As the recession strikes down even more corporate victims & consumer spending hits an all time low, outlook looks bleak for British businesses, except that is for British Telecom the UK largest communications company who has increased its call setup fees, line rentals & call charges.
BT line rentals today vary from 12.23GBP per PSTN line to 15.92GBP per ISDN channel on a one year contract. VOIP service providers have increased the price gap with IP line rentals of 1.50 per month per trunk.
BT’s ISDN connection charge has gone up by 25% to 299GBP to the same time las year. BT is somewhat flexible on connection fees should the customer be willing to enter into a long term agreement. Many VOIP phone service providers don’t appear to charge connection fees at all.
Many telephone providers & LCR operators charge a minimum call fee, this varies from as little as 1.5p to 1 minute minimum charge. As from Sept 2008 BT is charging 7p to connect for customers who have not to entered into any call plan agreement – an increase of 14% to last year
UK office to mobile rates vary from 8p per minute to BT’s 19p standard rate. Minute rates to national numbers vary from 0.8p to BT’s 4p. ITSPs appear to be the most competitive again with rates of 9-11p to mobiles & 1.25-1.5p to landlines.
Call plans such as: BTOneplan offer 5p capped calls(1 hour) to landlines & 20p capped calls(1 hour) to mobiles. To qualify for the plan customers need 2 other BT services on a 2 year contract. This however may not represent the best value for money to most of us – as a recent Telecost survey of 2 million calls across various industries suggests that the average call length to mobile is 110 seconds and an average call length to landline is 112 seconds. If this is accurate then BT’s offer is only suitable for companies that make longer than average length calls.
For maximum telecoms savings companies should insure that their phone system is GSM ready. By incorporating GSM gateways UK companies can achieve free office to staff mobile calls & rates of 1.47p per minute to other mobile networks. These deals are more suited to companies with higher call volumes as some development & negotiation is required.
Companies that are thinking of switching to VOIP will need the following:
- IP compliant telephone system
- reliable internet service
- necessary upstream to cope with call requirement
- IP phones such as Cisco, Snom or Aastra
- consultation with a Voip Telecoms Consultant (usually free)
Mail this post
