Mobile Choice gets behind TTR
by Natasha Stokes ~ August 19th, 2009. Filed under: Campaign Supporters.Natasha is the Editor of Mobile Choice
I’ve just come back from holiday in Australia, half the time during which I was still working. This meant lots of calls back home to London and I was pretty shocked at at the disparity in costs to call mobiles and landlines. Example – I had a A$10 phonecard that gave me 1800 minutes to a fixed line. When I tried calling my boyfriend’s mobile instead? 33 minutes.
Mobile Termination Rates (MTRs) are the reason for the massive difference, and it’s not any different back in England. When you call a friend on a different network, their operator charges yours to connect the call. Currently the rate is 4.7p a minute. It’s not the highest in the EU, but it is the reason it costs so much more to call mobiles.
3 and BT are spearheading the campaign for Ofcom to lower MTRs to 1p a minute. Terminate the Rate is well underway, and the sooner it’s passed – we’re hoping for an early day motion – the sooner the benefits get passed on to consumers. There has been talk from other operators that lowering the costs would result in higher prices, but let’s face it – MTRs were reduced back in 2002 and call costs didn’t in fact rise.
Instead, 3 is promising to introduce better value all you can eat voice/data/text prices, as is BT with call packages. We’re hoping stories on our site will help spread awareness of just why mobile calls are so expensive, show the benefits of reducing MTRS, and encourage our readers to sign the petition at the Terminate the Rate blog.
