Broadband and Telephone Services: Fees and Charges

(asked on 23rd March 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals on abolishing broadband and telephone line rental charges.


Answered by
Julia Lopez Portrait
Julia Lopez
Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
This question was answered on 31st March 2023

As the independent regulator for telecoms, it is the responsibility of Ofcom to make decisions relating to pricing regulation. In 2017, Ofcom conducted a review of the market which found that customers who only have a landline were getting poor value for money compared to customers who had bundles of landline, broadband and pay-TV services.

As a result of this review, Ofcom proposed new regulation which requires BT to reduce the price of line rental for these landline-only customers, from £18.99 to £11.99. At the time this represented a saving of £84 a year, or 37%, for up to one million of BT’s customers who didn’t also have a BT broadband service. BT also committed to capping any overall increases to line rental and call charges to inflation for three years.

BT’s original commitments ran to the end of March 2021. However, it committed to continue these protections for a further five years, which Ofcom accepted.

Given Ofcom’s statutory independence, it would not be appropriate for the Government to further comment on its regulatory decisions, which are taken independent of the Government.

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