Telecommunications giant BT has announced it will be scrapping call charges on 0870 and 0845 numbers for its customers.
Changes to current call charges will cost BT anything up to 24 million pounds, but will give BT’s existing 14 million customers something to cheer about in the New Year.
BT customers have often complained about BT’s exclusion of 0870 and 0845 numbers from their option packages.
BT said the changes would cost it “tens of millions” of pounds, but had decided, “to give customers what they want”.
John Petter, Managing Director of BT’s consumer business department, said: “We know that the public is frustrated by having to pay higher charges for these numbers, even though BT’s rates are cheaper than their rivals, so we worked out a way to go further and include all calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers in our call packages”.
Steve Cordingley, Director of 08 Direct, a UK based telecommunications company believes “the reduction in cost from BT landlines should go a long way to improving the image of these popular number ranges.”
These changes may be a very shrewd move by BT. Ofcom’s proposed restructuring of the way 0870 numbers work is reportedly happening in early 2009. By making this move early, BT may take the limelight for forcing a change on the 0870 number range amongst the big service providers.
Both Virgin Media and SKY have made no comment yet on whether they will be following suit.
With the impending Ofcom changes to 0870 many businesses will be moving away from 0870 to get their revenue share from numbers that are unaffected by the new legislation, so it is to be expected that BTs risk in this move is heavily minimised, while at the same time being a great PR move to encourage people to switch to BT.