Falling cost of broadband masking rising cost of line rental

Call for more transparent pricing on deals.

Falling broadband costs are hiding increases in line rental charges according to new research from comparison website broadbandchoices.co.uk.

Five years ago the average cost of a broadband connection was £9.05 a month. Today the cost has plummeted 58% to an average of £3.76 a month.

However, over the same period line rental prices have risen by 49% from an average of £11.14 a month in 2009 to £16.61 a month in 2015.

So although the cost of broadband has dived thanks to increasing competition between providers in recent years, line rental hikes have cancelled out the benefit and dragged total costs to 2009 levels.

The pattern is especially frustrating for the increasing number of households that rarely use their landline but are having to pay more and more for it in order to get fixed line broadband.

In a survey of 2,000 households broadbandchoices.co.uk found 37% would get rid of their landline altogether if they could and one in 10 admitted they don’t even have their home phone plugged in.

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Call for more transparent pricing

Broadbandchoices.co.uk is calling for clearer pricing when it comes to line rental that is bundled up with other services like broadband and TV.

It’s challenging the industry to start displaying the total cost of a deal including the price of monthly line rental as standard so that shoppers can compare prices more effectively.

Dominic Baliszewski, telecoms expert at broadbandchoices.co.uk explained: “We’d like to see the entire market working together collectively to make a combined pricing structure the industry standard, as it is unlikely that one provider will make the change before everyone else for fear of looking like the expensive option.”

Line rental is normally a compulsory element when getting a fixed line broadband connection.

However, providers tend to advertise deals by only displaying the cost of the broadband part of a package, with a footnote nearby on the monthly line rental charge that has to be paid on top each month.

This makes for attractive headline grabbing offers like 'free broadband' but makes it difficult to compare the total cost of deals effectively.

With more ‘quad-play’ bundle launches (packages that combine broadband, TV, landline and mobile phone) on the horizon for 2015, things could get even more confusing for broadband shoppers as they struggle to identify exactly how much they are paying for each component.

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The cheapest broadband deals

Comparison websites like broadbandchoices.co.uk can help shoppers make better informed decisions with the option to arrange deals by total monthly cost or even total first year cost.

Here are the cheapest home phone and broadband deals available right now ordered by total first year cost.

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