John Petter, BT and Kevin Russell, 3

John Petter, BT and Kevin Russell, 3

It certainly has been a busy day for termination rates. After Ofcom’s announcement of yet another review into the cost phone networks pay each other for terminating mobile calls, BT and 3 have teamed up to launch a new campaign.

Terminate the Rate was launched in a semi-fanfare of publicity at the top of the BT Tower this morning by the telcos, with support from moneysupermarket.com, National Union of Students (NUS), the GMB (Britain’s third biggest union), the Federation of Small Businesses and, rather randomly, Carers UK – who are ‘the voice of carers’.

The campaign is calling for an end to termination rates – or even something a little more sensible than the current 4.7p+ per minute the mobile operators charge traditional telcos – and each other – for carrying a call through their network. They argue that the same charge on a land-based call is 0.3p/minute, which is a huge amount different. Well ok, you’d expect it to be slightly more expensive as there’s huge quantities of radio infrastructure and the like involved, but the campaign claims the “real” cost is closer to 1p/minute.

According to John Petter, BT Retail’s MD of Consumer, “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 unfair Rate”. Meanwhile Kevin Russell, 3′s CEO, says “3 supports the Terminate the Rate campaign because excessive MTRs harm the British consumer by propping up high prices, stifling competition and preventing flat rate, unlimited deals that let people call and use mobiles as freely as they wish.”

Whilst this all sounds very exciting, the petition is trying to persuade Ofcom to do something about this in their aforementioned 2011 and beyond review – so it’s still a few years away. Still, if you feel strongly about the subject it’s worth getting your voice heard.

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