Home phone News

BT to hike call costs 5%

Tuesday 30 August, 2011

By Kelvin Goodson

BT call costs set to rise by up to 5% on 3 December in the company’s second increase this year.

BT’s home phone customers will see prices for line rental, calls plans, broadband-only packages and the cost of calling other UK landlines all rise by up to 5% from 3 December, the telecoms giant has announced.

This follows a 9% call charge increase in April, and a 10% hike last year.

The cost of calling another UK landline will increase from 7.6p a minute to 7.95p a minute and line rental charges will also go up to a hefty £14.60 - the highest line rental charge of the big home phone providers.

BT’s unlimited anytime calls plan - its most popular package with 3.5 million customers - currently costs £4.70 a month and will go up by 20p to £4.90 on 3 December.

This latest round of price increases will be BT’s second this year, though following these changes it has promised to freeze prices until 2013.

John Petter, managing director of BT’s consumer division, said: “We are making a series of price updates in December, but are then freezing some of our main prices until 2013.

“This will provide our customers with greater certainty over their bills. We are also telling them how they can save money with BT. Our Line Rental Saver product for example will soon provide customers with a saving of more than £50 per year so if half our customers took that option the collective saving would be more than £250million.”

In its latest financial results, released in July 2011, BT revealed that pre-tax profits had increased by 20% to £533million, which it attributed to a growing demand for broadband.

Although BT said many of its customers had seen bills fall by moving to more suitable packages, smaller rival providers offer far more competitive prices, with line rental as low as £6.79 a month if you shop around.