BT today confirmed it would be shutting down its dial-up internet service as of September.
The telecoms giant wrote to its customers in June to warn them of the move and, although it was unable to give Computer Weekly exact figures, it said only a few thousand residents would be affected.
“BT can confirm it is closing its dial-up service in September,” said a spokesman. “This is a legacy product that is only used by a tiny number of customers, most of whom can easily transfer onto broadband for a cheaper price.”
Although the majority of existing customers will be able to move to BT’s broadband services, it did admit some would fall outside of its fibre footprint, so another dial-up option would be available.
“Our estimate is that only 1,000 of the current customers will be unable to access broadband following the change,” added the spokesman, “but they will continue to have dial-up access via Plusnet should they choose to, once again for a cheaper price.
“No-one is being left without the option of an alternative service.”
The current price of BT’s dial-up service is £17.25 plus line rental. Its broadband packages start from £10 but, again, line rental is added on top of the bill.
BT is currently the only private sector partner in the government’s planned roll-out of broadband across the UK – known as the BDUK project. It has so far won 34 of the 44 local authority contracts, which the government has promised will bring superfast broadband to 95% of the population by 2017.
However, there has been controversy around the lack of competition for the contracts and accusations of a lack of transparency around where the roll-out will go, holding back local ISPs from filling in the gaps with their own superfast solutions.
27 Aug 2013