Despite the fact that everyone has had a choice of company for their landline telephone for several years now, research by the Department of Trade and Industry showed that, up until June 2004, only 11% of people had taken steps to save on their land phone bills by moving away from British Telecom (BT). Choosing a cable company is one option, but if you don't want to have a new line installed, or your street doesn't have cable, you can still save on your bills - up to 20%, for example, by keeping your BT line but changing the company that bills you for your calls.
Saving on the Phone & the Internet
There are several ways to save money on your phone bills, none of which involves changing your phone number.
- Stick with BT but switch from its standard line-rental package. Paying a little more each month for the BT Together package gives you a limited number of free calls, halves the cost of national calls, and reduces the cost of your local and international calls. Another alternative is the BT Talk Together package. This has a higher monthly fee, but the first hour of every local call made at the weekend or on a weekday evening is free.
- If you make a lot of national and international calls, you can save a substantial amount by routing them through an 'indirect access' company. You still pay line rental to BT, but you choose another company to bill you for calls. The company will give you a four-digit access code to dial before the number you want to call and/or you will get a special autodialler which you plug into your phone socket to re-route calls.
- You can use different indirect access companies for different types of call, which is worth doing because some are cheaper for daytime national calls, for example, while others specialize in cheap international calls. If you don't want to have to remember several access codes or have a number of autodiallers, consider signing up for 'carrier pre-selection' (CPS), offered by some indirect access companies. This allows calls to be switched through to the relevant company at the telephone exchange, doing away with the need for extra digits or kit.
- If you surf the Internet on a pay-as-you-go basis, it can add a big chunk to your phone bill, especially if you are a heavy user or you access the Internet at peak times. Unmetered access - where you pay a fixed fee per month to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to cover all your surfing time - can be a much better deal. You can get up-to-date details of ISPs (offering both dial-up and broadband access), together with user comments on the quality of service, by going to http://www.net4nowt.co.uk. Some cable and other phone companies offer similar fixed-fee deals and some offer package deals.
