GPO/Post Office Telephone/British Telecom have been a bunch of robbing crooks for 40 years.
I resented being charged £140 (more than a months wages)to have a phone installed by them in 1975, when I switched to Virgin later on I swore i would never have a phone from them again ,and i never have, until they give me the £140 they mugged me for.
Its like this - if you want to put a phone in my house, ill use it and pay the bill, but im not PAYING to have the phone put in - the cost of installing it is YOUR business expense, not mine, its your problem. If the Bus Company charged you for paining the bus shelter just because you used the bus you woudl tell them to **** off. Similarly, if the supermarkets billed you for painting the white lines on the car park because you shopped there, you would similarly tell them to swivel, ergo the cost of installing equipment i dont own, and am not responsible for, is your problem, if you want my custom and money.
I have a second reason to hate BT, when i was rolling out internet and email to schools, the only option was private leased lines from BT, BT did everything they could to prevent the spread of high speed communication lines because they saw it as a threat, had they engaged as they should, we would have had internet and free/cheap calls a decade before we did in this country. It was the private companies like Mercury and Diamond Cable that got it all moving.
