I was interviewed by a newspaper today about combating inflation and keeping your big bills cheap. She asked about home phone bills and I decided it wasn’t a priority – certainly not a top five issue.
Yet when I first started as Money Saving Expert in 2000, home phone bills were one of the big ‘uns. My suspicion is, and I don’t know as I wasn’t paying the bill, in the 1980s the phone bill was similar to the gas bill. Now many people pay under £200/year for phone but over £1,000 a year for energy.
Home phones have truly been deflationary (see Cheap Home Phones) with the prices dropping in real terms. Just take international call costs, whereas once you’d pay £1/min to call anywhere, now it’s 1p a minute or free (see Cheap International calls).
My suspicion is if it wasn’t for home broadband, many would’ve dropped their home phones completely, in exchange for the more convenient, but much more expensive mobiles.
