Nearly 70,000 sign Terminate the Rate Petition
by Tom Hall ~ July 29th, 2009. Filed under: Terminate The Rate.Nearly 70,000 have signed the Terminate the Rate petition to see Mobile Termination Rates (MTRs) reduced. Alongside this, 198 MPs have signed an Early Day Motion and 18 partners representing millions across the UK are behind the initiative.
Today sees the close of Ofcom’s consultation on MTRs and the future of mobile charges making today an important milestone for the campaign. With so much support secured, the Terminate the Rate partners will present a series of submissions today to the industry regulator in the ongoing effort to bring down the cost of calling mobiles for everyone.
BT and 3, who have led the campaign, have both issued statements,
John Petter, MD of consumer and retail at BT, said in support of the campaign: “This is a key moment in the campaign but it’s not the end. While the first stage of Ofcom’s consultation process is now closed, we will continue to lobby for lower termination rates until we get the result that UK phone users deserve. Termination rates last year cost land line users £750 million – we want to see that figure reduced to a sensible level and we won’t rest until that objective has been achieved.”
Kevin Russell, 3 UK’s CEO, said: “In little over two months the level of support the campaign has received from the public, MPs and from private and public sector organisations shows that there’s a growing understanding that that these charges are outdated and unfair. With the breadth and number of supporters who’ve joined the campaign Terminate the Rate has made a clear case for MTRs to come right down.”
Despite the Ofcom period of consultation closing, Terminate the Rate will continue to gather signatures to lend further weight to the cause – do so by signing up here!
I am new in this country and was quite surprised about the lack of competition in mobile phone business. In the past I lived in India and worked with mobile phone companies there for 10 years. I have been watching how the regulatory authority in India, TRAI, ensured fair competition from the begining. They protected the incumbent state player initially from predatory private players initially. The phone calls were expensive initially. Oh yes, the equipment providers are to blame for the high cost rather than lack of competition. Then they gradually changed lowered the maximum MTC that can be charged. They also controlled the maximum customer price. There were many players (now consolidated though). These measures put great pressure on companies rather than competition limited cartels. Now any call from one end of the country to 3000km away in the other corner costs less than half a penny for customers. There are special student rates too. The public sector company(BSNL, like BT in the UK), was leading the price war but some times one step behind. They competed among themselves to get better international call rates to customers by negotiating with carriers. A call from Indian mobile phone or land line to UK mobile phone is less than 10p a minute while in the other direction it costs many times that. A call to from my PAYG mobile here to even another one in the same network costs 20p. The cost of building a network is same in India and in UK since the GSM/3G technologies used in both places. May be running cost of phone companies is less in India. But not to justify such high cost. Probably regulatory authorities, phone companies and business schools need to look East once in a while.
What a bunch of hypocrites. BT charges £4.50 per month if you don`t pay by direct debit and you are happy to have them sponsor you. I see BT also say help the aged support you . How many older people pay by direcr debit.
This is a joke campaign, surely. All abot money. who really benefits?
john myles hi,
its not BTs fault for charging its customers every network has to charge the rate to all customers, BT dosent want to charge its customers this and neither dose 3 even tho they also charge also.
I have signed the petition and sent my MP a bespoke letter (as I guess he will receive dozens of the standard letter)
Lets hope we can get somewhere with this.
Thankyou for breinging this to the attention of the masses.
I don’t know if anyone remembers this but it was around 1998, BT and OFCOM (previously called OFTEL) who spark the Mobile Cross Network call charges when they complained that it was costing too much to call mobiles from a landline, and it still cost around the same now!