Ofcom said it proposes to cut call termination rate to 0.379p per minute next year from the current cap of 0.468p per minute for calls to mobiles.
Ofcom will maintain the current cap of 0.0292p per minute in real terms for calls to landlines.
Ofcom proposes that UK providers should charge no more than the rate they are charged when their customers make calls to that international destination when someone calls a UK number from abroad.
When people call a UK mobile or landline number, the caller’s network provider pays a wholesale charge to the recipient’s phone company for connecting the call. This is called a termination rate.
Ofcom’s statement explains how it will regulate the wholesale markets that underpin landline and mobile telephone calls in the UK, for the period between April 2021 and March 2026.
Currently, some phone companies still use BT’s wholesale call origination service to enable their customers to make calls on their landline.
Over the next few years, landline calls will be increasingly carried over more modern, Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Ofcom will deregulate wholesale call origination, as providers will no longer need to purchase it from BT.
As industry moves away from using the traditional telephone network, Ofcom expects companies will increasingly interconnect with each other using the more modern IP interconnection networks. So we have set out how we will regulate BT’s IP interconnection service.
