It correctly states that evening calls will fall from 7 pence per minute to 5.3 pence per minute and that this is a 24 percent reduction. This does not take into effect BT's Call Set-up Fee of 12.5 pence (per call), its policy of rounding call durations up to the next whole minute and rounding call charges up to the next whole penny.
I have prepared a spreadsheet which calculates the charges and actual percentage reductions for calls up to 10 minutes at 30 second intervals.
A 1 minute evening call has dropped by 10 percent and a 3 minute call at the same time will cost 14.7 percent less. These are hardly anywhere near the 24 percent headline figure now are they?
Call Set-up Fees (or sometimes called "Call Connection Fees"), whole minute billing and rounding each individual call charge up to the next whole penny means that we actually pay more for every minute of a chargeable call than the published "per minute" rate would have us believe.
If a butcher were to round up the weight of meat to the next 500g interval, Trading Standards would be down on him or her like a tonne of bricks. But Ofcom sits idly by and allows calls of 1 minute and 1 second to be rounded up to 2 minutes. That's 59 seconds of call that are billed for but are never made!
Contact: Dave Lindsay
E-mail: dave {at} saynoto0870 {dot} com
Notes to Editors
- Mobile termination rates fell on 1 April from around 4.7 pence per minute to 2.66 pence per minute and subsequent reductions are due in coming years.
- A termination rate is a charge one telephone network operator imposes on another for connecting (known as terminating a call). For example, when a BT customer calls a '3' mobile, 3 imposes a termination charge on BT for connecting the call.
- I thoroughly support the campaign to drive down mobile termination rates, but not the way in which Terminate the Rate campaign misleads in this case.
- Virgin Media has a similar policy (see www.virginmedia.com/callcosts).
