This topic

Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

AnotherStephen — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:27:37 GMT

Hi.

I recently started a 24 month contract for BT Fibre 1 Broadband (with Digital Voice). My home still has a copper connection.

The next monthly bill (estimate) shows 2 items - Broadband Package:£31.99 and Landline:£7.55.

It’s not clear what the 'Landline’ charge is for but I guess it’s the copper wire and/or the Digital Voice service.

There is now an offer to upgrade to Full Fibre 500 for £35.99 a month.

My question is: if I change to Full Fibre 500 (keeping Digital Voice) will there still be the £7.55 landline charge on top of the £35.99?

Thanks for any help.

Steve

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

gg30340 — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:44:39 GMT

If you have a landline phone you are charged for the landline and call package. This is because you are using the landline other than just for broadband.

If you have "Broadband Only" which does not include a landline phone the landline cost is included in the broadband price.

If you move to BT 500 with a landline phone even Digital Voice you will be charged for the landline phone package which includes the landline charge. The phone package is an add on to the broadband package.

The confusion comes about because they refer to landline when it should say landline phone.

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

AnotherStephen — Thu, 14 May 2026 20:12:37 GMT

Many thanks Distinguished Sage. Very helpful.

Steve

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

iniltous — Thu, 14 May 2026 21:34:30 GMT

If you have telephony you pay for the call plan , but your £7.55 doesn’t seem to match the current price of either of the available call plans , they are PAYG at £5 but typically reduced to £3 after negotiation and Unlimited Minutes £18 typically reduced to £12 after negotiation .

Currently Fibre 1 is £26.99 so your £31.99 seems a little coincidental as full price for PAYG £5 plus £26.99 gives what you state you pay £31.99 , which really begs the question, what is that £7.55 actually for ? , perhaps you can actually post the appropriate section of the bill .

FYI £35.99 is the current price of 500Mb standalone broadband, if you want telephony with that you will need to add something to the monthly cost , but as £7.55 is an unrecognisable amount for a call plan (unless you got a terrific bargain of Unlimited Minutes reduced from £18 to £7.55 ) it’s not likely to be that, so you will need to add £5 for PAYG or £18 for Unlimited Minutes ( or less if you call and haggle ) to the £35.99 if you change to FF500 and want to add telephony.

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

AnotherStephen — Fri, 15 May 2026 10:36:03 GMT

Hi. There is no detailed break-down of charges but I screen-shotted the relevant bits as best as I could (below).

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

iniltous — Fri, 15 May 2026 10:47:48 GMT

Can’t see your image yet , but what did you have before , were you with BT or another provider, if BT , has it been a while since you last recontracted , so were possibly on some sort of legacy products

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

licquorice — Fri, 15 May 2026 10:45:13 GMT

Must admit I'm confused by the £7.55 charge for 'Landline'.

Broadband and landline is normally a combined charge and the only extra charges is for a call package. If you have a PAYG call package, it is possibly the call charges

Can you expand the section and post a screenshot of that, ensuring no personal details are revealed.

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

iniltous — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:11:16 GMT

I suspect your regular price will be £31.99 + £5 PAYG = £36.99 , it’s slightly more this first month because your bill covers slightly more than one month , TBH this isn’t the best deal around but presumably you agreed to it .

FYI thats the same total as I pay, £36.99 although my bill break down is broadband Fibre 2 @ £33.99 and £3 PAYG , broadband was £29.99 up to the 31st March £4 broadband increase , my first bill after this was also a couple of ££ more than expected for the same reason as I suspect your bill having a weird amount , some days at outside the billing month , as the bill covers mid month to mid month , I suspect your £7.55 is £5 for the PAYG going forward , and £2.55 retrospectively for the previous part month

I recon BT calling the item on the bill ‘landline’ rather than ‘telephony’ causes confusion.

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

WSH — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:12:59 GMT

My bill is similar with the broadband charge and then £3 for the landline.

The £7.55 on your bill looks as though it includes some call charges. If you click the down arrow next to it, it should open up and detail the charges.

