15th Mar 11
Mobile calls to get cheaper
by Harry Oldfield
Regulator Ofcom has announced that, as of April, the cost of calling a mobile phone from a landline or rival network will be dramatically reduced. The charge reduction will drop the price of a call by 80 per cent over the coming four years. The first cut will be made on 1 April.
The country’s main operators – Everything Everywhere, Vodafone and O2 – currently charge callers £4.18 per minute if they are connecting from another network. Next month they will only be permitted to charge £2.66 and by April 2014 the price will be 69 pence. Ofcom is hoping that by reducing termination charges landline operators will be able to hand customers better savings and mobile operators will be able to give consumers a wider range of choice.
Smaller mobile operators are expected to see the benefits from being able to offer customers more competitive prices. The last time Ofcom imposed a rates cap on termination charges was in 2007. Since then the price of calls to other networks has dropped by around 35 per cent.
According to the regulator, any loss of revenue due to the drop in charges will be more than offset by money made through data services including people accessing the web through hand-held devices and text messaging.
In the last 12 months the amount of data traffic has doubled, according to Ofcom. The majority of mobile use is now data based. Between 2007 and 2009 revenues from data increased by 90 per cent and there is no sign of any slow down.
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