Home phone News

Orange home phone hikes weekend mobile rates

Wednesday 21 October, 2009

By Becca Talbot - becca@consumerchoices.co.uk

The cost of calling of calling mobiles from your Orange landline will now cost 6.9p a minute at the weekend.

Orange (www.orange.co.uk) had revamped some of its home phone call charges - calls to mobiles made at the weekend have increased from 4.5p a minute to 6.9p a minute.

The home phone and broadband giant has, however, cut the cost of making calls to mobiles at other times, with the price of daytime and evening calls to all mobiles except those on the 3 network now costing 12.2p and 7.3p a minute respectively.

Calls from an Orange landline to a 3 mobile phones will cost 21.5p during the day and 15.2p in the evening.

Simon Piper, business development manager at Homephonechoices.co.uk, said: “These price changes reflect other recent increases and decreases by other home phone giants BT, Sky and Virgin Media. Interestingly though, Orange’s call connection fee is still one of the cheapest in the UK.”

Orange now charges a 7p call connection fee for every call made, no matter how long the call lasts. This has increased from 6p per call.

The home phone provider has also increased its national day rates for its Starter and Max packages. The packages both offer free evening and weekend calls and daytime national calls are charged at 3.5p a minute - an increase of 1p.

The cost to make some overseas calls using an Orange landline has also increased, including calls to Australia, France, India and the USA.

“Orange offers a very competitive home phone deal for households looking to switch away from BT, and those who want to bundle their home phone and broadband, especially customers who already have an Orange mobile contract,” added Piper.