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Is it bye bye BT?

By Paul Gosling
Monday, 3 August 2009

BT'S call charges are to go up by nearly 15% from October — on top of a similar increase earlier this year. It is time to consider how best to cut those rising phone bills.

The bad BT news is that standard call charges are to jump from 4.5 pence per minute to 5.25 pence per minute and the ‘set-up' (connection) charge goes from 8 pence to 9.05 pence per call. The good news is that phone users who change their pricing plans can save substantially.

BT is advising customers they should respond to the latest price hike by reviewing their contracts and consider moving to its Anytime calls package. Northern Ireland customers on the Anytime tariff pay £4.95 a month, inclusive of all calls anywhere in the UK or Ireland and no matter what time of day the calls are made.

The Anytime charge is on top of BT's basic line rental charge of £11.25 per month. Customers not paying by direct debit or who still receive bills in the post will pay more. Charges for signing-up with Anytime have fallen by nearly a third in the last three years, as BT tries to persuade customers to pay a fixed amount instead of paying per call.

No monopoly now

But BT is not the only phone provider and other services can save customers even more. One of the cheapest is Primus, which costs £10.99 a month for line rental and just £2.99 a month for unlimited calls to UK local and national numbers.

To apply for the Primus service at this discounted price, consumers need to sign-up via an approved intermediary — these include the price comparison websites www.HomePhoneChoices.co.uk and www.uswitch.co.uk.

Alternative low cost phone providers include Yourcalls.net, which charges £3.90 per month for unlimited calls to UK local and national numbers, plus £10.03 for monthly line rental. Another cheap operator is Euphony, at £3.90 for the calls and £10.25 for the line.

More hassle, less cost

Other cheap phone networks can be accessed with more hassle but lower cost by dialling a prefix before the destination number. These services can produce large savings, in particular on international and mobile calls.

Customers using Call 18866 pay a 5 pence connection charge on calls from Northern Ireland landlines to other UK landlines, or mobiles free of charge, but with no additional charge per minute. Phoning landlines or mobiles in the United States via Call 18866 costs 2 pence per minute, plus the connection charge, against a minimum of 11.2 pence per minute with BT. Other low cost operators include 18185, 05Pence and Liquid Telecom.

Many consumers will want inclusive deals, which give them broadband as well as phone, and perhaps TV as well. Analysis by price comparison site HomePhoneChoices.co.uk (and confirmed by another comparison site, uSwitch.co.uk) reports the best buys in Northern Ireland at present for phone plus broadband contracts are Virgin Media, Plusnet and TalkTalk.

However, Virgin Media is not available in all areas of Northern Ireland, nor to all homes within the areas it does service. Anyone with a strong aversion to BT will probably not wish to sign-up with Plusnet as both it and another BT ‘competitor' Madasafish are owned by BT.

Unpopular Tiscali

TalkTalk is a subsidiary of the Carphone Warehouse, which has just purchased another of the phone and broadband operators, Tiscali. In terms of price, Tiscali is also competitive. But I have received so many complaints about the quality of service offered by Tiscali that I would not recommend the company.

As Carphone Warehouse has succeeded in making vast improvements to the service standards of TalkTalk I would expect the same process to take place at Tiscali over the coming months.

Comparing the prices of phone services is extremely difficult, because of the variations in service plans and content. Sky is also worth considering as a phone and broadband provider if customers also want the satellite TV service. Remember whoever you choose, to check whether there is a connection fee and what it is. These can be substantial.

Time for a dongle?

For about 1% of people in Northern Ireland, in remote rural areas, it remains impossible to get a broadband service on a landline. One option, if they have a strong mobile signal, is to sign up with a mobile phone company for a mobile broadband contract.

The provider will supply a ‘dongle' which plugs into a USB socket of a PC, laptop or notebook to provide a broadband service.

Mobile broadband coverage in Northern Ireland is, though, still patchy. A map of mobile broadband coverage in Northern Ireland has just been published by the telecoms regulator Ofcom on its website, www.ofcom.org.uk. Be warned that heavy usage of dongles can be extremely expensive. A survey just conducted by moneysupermarket.com reveals that O2 customers who exceed their contracted download limit can be hit by a charge of £200.70 per Gb and customers of the 3 network may be charged £102.40.

This demonstrates the risk of very high costs if consumers make the wrong phone connections. It also shows the benefits of getting those connections right.