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Lifeline needed for landline
Linda Hall
TALKTALK, Virgin Media and SSE have been accused of overcharging landlineonly customers by almost €219 million (approximately €247.3 million).
Almost 600,000 UK landlineonly customers were charged ‘excessive’ prices since 2009, maintained Fideres, which specialises in providing industry expertise for financial markets’ disputes.
The consultancy, which also aims to identify corporate wrongdoing, found that TalkTalk and the nowmerged Virgin Media and SSE have between them overcharged consumers when their prices were compared with those of their rivals. Fideres pointed out that as well as a pricing abuse that possibly breached competition rules, the three companies were also infringing equality laws since twothirds of customers with landlineonly deals were aged 65 or older.
In 2017, Ofcom published research showing that landline customers were getting ‘poor value for money’.
Providers had increased line rental charges by 25 and 49 per cent since 2009 even though the underlying wholesale cost of providing a landline service had fallen by 26 per cent.
As a result, BT, which accounts for about 80 per cent of the UK’s 2.9 million landlineonly clients, cut charges by around 37 per cent, reversing the increases by returning pricing to 2009 levels in realterms.
Ofcom said in 2017 that it expected other providers to follow suit as did the Post Office, unlike Virgin Media and TalkTalk. If providers rolled back their prices to match the 2009 levels, TalkTalk’s customers would have saved £103 million (€116.3 million) and Virgin Media and SSE’s customers £48 million (€54.2 millon), Fideres calculated.
