TT are going to make 0845/0870 calls free/inclusive ,and are going to offer free local calls to line rental customers only. CPS customers will not qualify. Needless to say they have put up their prices etc to cover this.

See: http://www.talktalk.co.uk/pricechanges

No mention of a fair use policy yet,but following applies.

"The availability of free 0845 and 0870 calls excludes indirect access numbers and dial-up Internet access. The inclusive call limit of 60mins also applies to these calls."

"Non-inclusive 0870 and 0845 calls will be charged at the same rates as standard local or national calls." 

And I note they did not pass on the 2 1/2% VAT cut.

Is all this (0845/0870 "free") not cross-subsidy?
I thought that the regulator took a dim view of such a practice.
(Sorry, NGM and SCV, using regulator and think in the same sentence.)

To my mind this whole move is part of a last ditch effort by the telcos to head off the killing of the revenue share cash cow that would be implicit in a wide spread move to 03 (where the call recipient is in charge of the real bill for the NTS facilities it uses rather than than the cost being paid by the customer who is not aware of it)

Instead the high rip off revenue shares implicit in 0845 and 0870 will be embedded and the customers made to pay for the revenue share whether they use 0845 or 0870 numbers or not.  It is of course notable that so far 0844 has not been  included but one wonders if that is not BT's next gambit just as the consultation on 0844 number use by GPs closes.

Any member of this site should be looking to move their business away from a telco that includes free 0845 and 0870 calls to one with the lowest line rental price that does not include them.  However unfortunately I fear that the Significant Market Power of the BT group means that all its competitors will follow suit in offering inclusive 0845 and 0870 calls at a higher line rental fee so there will be no way to do this.

An interesting point of speculation is what will happen over in mobile phone land where the inclusive status of 0845 and 0870 calls in call packages on landlines must eventually bring pressure to bear for the mobile operators to follow suit.

All these things are very bad news for single person households and badly off households who make few phone calls as the cost of line rental will go up and up and up to pay for all these revenue share rip off calls being inclusive and you will be forced to pay for other people using the ripoff numbers whether or not you call them yourself.

Unfortunately I find I can no longer pursue this campaign with the impressive level of campaigning energy shown by SCV since I have come to realise that whatever we do the telcos hold all the trump cards in the deck and can always rejig the whole disgusting system against us just as we think we are winning.

By the way I suspect that "Foreign Exchange Rate Levy" on credit cards is another example of revenue sharing where the customer is made to pay more for the card issuer then getting various services from Visa or Mastercard at an ever cheaper rate.

Dave wrote on Mar 16^th, 2009 at 9:51pm:


What about BT allowing up to say 30 minutes of calls a month to 0844 (and increasing the line rental another £1 per month to pay for it) since as you say they can't afford a substantial amount of calls in the way that they can manage with 0845 and 0870 numbers.

That would be enough for the likes of Sky and the NEG using doctors to be able to then go on claiming the call was not premium rate, even though you wouldn't have enough minutes to call the whole damn lot of them.

Source: FT

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e4e39300-3bec-11de-acbc-00144feabdc0,s01=1.html

Deal of the Week: Free calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers

By Steve Lodge
Published: May 8 2009 18:09 | Last updated: May 8 2009 18:09

What’s the deal?

TalkTalk is offering free calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers for customers on its monthly phone plans. These “national” and “local rate” codes – which can cost up to 10p or 7p a minute respectively to call from fixed-line phones – are commonly used by businesses for customer information and helplines.

From next month, the Carphone Warehouse-owned provider is including the numbers in phone packages for households that also have line rental through the company.

The deal covers existing customers as well as new ones, and applies to the company’s Essentials plan (which includes broadband internet access) as well as Talk UK Weekend, Talk UK Evening and Weekend, and Talk UK Anytime tariffs.

Is this good?

With households said to spend typically 30 minutes a month phoning “non-geographic” numbers, having these codes included in phone plans could save several pounds a month.

TalkTalk is already particularly competitive for packages combining home phone and broadband, according to Moneysavingexpert.com, the consumer website.

The improved deal follows a similar move by BT, the market leader, to include 0870 and 0845 numbers in its call plans earlier this year, benefiting 14m customers.

[…]

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We mustn't get carried away here! Including 0845 and 0870 calls in inclusive tariffs does nothing to alleviate the underlying costs for these types of numbers which must be passed back to the caller.