Articlr

BT 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.

The next task was to establish UK’s average call length. Telecost performed a study in 2002 of 100 UK businesses ranging from high users such as call centres to small enterprises at variuos locations. Over 2 million calls were analysed with results as shown below:

Average length of call to a mobile (07 numbers) – 110 seconds.

Average length of call to landline (01 numbers) – 112 seconds.

Average length of call to landline (02 numbers) – 121 seconds.

I am therefore going to assume that the average call length is 2 minutes hence:

A 2 minute call on BT Standard Rate to mobile is 45p and to landline is 15p inc BT’s call setup fee.

A 2 minute call on BT’s ‘Business Plan’ to mobile is 25p(capped) and a 2 minute call to landline is 8p on a 1 year contract.

A 2 minute mobile call using BT’s ‘Oneplan’ is 20p (capped) and a 2 minute landline call is 5p (capped) on a 2 year contract with additional BT services required.

A 2 minute call through Westlake to mobile would cost 18p and to landline would cost 2.5p on a one year contract.

A 2 minute call using Midland LCR to mobile is 16p and 1.8p to landline on a 1 year contract with 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.

The conclusion therefore is:- if your business makes average length calls then you are probably better off with LCR or VOIP, however if your business calls are long then BT offers good value, however…

The most efficient way to handle business calls is to use a telephone system such as Asterisk which is able to route calls via the most efficient methods: ie. route all national calls through VOIP hence take advantage of free calls and unlimited outbound trunks. Route mobile calls through GSM gateways to benefit from free calls to staff mobiles & mobile call rates of 4.5p. It is also not a bad idea to have a few BT lines on Oneplan to route long calls. This method also allows gives the user the benefit of mutiple failovers.

This article is merely a guide to help UK businesses make up their own minds – the call rates were obtained in Sept 08 hence may or may not be accurate at the time of reading.