Home phone News

Virgin Media increases calling costs

Monday 11 January, 2009

By Becca Talbot - becca@consumerchoices.co.uk

Cable phone and broadband giant Virgin Media has increased its call costs and call connection fee, following the UK government’s decision to raise VAT back up to 17.5%.

Virgin Media (www.virginmedia.com), Britain’s largest cable home phone provider, increased its call charges on 1 January 2010, in line with changes in VAT.

Virgin Media customers will now have to pay 6.5p a minute for calls made outside of their calling plan to local and national landlines. This has increased from 6.36p a minute, and is over 1p per minute more expensive than calls made with rival provider BT (www.bt.com).

Virgin Media said if customers’ call plans included daytime calls to landlines, such as the Talk Unlimited package, they didn’t need to worry about the increase. “You’ll continue to enjoy unlimited calls any time of the day or night,” it added.

However, Simon Piper, business development manager at Homephonechoices.co.uk, warned: “Customers with Virgin Media’s phone service should be aware that it’s not just the cost of making calls to landlines that’s increased - international calls, calls to mobiles and the call connection fee have all increased as well.”

The cable giant’s call connection fee - a one-off charge applied to every phone call made, regardless of duration - has increased, from 9.79p to 10p per call.

The cost of calling a mobile phone from a Virgin Media landline has also increased, with the cost of calling someone on the 3 Mobile network rising to nearly 30p a minute during the day. Calls to other networks are slightly cheaper, but still more expensive than making a call to a mobile with BT.

Other home phone suppliers, including BT, TalkTalk (www.talktalk.co.uk) and Plusnet, have also increased line rental and call charges following the government’s decision to raise VAT.