The April/May bill also tends to include part month adjustments for the annual increase in prices, so it often looks different until it settles down again next month.

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

iniltous — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:16:16 GMT

That’s a good point , because I don’t make calls on my landline phone service I never see the PAYG charge vary from £3 , but if there are chargable calls made presumably they are shown added to the call plan charge

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

licquorice — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:18:07 GMT

Which I said in message 7

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

WSH — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:27:54 GMT

I was just confirming you are right.

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

AnotherStephen — Fri, 15 May 2026 20:52:37 GMT

Many thanks for the replies. For information:

1. I recently (March 26^th) changed from being out-of-contract with BT (whoops) to the current Fibre 1/Digital Voice contract. So there may still be some change-over issues.

2. There have been no Digital Voice calls in the current billing period. So the £7.55 ‘Landline’ charge does not include any chargeable calls.

3. In case it was invisible in post 5, here’s another image showing my package/estimated bill:

I’ll wait for the next bill to arrive (28^th May). If I don’t fully understand the charges, I’ll query them with BT and post the outcome here.

Thanks again,

Steve

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

WSH — Fri, 15 May 2026 22:13:18 GMT

Just for future reference, the image wasn't invisible, it's just that they go into quarantine until a moderator clears them. Only you (when logged in), the mods and community leaders can see them straight away.

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

pddco — Sat, 16 May 2026 08:21:23 GMT

@AnotherStephen Looking at your original post, why do you want to pay more ( the upgrade) for a faster broadband service you’ll hardly ever ( if at all) see the benefit from? Unless you really can’t wait a few minutes more for your SatNav update to load or you’re in the business of downloading loads of videos for local storage and you can’t wait too long, or you just get a kick out of seeing the speed on fast.com, then the 100 (150)/ 30Mbps service is more than you’ll ever need as a domestic user. There are technical (not marketing) articles out there explaining all this.. For the vast majority of residential / domestic setups. Faster Broadband is not better.. It’s just faster.
In case I get pulled up on that last statement.. I’ll qualify it with “Once you’re on fibre to the premises (FTTP)….” It could be argued that moving from Hybrid Fibre/ Copper FTTC at 80/20 to a full fibre 100/30 service is better in that latency (delay) is reduced so improving the overall service. But that’s because of the full fibre technology, not outright speed.

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

WSH — Sat, 16 May 2026 08:50:48 GMT

@pddco

Yes, I’d fully agree with you.

I moved to 150 Mb/s FTTP from 58 Mb/S FTTC eight months ago. Operationally, it’s made no difference in the time it takes to get from A to B, but the connection on FTTP is more stable. None of this variation in speed when you reboot the router.

Speeds have been so poor for so long now that people have been conditioned to believe faster is always better, but your connection has several factors in the equation and the speed at your end is only one of them. We passed the stage where a faster connection speed is automatically “better” some time ago, as speeds are now fast enough for most uses and any holdup is no longer at “your end”. It’s a bit like buying a 160 mph car…you can still only do 70 on the motorway and even that will go to pot if the traffic is bad.

Of course, if I look at it from a cynical marketing point of view, …let’s get everyone on 900 Mb/s, close down the lower speed tiers, (because no one is using them anymore), and then start charging the suckers what it really costs, knowing they can’t downgrade.

Call me cynical, but I smell “Halo” all over again.

A more interesting consideration is symmetrical or asymmetrical speed? If you are doing a lot of uploading to the Cloud, a package with symmetrical speeds would be more useful and you won’t get that from Openreach any time soon.

Re: Landline charge if changing to Full Fibre

AnotherStephen — Sat, 16 May 2026 09:49:08 GMT

Hi @pddco. In Message 15 you asked “Looking at your original post, why do you want to pay more…?”.

In fact I originally posted hoping to pay less!

If changing to ‘Full Fibre 500’ no longer incurred my current £7.55 monthly ‘Landline’ charge, then changing would reduce the overall cost slightly. However, from previous posts, the additional 'Landline' charge seems unavoidable.