BT scraps charges for 0870 numbers

Telecoms giant BT announced it was scrapping charges for 0870 and 0845 numbers, used by millions of customers, in a move which will cost the company £24 million.

The two numbers are used by banks, building societies, utilities, insurance firms and doctor's surgeries and currently cost up to 5.8p a minute for BT's 14 million customers.

Charges will be free from January 16, depending on which package customers are on, ranging from weekend, evening and any time calls.

BT said it was the first UK telephone company to make the numbers free, saying some of its competitors charged about 10p a minute for a daytime 0870 call.

John Petter, managing director of BT's consumer business, said: "We know that the public is frustrated by having to pay higher charges for these numbers, even though BT's rates were cheaper than our rivals, so we worked out a way to go further and include calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers in our call packages.

"These numbers are widely used by banks, utilities and even NHS Direct, and our customers spend 30 minutes a month on average calling these numbers. We hope we have taken a sting out of the price of these calls, but also removed one of those irritations that customers believed was an unfair anomaly."

Source: The Associated Press, 8th January, 2009

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