LRS ( line rental saver ) was a mechanism to save around £20 a year from your bill , basically for an upfront payment of around £220 , you had 12 x £20 credits applied to your bill ( one per month ) so worth £240 in total, and although originally based on the fact that £20 was around the price of ‘line rental’ of a standalone phone line for a month , this predated when it was required to sell broadband with the line rental included in the price .
When the rules changed around advertising the total cost of broadband, including rental, LRS became a discount unrelated to ‘line rental’ , just a discount for an upfront payment , unfortunately some still think of line rental and broadband as separate items and allocate ( for example ) a typical £30 monthly bill as £20 line rental and £10 broadband, but it isn’t , it’s £30, there is no subdivision , it’s a single price.
What BT now do is offer the option to remove telephony from broadband, to save £5 , unfortunately those that still think in line rental terms ask , if line rental is £20 ( but it isn’t ) why if I remove line rental does the bill only go down £5 and not £20 , presumably expecting broadband for £10 per month .
Line rental and telephony are not the same but are fixed in some minds are interchangeable terms , it doesn’t help when ISP refer to line rental either , like ‘broadband without line rental’ , there is still a ‘line’ and it’s still rented , even if it only delivers broadband and not telephony.
For those that want to keep telephony with their BT broadband, you need a calls package, the basic calls package is PAYG and is £5 ( although frequently discounted to £2 ) , so typically, broadband on its own £30 , with telephone on a PAYG basis , £32-35 a month , if you paid £219 upfront, your next 12 bills each had a £20 discount, irrespective of what you thought it was for , but it’s no longer sold anyway.
