Home phone News

Brits to get cheaper calls to mobiles

Tuesday 6 April, 2010

By Becca Talbot - becca@consumerchoices.co.uk

Telecoms regulator Ofcom will cut the cost of calling a mobile from your landline, saving UK consumers millions of pounds each year.

Ofcom has proposed a reduction in mobile termination rates, which it hopes will lead to cheaper calls to mobiles for some 32.7 million households and businesses in the UK that use a landline.

Mobile termination rates are the wholesale fees that mobile network operators such as T-Mobile and O2 charge to connect calls to each others’ networks.

Under Ofcom’s plans, these wholesale rates will drop from the current 4.3p per minute to 0.5p per minute by 2015.

Ofcom said it hopes that customers will benefit from smaller bills and increased competition.

The proposals from Ofcom come after a consultation was launched last May and a petition called “Terminate the Rate” was signed by 114,000 consumers in November 2009. The consultation will end and be finalised on 23 June this year.

Ofcom is now looking for views on its proposals. BT (www.bt.com), the UK’s biggest home phone provider, said it welcomed the move, and promised to “make sure its customers see the benefit with cheaper calls to mobiles.”

Simon Piper, business development manager at Homephonechoices.co.uk, said: “Cutting the cost of connecting landline calls to mobile networks to just 0.5p a minute is a positive move and will definitely help to reduce consumers’ landline bills.

“2015 is still some way off though, and customers looking for a quick-fix to cut their costs should consider other options, such as a home phone tariff with inclusive calls to mobiles like that from the Post Office (www.postoffice.co.uk), or a calling plan add-on that discounts mobile calls, such as Mobile Boost from TalkTalk (www.talktalk.co.uk).”