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Comment by james246 | Hacker News Reader

FTTC provides a decent connection speed ("up to" 76Mbps according to BT) but my main gripe with it is that I have to continue with the archaic process of "renting" the copper telephone line between the exchange and my house - for a sum almost the same as the broadband itself. Openreach have clung onto this cash cow by opting for FTTC over FTTP, forcing customers to rent a telephone line they don't want

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I recently changed ISP and told them the copper line was part of the broadband package with my previous ISP (for an extra £10/month) and was assured everything was fine.

One month after the transfer, Openreach ceases the PSTN line and the reaction from my new ISP was "well it's your responsibility to keep up your BT subscription" (never had BT).

Two weeks later, the PSTN line is still dark, and I'm waiting for Openreach to install a new MPF line provided by my current ISP (for an extra £10/month of course).

Apparently the reason for doing this rather than re-start the PSTN line is part of a process called "Local-loop unbundling".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling

I'm amazed they still can't get LLU -> BT/LLU -> LLU migrations right. We sold ADSL as a second tier provider and once upon a time if you were on an LLU service and needed to migrate to another LLU provider the only sure-fire way of doing it so it didn't fuck up was to migrate back to a BT based service then migrate again. We once had a business customer, paying proper business coin migrate from one LLU provider to another. On the day of the migration the gaining provider's engineer didn't turn up to pick up the pairs and jumper onto their rack which left the customer without service for over 24 hours. So glad I don't have to deal with that crap any more.

I have this gripe too. I recently received a letter from BT to say that my line rental was increasing by £1/month so that they could offer more "great services and a wider selection of content".

The only reason I have the line is for the FTTC connection that runs over it (using Goscomb as my ISP, rather than BT) There isn't even a phone connected to it.

> (using Goscomb as my ISP, rather than BT)

Same scenario and ISP here, but I switched line rental to Zen's most basic no-calls-included package at 12 UKP per month.

Still not 'cheap' but cheaper than BT Retail.

We don't even have a landline phone in the house.

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