copper telephone line involved and therefore no PSTN analogue line rental charge, so overall you are likely to save money! We constantly monitor all our customer’s connections to see if they can be upgraded and when this is possible we will advise directly.
Need more information?
We are here to help, and if you are unsure on how the line rental price increase may affect you, then please get in touch with us straightaway, just call 0161 711 1100 or email info@nxcoms.co.uk