jrawle wrote on Feb 1
st, 2010 at 3:29pm:
No-one should ever pay BT's rip-off daytime date!
Yes, that is the whole point; BT would agree with this statement.
Clearly some will be disadvantaged and odd effects will be created in the process, but the whole idea behind this sequence of tariff changes (a continuing 30% per annum price hike) is to eliminate call charges for ordinary calls. Some people do not use their landline during the day, so there is a distinction between "Anytime" and "Evening and Weekend", although the terms of this concession have now been narrowed. Those who only make the odd daytime call pay what I call a "penalty rate", also described as a "rip-off". This is part of BT's undisguised (and somewhat bullying) efforts to get people to stop paying for each ordinary call that they make.
For those who make regular weekday daytime calls - Anytime is the BT product. Calculations are difficult because there are two elements in the non-inclusive charge, but simple examples are relatively easy. If you made at least one 3-minute daytime call on each of the 20 weekdays in a month this would cost £5.60, so it would be worthwhile to subscribe to Anytime at £4.99. To beat 18185, one would need to make an average of more than 5 calls per weekday.
For many there is also the important psychological element - once having decided to go for an inclusive package one does not have to think about the cost of each ordinary call, unless it goes on beyond 60 minutes. Our engagement on this site may mean that we are happy to think about the cost of everything that we do very carefully, however I suspect that most people would rather spend their minute by minute energies on other things.
One does however, quite rightly, have to think about the cost of calls to premium rate numbers (I include 0844, assuming that the present mess with 0845 will shortly be resolved). That is as it should be, those who offer premium rate services should be proud of the fact and happy to be judged on the basis of the value for money that they offer!
I support the principle of what BT is trying to achieve, although the method has to be somewhat heavy-handed. The way that we pay for usage of the telephone system has grown up as it has for a variety of reasons, not least because call billing technology was implemented as an inherent (and costly) feature from the early days. The total costs have now fallen sufficiently so that (essentially) unlimited access can be provided to all, without concerns about this being unacceptably inequitable. Apart from special provision for low volume and disadvantaged users, it is now reasonable to start moving away from charging according to what you use. Complications remain with access to mobile phones, because of the arrangement under which callers subsidise what would otherwise be "line rental". In time this could be resolved and the cost of international calls could also fall sufficiently to be handled similarly.
Whilst premium rate services remain (as I suspect that they will) they will have to be treated separately because this is an arrangement between the caller and the particular person being called, with the telco simply acting as an intermediary, (just a delivery agent) providing only part of the service.