[avtur3]

I'm in the process of a house move and at the stage of looking at utility providers at the new address, currently with Plusnet for telecoms and been happy with price and service (none fibre) for 3-4 years now so decided to rattle their cage about service at new address.

The adviser started to list costs of different elements of a package but hesitated and said "did you know you're new property is served by a high cost exchange?" ... er "no ... never heard of that". Net result is that it's +£7.50 on all advertised prices because of this "high cost exchange"; and yes that means there is a low cost exchange which relates to normal advertised prices.

Apparently something to do with number of connections to the exchange and where there are a lower number of connections it makes the exchange more expensive for Openreach to operate and this is passed on down the line. ( )

Was also told that some ISP's don't provide service via these high cost exchanges. Anyone familiar with this or is an imaginative way of extracting more money? By the way from what I can see I would accept that this exchange is likely to have fewer connections than one in a busy urban setting.

[rikur_]

Exchanges are designated as either Market A or Market B:

Market A (high cost) - Telephone exchanges where there are only one or two potential significant wholesale broadband providers present or forecast to be present (e.g. BT), which accounts for 9.5% of UK premises in mostly rural areas.

Market B (low cost) - Telephone exchanges where there are three or more primary operators (ISPs) present or forecast to be present (Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, BT, Virgin Media etc.), accounting for 89.8% of premises (exchange areas where there are three or more primary ISPs present or forecast to be present).

A bit more detail here....
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2 ... users.html and here https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/ ... tation.pdf

....and yes, not all providers provide services at Market A exchanges. e.g. TalkTalk don't.

[Tall_Guy_In_a_PA28]

The final post in this thread suggests that there may be some room for negotiation.
https://community.plus.net/t5/My-Account-Billing/Magically-moved-from-low-cost-to-high-cost-area/td-p/1526735

[rikur_]

I've always found Plusnet's pricing to be very negotiable .... I ended up at £197.88 for 12 months line rental & broadband , vs £28.99 "do nothing", vs their starting retentions offer of £19.99 per month. In my experience they were happy to price match others - so just needed to go armed with a quote from Sky.

[Colonel Panic]

I'm with PlusNet, and have also been very happy with them. For reasons best known to themselves, my "area" has changed from high cost to low cost this month, and my monthly sub is going down by £7.50pcm

[avtur3]

Thanks for replies, glad to learn that there was some truth behind the explanation, I must try to be a bit more trusting and a bit less cynical ...

Made a call back to Plusnet and low and behold there is some movement to be had on price. It just so happens that some of the Market A exchanges (thanks rikur) are loosing the price premium and the exchange that will be our new exchange is one of those to see the reduction.

I do't know if that means they are changing to Market B or they remain Market A but with price reduction. Whatever the reasoning the second call results in £11.50 per month reduction from the previous quote, which make the offer acceptable. I've gone for the nominal 40mb fibre service and the adviser went out of his way to explain that if the speed didn't maintain at least 34mb, once all is settled, that would be beach of contact and I would be free to leave.

Fingers crossed that's one utility all sorted,