Ofcom rules that BT will have to start charging its customers less | TechRadar
http://www.techradar.com/news/some-bt-c ... every-year

It's all a bit dubious wider picture, but anything that damages Bastards Totally is a winner IMO. That company seems to be run by gangsters.

As I heard it, it's only for landline customers who take no other service (i.e no broadband or TV), so it's likely to be a fairly small number of people these days.

My mum will be pleased

Depends what you consider small.
The article about this over at hexus.net says there are about 2.9m landline only customers and if BT has around 80% of those that's ~2.3 million households so not exactly small beer.

I think it depends exactly on the definition. I suspect a big chunk of those probably take other services from another provider but just a landline phone from BT. Not sure whether they'd be excluded from the deal or not.

Here's some of the Ofcom stuff about it - clickety

I think the really interesting thing they highlight is the overall drop in the wholesale cost of providing a landline - it's down to about £7/month according to Ofcom compared with line rental charges sitting between £17 and £19 for the suppliers they listed.
Now suppliers have been forced to include the cost of line rental in their advertising they can't hide the real increase in charges they've been making for years.

Line rental has been a ripoff for ages. For 99% of the addresses in the UK the cost of supplying & fitting the lines has been paid for decades ago and as you say the cost of continuing maintenance the network is a fraction of what they charge. It's a nice profit provider for the companies, and 'competition' in this case is doing feck all - all the major providers all charge roughly the same flat line rental fee.