BT vs Sky - How much could you save?

SkyUser compare current packages from BT and Sky to see how much you could save on your phone bill

A few days ago, one of our members Nigelh posted in our Sky Talk forums, an interesting piece of news regarding BT and their (on face value) scrapping of 0870 and 0845 numbers.

Naturally, we wanted to see what this would mean for those of us who use BT as a telephony provider compared to Sky and their alternative offering Sky Talk.

We have uncovered the following facts, which greatly reduce the ‘perceived’ value of BT’s so called grand gesture.

• BT lost 931,000 residential telephony customers in the 12 months ending September 2008. If we compare this to Sky, Sky Talk gained 682,000 customers.
• ‘Free’ calls to 0845 / 0870 are tied to BT customers’ inclusive minutes. Outside of these inclusive minutes, BT would still charge you for calls to 0870 numbers: http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumer/consumerProducts/pdf/UKInternationalprices.pdf
• Only those of us paying £4.85 per month for BT Anytime would actually benefit from free 0870 calls during the day time. (Less than 10% of BT customers actually take BT Anytime)
• So the rest of BT’s customers would still be paying for daytime calls to 0870 and the vast majority of calls made to 0870 numbers are made during the day. This could be from work and using your employer’s telephone bill to do so.

SkyUser have made a comparison between BT and Sky and both their equivalent services below. When you weigh up the recent news from BT, there are some serious savings to be made, just from taking Sky Talk over staying with BT.

• BT’s ‘Broadband Option 1’ (up to 8Mb) plus ‘Unlimited Evening and Weekend Plan’ (unlimited evening and weekend calls including line rental): £18.95 for three months and then £25.92 after with an 18 month contract = £445.65
• ‘Sky Broadband Mid’ (up to 8mb) and ‘Sky Talk Freetime’ (unlimited free evening and weekend calls), and ‘Sky Talk’ line rental: £15 a month = £295 over 18 months (including all connection fees).

So as you can see, providing you don’t use 0870 or 0845 numbers too often, you could actually save yourself £150.65 over 18 months or in layman’s terms £8.37 a month. And even then, if you do use 0870 numbers, you could always save yourself some more money, by using SayNoTo0870 to find any alternative local rate numbers.

The recent news from BT can now be seen in a completely different light. It could be construed that BT are actually offering this, to help slow down the loss of their customers to other providers.

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