VOIP Phone Systems – Recession & BT’s Price Hikes
As the recession strikes down even more corporate victims & consumer spending hits an all time low, outlook looks bleak for British businesses, except that is for British Telecom the UK largest communications company who has increased its call setup fees, line rentals & call charges.
BT line rentals today vary from 12.23GBP per PSTN line to 15.92GBP per ISDN channel on a one year contract. VOIP service providers have increased the price gap with IP line rentals of 1.50 per month per trunk.
BT ISDN2 connection charge has gone up to SRP of 299GBP which is an increase of 25% to the same time last year. With an 80GBP connection charge per channel on ISDN 30, BT paves the way for VOIP Telecom providers & LCRs many of whom offer free connection without long tie-ins.
BT has raised it’s call setup fee from 6 to 7p which means that unless you have opted for a BT call plan or switched your billing to LCR, you will be paying 7p per connection before you start your call – this is quite poor considering large number of calls go to voicemail. UK VOIP providers lead the pack again with minimum call charges of 1.5p – 2p.
UK landline to mobile minute rates to (07) numbers vary from 8p with LCR on long term contracts and high call spend to BT’s 19p standard rate. Minute rates to national (01) (02) numbers vary from 0.8p on long term LCR contracts to BT’s 4p standard rate. UK ITSPs typically charge 9p – 11p to mobiles & 1.25p -1.5p to landlines without any long contract obligations or spend commitments. Many Voip Providers are now offering all inclusive UK & international calls packages from 15 to 25 pcm.
Call plans such as: BTOneplan offer 5p capped calls(1 hour) to landlines & 20p capped calls(1 hour) to mobiles. To qualify for the plan customers need 2 other BT services on a 2 year contract. This however may not represent the best value for money to most of us – as a recent Telecost survey of 2 million calls across various industries suggests that the average call length to mobile is 110 seconds and an average call length to landline is 112 seconds. If this is accurate then BT’s offer is only suitable for companies that make longer than average length calls.
For maximum telecoms savings companies should insure that their phone system is GSM ready. By incorporating GSM gateways UK companies can achieve free office to staff mobile calls & rates of 1.47p per minute to other mobile networks. These deals are more suited to companies with higher call volumes as some development & negotiation is required.
Those companies who are thinking of migrating telecoms to VOIP will need the following:
- phone system that supports SIP or IAX
- good quality internet connection
- necessary upstream to cope with call requirement
- IP phones such as Cisco, Snom or Aastra
- consultation with a Voip Telecoms Consultant (usually free)