I have just noticed that BT quietly put up the price of calls to mobiles to 12 pence per minute at all times!

From the BT Price List Part 8:Calling Plans - Unlimited Weekend Plan - Not available for new supply from 19th April 2013 gives the cost of calling numbers of the main mobile networks as 11.3 pence per minute during the daytime (7am to 7pm, seven days a week) and 5.3 pence per minute (7pm to 7am seven days a week). These rates apply to all Calling Plans (i.e. they appy to Evening & Weekend and Anytime as well).

Calls are charged per whole minute. On the "old" plans, a call set-up fee of 13.87 pence applies and on the new ones it's 15 pence.

The "new" plans charge 12 pence per minute at all times!

This is rich when only two years ago BT was calling for lower termination rates to mobile phones as part of the Terminate the Rate campaign. Now the price of ringing mobiles from BT landlines are going up again.

When Terminate the Rate was active, BT made a promise:


Quote:

BT’s promise BT is committed to giving you great value products, promotions, deals and bundles. We’ve already managed to squeeze more out of the reduced regulated termination rates than expected, in order to offer even better prices to our customers. BT wants to offer ‘all-you-can-eat’ packages where you pay a set price and have the peace of mind that all calls will be covered, including those to mobiles. Current termination rates make that impossible. BT says: “This is a massive issue for landline customers. Last year they made 13 billion calls to mobiles (around half of these are BT customers), which gave the mobile operators a £750m bonus.” “Bearing in mind the cost of Mobile Termination Rates, it’s easy to see how cheap calls to mobiles could be if termination rates were reduced to around a penny or less.”

Does BT offer an "all-you-can-eat" mobile package, or anything approaching it, yet?

Dave wrote on Sep 8^th, 2013 at 12:41pm:

Does BT offer an "all-you-can-eat" mobile package, or anything approaching it, yet?

I've found out more about the changes to BT's plans.

Prior to 19th April there were four Calling Plans: Unlimited Weekend, Unlimited Evening & Weekend, Unlimited Anytime and Unlimited Anytime Plus. The Unlimited Anytime Plus offered calls to mobiles at half the per minute rate of the other three Plans.

For brevity, from here on in I'll omit the word "Unlimited" from the beginning of the Plans' titles.

From 19th April there is no longer an Anytime Plus and Anytime offers mobile calls at half the per minute rate of the other two Plans. So basically the "Plus" bit has been incorporated into the Anytime Plan.

For contracts taken out prior to 19th April the Plans cost (on top of the line rental fee):

• Weekend: £0
  
• Evening & Weekend: £3.30
  
• Anytime: £5.15
  
• Anytime Plus: £8.00

Calls to mobiles on all Plans except Anytime Plus are 11.3 pence per minute during the daytime and 5.3 pence per minute during the evening.

Calls to mobiles on Anytime Plus are 5.65 pence per minute during the daytime and 2.65 pence per minute during the evening.

A 13.87 pence call set-up fee applies to calls to mobiles.


For contracts taken out from 19th April the Plans cost:

• Weekend: £0
  
• Evening & Weekend: £2.00
  
• Anytime: £7.00

Calls to mobiles on Weekend and Evening & Weekend are 12 pence per minute at all times.

Calls to mobiles on Anytime are 6 pence per minute.

A 15 pence call set-up fee applies to calls to mobiles.


The changes are thus:

• The Call Set-up Fee has increased from 13.87 pence to 15 pence.
   
  
• The cost of Evening & Weekend Calling Plan has been reduced by £1.30.
   
  
• The cost of calling mobile phones in the evening on Weekend and Evening & Weekend has roughly doubled. The daytime cost is about the same.
   
  
• The new Anytime is £1.85 more than the old Anytime, and for that daytime mobile call rates are half what they were previously.
   
  
• The new Anytime is £1.00 less than the former Anytime Plus, with evening calls to mobiles having roughly doubled.

A fair while back  we touched on  subject of inclusive mobile calls from BT Landline in this thread   http://www.saynoto0870.com/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.cgi?num=1302794605

Your see in April 2011 BT said

"will be passing on the new rates to customers as soon as possible".

"Ofcom has made some worthwhile reductions in mobile termination rates, which will benefit customers in the near future," BT Retail consumer chief John Petter said in the statement. "Our focus is now on developing an all-inclusive package that will enable people to call mobiles from their landlines at no extra cost, with no fear of 'bill shock'. This will be incredibly good news for BT's customers."

BT did, however, note that "Ofcom has set rates at a level somewhat higher than those in its recommendation last April and the reduction glide path is more gradual than we had hoped for".

No such BT package has been forthcoming yet.

I have noticed following BT,s examples other suppliers have started to increase cost of landline calls to mobiles.

EG:Talk Talk increase them to 12p a minute from 1/10/13 with a 15p call connection  fee.

http://sales.talktalk.co.uk/pricing/info/pricing-notification

But Talk Talk offer a half decent boost of 1000 landline to mobile minutes for £5 a month.

bigjohn wrote on Sep 9^th, 2013 at 4:18am:

I have noticed following BT,s examples other suppliers have started to increase cost of landline calls to mobiles. EG:Talk Talk increase them to 12p a minute from 1/10/13 with a 15p call connection  fee. http://sales.talktalk.co.uk/pricing/info/pricing-notification But Talk Talk offer a half decent boost of 1000 landline to mobile minutes for £5 a month.

As with non-geographic numbers, such as 0844, in the past, TalkTalk is seen to copy BT in some of its mobile rates.

Unlike BT, it has only two phone packages: Talk UK Evening & Weekend and Talk UK Anytime; these are £4.61 and £7.21, respectively, plus the cost of line rental. Talk UK Weekend is no longer available, so if TalkTalk's Evening & Weekend plan is its most basic and it costs more than the "line rental", is it possible to have just line rental and if so what are the call rates? The fact that the Weekend plan is no longer available suggests that one has to pay line rental plus at least £4.61 for a package. Is this understanding right?

The cost of calling mobiles with both packages is the same as with BT's old rates: 11.3 pence per minute during the daytime and 5.3 pence per minute during the evening, plus a call connection charge of 13.87 pence.

TalkTalk offers the Mobile Extra add-on for £1.49 which makes calls to mobiles 7.15 pence per minute at all times (plus 13.87 pence connection). This is available to subscribers on both the Evening & Weekend and Anytime plans.

The point is that BT offered a similar add-on - Anytime Plus - but only for its Anytime plan. It (the "Plus" bit) cost £1.85 with half call rate mobile calls. Unlike TalkTalk there was no add-on for the BT Evening & Weekend package, and TalkTalk offers no Weekend plan.

As bigjohn says, TalkTalk do add-ons that offer a finite number of call minutes. There is the 100 Mobile Minutes Boost for £3 and the 1000 Mobile Minutes Boost for £5.


The TalkTalk changes of 1st October 2013 will see the Anytime plan fall from £7.21 to £5.50 (have I got that right? It's quite a drop!). Call rates of UK non-geographic numbers will increase. For example, 0844 g6 will increase from 6.62 pence per minute to 7.62 pence per minute. BT's rates for g6 numbers are held by regulation at 5.105 pence per minute. The call connection fee follows BT from 13.87 pence to 15 pence.

The main topic of this thread is mobile rates and TalkTalk's will go from (daytime) 11.3 and (evening) 5.3 pence per minute (as BT's old) to 12 pence per minute at all times (as BT's new).

There is no indication about what will happen to Mobile Extra. If it remains as it is then it will offer mobile rates at just over half regular call rate.