back to article Last chance to vote to cut phone termination rates

The Terminate The Rate campaign launched by BT and 3 is approaching 70,000 signatures, on the last day for those who want to put their name to the campaign to reduce the amount their operator charges for incoming mobile calls. The 70,000 members of the public that have signed the petition have been joined by various charities …

COMMENTS

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  1. Adam Salisbury
    Grenade

    Perhaps?

    Or perhaps someone should kerbstomp those greedy scumbags into submission. They, like almost everyone else who can, have been ripping us off and we've finally got their backs to the wall.

    They should take the profit loss as a message not to screw their customers over again

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Pay to recieve?

    No way in hell, buster. If someone wants to call me, they pay pay all the charges for the call. Why should I pay for some cold-calling arse-much to try and sell me a double glazing payment plan (or whatever).

    Why should mobiles be any different to landline? They wanna call, they pay. Christ, it would be like the post office demanding that you pay the postie to receive your mail!

    Paying for receiving is just a money grabbing scam; simply raise the price of calling to cover the costs.

  3. Bassey
    Happy

    Nice! :)

    "one has to wonder where else the operators would get that revenue from. Perhaps they would just content themselves with lower profits for the good of the people" :)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RE: Pay to recieve?

    "Christ, it would be like the post office demanding that you pay the postie to receive your mail!"

    Never got a letter that requires a customs charge? Or doesn't have enough postage on it?

    In any case, pay to receive would be a dumb idea, but what purpose do the termination rates serve anyway? If I call you then you'll probably call me at times, so doesn't this balance out any need to cream off the profits that the calling customer's company makes?

  5. adnim

    Yeah right

    "Perhaps they would just content themselves with lower profits for the good of the people"

    And how does the good of the people pay for 2nd and 3rd homes, Porsche, Ferrari, Learjet, Gulfstream, Rolex, Cartier, Prada, Armani, Bollinger, Dom Perignon, swimming pools, islands and political will. You know all of those little essentials that are so vital for ones survival. Those things that massage the ego and make one stand out as something really, really special in the sea of mediocre nobodies that struggle to make ends meet.

  6. Gareth Perch
    Thumb Down

    let it be

    I don't fancy paying to receive calls, it was bad enough that my boss cost me my last £5 on my pay as you go mobile on my last visit to Australia, simply by phoning me for a few minutes. Goodness knows how much the call cost him from Blighty. I ended up buying a SIM for while I was over there - much better value - plus the boss didn't know the new number ;o)

    Some people hate the fact that I no longer use a landline (and I've recently had to cancel the "free" caller ID because they decided to charge me £7.50 a month for it, because my bills aren't big enough) and are "forced" to call my mobile, but they usually want something (IT support probably!) so if it's that important... Anyway, my iPhone's on the £45 a month contract (although a mate got it me for < £31 a month) and I get 20 hours to any phone / mobile / network / any time within that monthly cost. I don't use anywhere near that much, so I've let (some) people know that if they let it ring once or twice I'll phone them back, so it doesn't cost them a bean.

    I'd rather they petition to force companies to provide an alternative to 0870 etc. I don't see why companies should profit from a phone call unless it's a competition or whatever. http://www.saynoto0870.com goes some way towards alleviating that. Either that or charge me double - but out of my free minutes.

  7. pctechxp
    Stop

    Pay to receive? Bye bye phone

    As I'd rather not have a fixed or mobile phone in this case.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Say goodbye to cheap handsets

    Seeing as how we don't want the american model, we will probably be saying adios to the handset sunsidies that we get for new phone contracts and hello to paying £200+ for a new phone ...

  9. NogginTheNog

    "what purpose do the termination rates serve anyway?"

    I'm no industry expert, but I'd guess the idea is that the charge is a way of offsetting the costs of the terminating provider providing the infrastructure, particularly since mobile telephony should (or at least did?) cost a lot more to put together than landlines.

    A method of levelling the playing field amongst telco's perhaps..?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Lower profits...

    "...Perhaps they would just content themselves with lower profits for the good of the people"

    Hahahahahahahahaha

  11. david bates

    RE:RE: Pay to recieve?

    Yes....unless its something I've ordered postie gets told to bugger off and return it whence it came. Can't do that with a phone call.

  12. twelvebore

    Termination

    Termination charges are basically just part of the petty war amongst the networks being passed off on the consumer. Fundamentally it hurts all of their businesses, but they haven't realised it yet.

    Just like they haven't realised that it helps all their businesses to share their networks and let me connect to any of them without the "Emergency calls only" nonsense. I'm not going to switch to your network just because it's the only one I can get in a place I rarely go to. I'd be more likely to switch to your network if you make deals which allow me to use my phone wherever I go without having to give a crap whose infrastructure I'm actually using.

