Trade chiefs back drive against 'excessive' phone rates

TWO high-profile business figures today backed a campaign to change an "unfair" mobile phone charge, which costs users millions of pounds every year.

Brendan Dick, director at BT Scotland, and Andy Willox, the policy convener of the Federation of Small Businesses, have joined forces to highlight the problem. They are backing the Terminate the Rate campaign, which aims to change the law surrounding Mobile Termination Rates (MTRs), a charge that last year cost Scottish businesses and consumers using landlines about 63 million.

MTRs currently cost the user about 4.7p for every minute of a call they make to a mobile which is on another network or to a mobile from a landline.

This is more than ten times the rate charged to call fixed lines and accounts for up to 80 per cent of the cost of a call from a landline to a mobile.

The Terminate the Rate campaign wants to bring this charge down to about a penny or less.

Last year, UK mobile operators took more than 750m for allowing fixed-line customers to call mobiles. Based on population, this is about 63m in Scotland, or 12 for every person.

The campaign is lobbying industry regulator Ofcom to make a change at www.terminatetherate.org.

Mr Dick said: "Fixed-line phone users know that calling a mobile is too expensive. We've done what we can to bring down that cost, but with MTRs accounting for up to 80 per cent of the price per minute of a call from a home phone line to a mobile, the only way to get better prices is to terminate the rate."

Earlier this year, the European Commission recognised that high MTRs penalise consumers, recommending that regulators bring the costs down.