UK NEWS

FURY AT CHARGE TO RECEIVE CALLS ON YOUR MOBILE

Nice to hear from you..as long as I'm not paying

Tuesday June 17,2008

By John Chapman

MOBILE phone users are furious after a European Union telecoms chief suggested they should pay to receive calls in Britain as well as make them.

Consumers who take their handsets abroad can already be hit with a large bill when taking calls from home.

Now mobile phone industry sources warn that a similar system could be imposed on domestic calls if EU plans are implemented.

EU telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding will this month make her long-awaited recommendations on cutting the fees that mobile and fixed-line operators charge for routing each others’ calls.

There are no plans to start charging UK customers to receive calls

A spokesman for Vodafone

But the guidelines could in turn lead to the introduction of new business models under which all customers have to pay to receive as well as make calls.

One mobile industry source said: “This will infuriate mobile phone users who already face a bewildering array of charges.

“If people have to pay to receive calls it will be a huge turn-off and a big step back for the industry.”

Mobile phone companies were last night keen to play down consumers’ fears.

A spokesman for Vodafone said: “There are no plans to start charging UK customers to receive calls.

“Across the industry, mobile call prices continue to fall, unlike some other key consumer services at the moment.

“This is due to healthy competition in the market place and not from heavy-handed regulatory intervention.”

A spokesman for O2 said: “This story is highly speculative and we don’t comment on speculation.”

The mobile phone industry and the European Commission are waging war over high costs.

The Commission claims that the new charges could be more than offset by a sharp cut in the cost of making outgoing calls.

Ms Reding has spearheaded a campaign to reduce mobile phone charges which deliver a multi-billion pound windfall to the operators.

Charging to receive calls is normal in the USA and some Asian countries including China and Singapore.

Overall, industry experts believe, it can lead to lower bills than those imposed on consumers in Britain and the rest of Europe.

Currently in Europe every operator imposes a mobile termination rate (MTR) on another network for connecting a call to one of its customers.

Scrapping the mobile termination rate, according to the Commission, would remove cost and bring down charges.

European networks could then adopt the American model of introducing a mix of charges for both making and receiving calls. Martin Selmayr, the European Commission’s spokesman for Ms Reding, said that the current system “means clients are paying costs that are avoidable”.

But it is believed that many people would be unhappy at being charged to receive calls even if there was a fall in making outgoing calls.

Ms Reding said of her controversial plans: “Why not? The whole market is developing so we should not stay on the rules that have been in place for 10 years.”

Her spokesman, Martin Selmayr, said: “It is entirely up to the operators how they want to charge for receiving calls – and whether they want to charge. It’s the operators’ decision.”