B loody T hieves

Just seen an announcement that BT intend to up the cost of evening calls from 4.5p an hour to 1.5p a minute from 1st April 2008. That's a 1900% increase. And no, I suspect it is not an April fool but it ought to be. And who knows what it will mean for those, like my neighbour, who are reliant on the PCB (phone box) for their telephone calls.

BT's income from calls has been reducing steadily as more people use mobiles, VoIP, email etc to communicate. But this increase is ludicrous. Completely unjustifiable. It costs no more to make a phone call daytime, evening or weekend for 1 sec or an hour because the entire process is automated. BT do not have people plugging in your call at a switchboard any more. Where voice only is being transmitted, there is no additional data cost for BT to bear.

So, what this is about is screwing those who probably can least afford it to no doubt help fund their balls up of a 21st Century Network switchover.

It is more than time that subloop unbundling took place and we could all decide whether we want to replace our lump of ancient and eroded copper to the street cabinet with fibre, and who we buy our telephone services from - if anyone. I'd much rather be using VoIP. And as they are migrating to an all IP core network with 21CN all of these voice calls will be VoIP. Possibly the most expensive VoIP in the world if these charges stand.