I noticed this thread on MSE yesterday and thought it's worth a mention over here especially as I believe this is in response to Ofcom's rules that from middle of this month (give or take a few days) teleco's have to be more forthcoming with their call charges to NGN's including given them equal prominence as they do their ordinary geographical calls.

Calls to 08x, 084x and 0870 will, from 15th August, cost 15p/min for PAYG customers.  The general cost of these numbers varied in price from as high as 35ppm to as low as 5ppm depending on number and time of day, etc.

Calls to these numbers for PayMonthly customers is included in your inclusive call allowance (where applicable) except calls to 0871 numbers.  Calls to these numbers outside your inclusive call allowance are, according to o2 t&c, charged at normal geographical rates.

Also, these calls will be excluded from all PAYG tariffs and bolt-ons that come with inclusive minutes and will be charged for as mentioned above.

The only exception to this is the cost of the call to their customer services' 0870 number which will remain at 20p/min!

Although nothing was mentioned about contracts, I do believe it wont be long before these are excluded from inclusive minutes.

I know from recent previous experience that freephone calls cost at least 30ppm and although I was warned it was chargable although I wasn't warned how much it was costing me.  Luckily though I had a good idea how expensive it was and kept the call as short as possible and before anyone mentions it, nope I couldn't wait until I reached a landline/payphone.  

It could be coincidence that the timing of this change is around the same time as this new rule that Ofcom are enforcing but I don't think so.  I believe it was done because o2 didn't want to openly publish the fact that they were charging upto 35ppm to call 08x, 084x and 0870 numbers so to make it look not as bad (especially compared to other networks), they've reduced the cost to 15ppm when compared to daytime calls but obviously evening & weekend calls are increased to 15ppm.

It would be interesting to see what other mobile networks will do, and more importingly, if the teleco's will actually stop hiding the cost of calls to NGN's and actually give them equal prominence as they do their geographical calls!

I suspect though, due to the high revenue return on these numbers, teleco's may "forget" to be more forthcoming and therefore may need Ofcom to persuade them to!

Update:

These call charges definitely apply to PAYG customers and according from what I can understand calls to NGN numbers from contracts are included in inclusive minutes (with the exception of 0871 numbers).  Calls to NGN's from a contract outside any inclusive minutes is apparently charged at normal call rates (ie geographical numbers).

See here for a breakdown of charges to special rate numbers (ie 08x numbers).

bbb_uk wrote on Aug 10^th, 2006 at 7:50pm:

How exactly is this good for the consumer if these numbers were previously included in "free" minutes, but will now be excluded?

Let's hope Tesco (with no details of NGN costs on their site) follow the new rules, though.