Ofcom, the UK telecoms regulator has announced that they are looking into the standardisation of the “confusing” costs of calling non geographical 0845 and freephone 0800 numbers from mobile phones.
Costs of calling these numbers currently can vary from 20p to 40p per minute for 0800 and vary even more widely for 0845 numbers..
The numbers are often used for vital services such as banks, energy companies and even government departments.
Ofcom’s chief executive, Ed Richards, said:
“Consumers need to have far more transparency about the price they are going to pay for calls so that they can make more informed choices and so competition can work more effectively.
“Making 0800 free from a mobile and giving people clarity about what they are paying for 118 directory enquiry services will improve transparency, improve competition and enhance trust in these important services.”
Ofcom’s intention is to make call charges more transparent however as this will result in major restructuring of call charging the mobile companies will have 18 months to implement the changes. The consultation closes on 28th May 2013 and the changes are expected to take force in 2015.
Full details can be found on the Ofcom website.
That’s good news about the 0800 numbers. It’s preposterous that just because you’re using a mobile it should cost you more these days. It was understandable back when mobiles were fairly new and weren’t ubiquitous as they are now – but they are more common than landlines today. It wasn’t so long ago that 0800 numbers were outside most peoples’ talk plans too, so quite often you paid outside of your minute bundles (not sure how true that is now).
However, is it really a big enough change to warrant 18 months to change over? It certainly doesn’t take mobile operators that long to hike their prices or decide to charge more for a particular type of call!
About bloomin’ time. 08xx calls from mobiles are a licence to print money as far as I am concerned and the standardisation of prices is well overdue.
I’d much rather all 0845 were now band and we went back to normal geological numbers as they would come out of Inc minutes both on mobile and land lines
The biggest con is that for ‘customer service’ numbers you even have to pay a penny, why should I have to pay to call my utility companies, for which I am already paying them for their service. And normally it is because something has gone wrong and I have to pay them to tell them.
But I guess they have to pay for the customer service centers in the UK somehow.
Simple. Just use saynoto0870 and 0800buster. Problem solved.