Mike Crockart: OK we’ve moved onto CLI which is something I know that Alun is particularly interested in so.
Alun Cairns: Yes caller ID, Warren, you’ve made a great play on how numbers need to be displayed and how that should be a requirement here in the UK. Can you explain the charging structure whereby you recently announced that in some circumstances you charge £21 a year, in order for the customer to see the caller ID, which I interpret as charging a consumer to make a complaint about a nuisance call?
Warren Buckley: I’m grateful for the question because I think there’s been quite a lot of confusion around this, so let me try and explain exactly what is happening. We absolutely agree that it’s important for customers to be able to choose whether they want to have caller display on their phones or not. This is a great way both just in knowing who’s calling you, but also to fend against nuisance calls. One of the problems that we were concerned about was that we had a legacy position at BT that was confusing for customers. So we essentially have caller display available to customers in three different ways. We had one which was around something called BT privacy with caller display, which is where customers could have caller display and would automatic register with the Telephone Preference Service and the Mail Preference Service around that piece and that service was free. One of the challenges though of that free service was that it some restrictions around it, so for example, although it was free, if you didn’t make a certain number of calls a month you then got charge £2 and what we’ve seen is, is that a large number of customers have reduced the amount of fixed calls that they’re making and therefore we were seeing quite a lot more customers who were getting this £2 fee. And effectively one was free, we felt that was confusing, we felt that was something that was coming across as effectively as a hidden charge and I dealt with a number of customers around that. So that was one category. The second category was customers who were on a set of legacy charges, that effectively going back many years people had had services with us for a long time and they were set on a whole range of different charges that we’d made on caller display and advanced features across that. And then the third piece was that customers were paying £3.30 a month for a feature of caller display and that was effectively where they hadn’t signed up to the caller display with BT privacy. So we just looked at all of that and said this is really confusing for customers, how do we make this less confusing as we go forward? So what we have done, and we are writing out to all of our customers, either in their bills or directly on email for customers who receive electronic bills. And also we’ve made a point of making this very aware, we talked to lots of newspapers and media, we want to be to be really transparent around this and we’re creating what we believe is a much less confusing situation. So from January of next year we move to a position where if you want caller display you can have caller display for free, so long as you’re under contract with us and that’s the case with lots of our different services, BT Smart Talk, a number of different services, it’s within the contract, you get that free, that will stay on that basis. If however you don’t want a permanent contract with BT and you want to just pay on a month to month also then they’d be a charge of £1.75, which is less than the £2 that we were charging for the not making calls and is significantly less than the £3.30. So what we’ve tried to do is to remove the confusion, make it very clear that if you have a contract with us you get caller display for free, if you’re on a month by month basis there’s a £1.75 charge.

There is a programme to make changes that will allow international CLIs, rather than the "international" status which is shown at present.

I'm afraid, after a lifetime of using BT, we have just decided to leave. The constant price increases, especially the call setup charge, drove us first to go for anytime calls, but this is now being increased to £7 per month. Plus there's this new charge for caller display which we got for free before (don't want to be tied to a 12 month contract)  Goodbye BT - I suggest others follow - it's the only way to make a difference.