Small businesses face 'unfair telecoms tax', BT argues

Date: 21st May 2009

Small businesses have been given a boost by fresh calls for mobile phone termination calls to be scrapped.

Under the existing system, calls made from landlines to mobile phones can be far more expensive than mobile-to-mobile calls, with operators arguing that this is due to the termination charges BT is hit with by 'hosting' networks.

Now, with the Federation of small Businesses as well as the National Union of Students having already called for the end of such a system, BT itself has asked the communications sector watchdog Ofcom to force mobile operators to lower or even do away with termination charges.

According to John Petter, managing director of BT Retail, such charges can often represent a significant burden on both small businesses, as well as households, with elderly phone users who are the least tech-savvy the worst-hit by high bills.

"Mobile termination rates might sound like the obscure preoccupations of telecom nerds or geeks but their effect is to impose an unfair tax on every household and business and organisation in the UK," he said.