In article ,
Derek G. wrote:

Just one question. - On all their tariffs why do VM then insist on
everybody either taking a stone age telephone or in default of taking
one pay for it anyway?

I already have 3 phonelines into the house on long contracts.

It seems illogical to me for VM to avoidably add cost to their
product. If they wanted a higher price for their service rather than
bundling a compulsory phone they should simply increase the price.


It doesn't always work like that. I've had broadband with them (and before
when they were NTL, and before that when they were Cable&Wireless) starting
with the 150k service that was amazing (no ADSL offering back then), through
600k, 1M, 5M, 10M and now 50M. Tempted to move to the 100M service soon.

I just had the broadband service, but at some point (probably about 5 years
ago) it became *cheaper* to take a tv box in the bedroom that I didn't want
than to just have the broadband.

Sometimes it works out cheaper to take the whole lot than to pay BT for
line rental. Of course, they screw you royally for call charges... not an
issue for us as we rarely use it but something to be careful of. Also,
watch out for caller ID - free on BT, 2.50 a month on VM.

I suspect their main driver for getting people to take the phoneline is that
most people will move from BT and remove their BT line. That makes moving
away from VM broadband a whole lot more complex as you need to coordinate
BT reconnecting you along with all the other stuff...

Darren