UK Cheap Business Calls - Are Capped Call Rates in Your Interest
Posted by: Darren Borne in Communication, tags: CommunicationBT the UK’s largest telecoms provider is singing the praises of ‘capped calls’ and selling call plans on the basis of the savings these deals seem to offer - are these capped deals really that good or is this a financial smoke screen?.
Trying to gather call rate information for this task was rather awkward to say the least - BT’s website and search facility seemed to make this task ‘difficult’ to say the least. In my experience the best way to do this is call.
Armed with call rates call rates for BT & alternative telecoms prividers, I had to to establish the average call length. Luckily Telecost performed this task in 2002 by looking at call records of 100 companies in different UK locations and mixed industry sectors. In total some 2 million records were analysed. Of course some time has gone by and without a bigger study it is difficult to be certain - so if anything this is a good guide:
Average length of mobile call (07 numbers) - 110 seconds.
Average length of national call (01 numbers) - 112 seconds.
Average length of call to landline (02 numbers) - 121 seconds.
If the average call length is 2 minutes then the following stands to reason:
A 2 Minute call through BT Standard Rate to mobile would cost 45p and to landline would cost 15p (inc call setup fee).
A 2 Minute call through BT’s ‘Business Plan’ to mobile would cost 25p (capped) and to landline would cost 8p on a 1 year contract.
A 2 Minute call through BT’s Oneplan to mobile would cost 20p (capped) and to landline would cost 5p (capped) on a 2 year contract with 2 additional services as a requirement.
A 2 minute mobile call using Westlake LCR is 18p and a 2 minute landline call is 2.5p on a one year contract.
A 2 minute call through Midland Telecom to mobile would cost 16p and to landline would cost 1.8p on a 1 year contract with a minimum spend requirement.
A 2 minute mobile call using Gradwell VOIP would cost 20p and a 2 minute landline call would be free (on all inclusive tarif) with 3 month contract.
Based on the above information above being correct the conclusion therefore is:- if your business makes average length calls then LCR or VOIP providers offer you the best overall call savings. If your bunsiness makes long phone calls on a regular basis then BT will be the better choice, but then…
The best possible way to route business calls is to use a phone system such as Asterisk that is able to route calls via the most efficient routes. For example customers may route all 01 numbers through VOIP to take advantage of the all inclusive tarif and unlimited outbound trunks, use GSM gateways for free calls to staff mobiles (a big chunk of a typicall business phone bill) & mobile call rates as low as 4.5p. It is also not a bad idea to have a few BT lines on ‘Oneplan’ - for long length calls (users can have buttons on their phones that say long calls or can be made to press a button before dialling out)
Call rates in this report were obtained in Sept 08 - some of the information above may or may not be accurate at the time you read this article hence this information should be treated as a yardstick.
Entries (RSS)