General Chat

"Somerset is a medium sized county about 130 miles from London."

thank you for that info Rollo - I don't suppose any of us were aware of that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t9ZJK-vc-I

:-D

'Govt phone socket tax'

Could you clarify please as it's not something we were aware of applying in the UK. Searches did find something similar related to the US.
Genuine question, not a criticism.

This BBC article covers some of the issue:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30273667

It skims over the fact that Virgin buries the charge inside its overall billing. Virgin have to pay the bulk charge to OpenReach otherwise its customers could not use the UK POTS system.

UKGov has recently raised the charge by £ 1 / month per line. - the charge applies to all allocated phone nos inc biz switchboards! However medium and large business can install phone systems entirely independent of BT and this avoid most of the charge. This p-s off OpenReach no end.

The infrastructure costs of running a number are nowhere nr £ 13/month. Traditionally the surplus has been used to fund POTS telephone service to wild and outlying areas and islands. Now the fund is also being used to install rural broadband. Openreach does not much care but UKGov is keen 'cos the estate agents are telling them that poor broadband is a deal killer.

I have no problem with that except that OpenReach are grossly overcharging and rollout is far slower than it could be.

Broadband in the Black Country & Brum is terrible too but there is no fund, the voters don't vote Tory and so the problem is ignored. Oddly enough HS2 is affordable.

The "me" generation who tend not to use the landline are gipping at the cost of approx £ 150 p.a. For that reason UKGov via OFCOM is pressuring ISPs to subsume the "minimum monthly line rental charge" into their overall costs. Not very transparent.

fwiw governments raising significant revenues from call charges has always been regarded as a third world sort of thing.

England is a medium sized country 40 km off the north east coast of Europe with around half of the population living withn 200km of Calais so that they are wthin pigeion post distance of Paris and Brussels.

Half of the main island pretty well unihabited perhaps because of the poor mobile phone connection and none existent broadband. The lack of these services regularly comes as a surprise to spur-of-the-moment hikers and J Clarkson who think GoogleMaps is an ideal climbing aid.

The govenment of the day has come up with a cunning scheme. It is going to cut Europe off where it hurts. At one stroke both the overcrowding and communcations problems will be fixed - non-Brits and Remoaners will be shipped south while communications can get back to usual, a natter over some nice Yorkshire Tea.

well, gee whiz


.............. and there I was thinking that England was just off the coast of Newfoundland


You learn something new every day.




Now, please, may we have an end to this dissertation on cell phones, smartphones, everyone should have one, where one can or cannot get reception, and the geographical descriptions of counties, motorways, countries etc.

I posted this thread as an advisory re a scam ................. not to provide a platform to one person.



Thank you.

Don't know if you get them in Canada, Sylvia, but I'm plagued by automated PPI calls from 'number with held' - my sister gets them on her mobile and work phone.

As one of my friends has 'number with held' - I have to answer, and can't block :-(

What's worse, as it's automated, they can't hear what I think of them :-|

yep, we get those!

I hate them.