    The high-street banks tried all this on with trying to charge customers to use each others ATMs. The result? Within months it all collapsed. It's free now. The consumers don't care, they want to be able to use *any* ATM without giving a crap about charges. Eventually the banks all realised that they were better off not antagonising their customers, and sharing that infrastructure. One day may the mobile networks will have the same epiphany.

  13. Mr Spoon

    @ac

    If i'm a mobile telco i have 40% of the market then I have to pay a termination fee for around 60% of the calls my users make. If I have 10% of the market then I have to pay termination fees on around 90% of calls. BT of course has to pay the termination fee on all calls to mobiles.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RE: RE: Pay to recieve?

    "Never got a letter that requires a customs charge?"

    If it is something I have ordered, and the charge is in fact due, then I pay it.

    If I have no idea what it is, I refuse it.

    "Or doesn't have enough postage on it?"

    Return to sender - why should I pay for some company to send me their marketing tat? Again, if it is something I have ordered, I will pay it; but you can be sure there will be a call to customer services pretty quick.

    "what purpose do the termination rates serve anyway?"

    Barrier to entry for new companies? Confusing market pricing and pulling the wool of the consumer's eyes?

  15. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Money grabbing b........

    We have a leased line into one of the mobile companies. It's more expensive for us to call one of their mobiles via this leased line (That *we* pay them the privilege for having, BTW !) than it would be if we went and got a contract SIM from the high-street.

    We reduce the load on their network, reducing their costs, and *we* pay more money !?!

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Vested Interest

    "In any case, pay to receive would be a dumb idea, but what purpose do the termination rates serve anyway? If I call you then you'll probably call me at times, so doesn't this balance out any need to cream off the profits that the calling customer's company makes?"

    Actually not, the key is to look at who is backing this proposal, 3. As a smaller network vastly more calls are placed out of their system than it recieves (causes by the majority of people having phones from one of the big three), conversely those people have fewer friends with 3 mobiles so call them less.

    What this means is that 3 pays out far more in termination fees than it recieves back, unllike the other operators. So they do have a serious vested interest here.

  17. Matt 32

    On the upside...

    In the U.S. the "pay for all calls" (even if it's bundled so you don't see it) is the moral rubicon that keeps 99.999% of telemarketers and such from daring call mobile phones, out of fear the backlash would end their industry.

  18. Steven Jones

    @AC

    "Why should mobiles be any different to landline?"

    Good question. Interconnect calls into landline are regulated at fractionally above cost. Mobile operators are allowed to charge something like five times marginal costs. Mobile phone users are being subsidised by landline callers - plain and simple. That's a market distortion and hardly a just system.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    You think you have it bad!

    "that would lead to the US model where punters have to pay (from their bundled minutes) to receive calls"

    And the rest... To use sim cards over here in Canada you pretty much have to use Rogers. You pay $35 for the card, another $35 to switch it on, and over $6pcm just to connect to the network. That's without making a single call (oh yes, caller display and voicemail are also optional extras).

    I wouldn't mind some european greedy scumbag telecom companies over here to shake things up a bit!

  20. Andy 97
    FAIL

    Ofcom should make the first move....

    Running a mobile network isn't just expensive, it's really expensive.

    Maybe Ofcom can cut their wireless license fees to reflect the better value for money model, but I think the public have no perception of the real costs of running a mobile network.

    It's bad enough having to pay up-front to 'give' an expensive phone away every contract renewal, but having a balance to make enough money to stay solvent is even harder.

    Just talk to Orange, O2, Vodafone and the other one.

  21. Raspy32

    Re: RE: Pay to recieve?

    "Never got a letter that requires a customs charge? Or doesn't have enough postage on it?"

    No, and personally if I did then I would advise the company or person who sent it that they didn't put enough on it. It's not really the same thing comparing something that results from a mistake to your postman coming to your door in the morning, delivering 3 bills, 2 pieces of marketing junk and then saying "that'll be £1,50 please".

    I actually don't know which way to fall on this issue, as I don't believe we should pay to receive calls but likewise I think it'd be nice to reduce the cost of calling a mobile from a land-line. In an ideal world we'd have both but realistically it'll probably go one way or the other.

  22. Dave Colborne

    Why pay to send or receive?

    A company called Metro PCS in Atlanta GA (metropcs.com) does very well out of about £30 a month and gives you unlimited call time with all the frills. There is no contract, no credit check. You just pay by the required day of the month for another months service. I was with them for years and it was a great feeling to know that you did not have to worry about minutes.

  23. James Micallef Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    kerbstomp

    excellent word!!

    reminds me of American History X :)

  24. lukewarmdog
    Stop

    ofcom

    Needs to stop ebaying off the spectrum. Bidding wars are anti-competitive and can lead to situations like Setanta where the winner goes bust. All those millions ofcom has taken.. I've not seen a penny of them but I have seen monthly contracts rise and quality of service deteriorate to the point where I can't understand a word anyone from 3 says.

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