I just thought I should point out the even more unacceptable nature of the increased calling costs for any of the poorest members of the population who need to call a doctors surgery from a BT Callbox.

The cost of a 15 minute call from a BT Callbox to a uk geographic phone number at any time is only 30p but the cost of a 15 minute call to an 0845 or an 0870 number is now £1.65, following BT's decision to exclude 0845 and 0870 numbers from the 15 minutes for 30p deal even though they were included in it until some time late in 2004.

This decision by BT is all the more extraordinary in view of the contents of BT's submission to Ofcom on NTS Options for the Future to be found here:- www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/ntsoptions/Responses/btrev.pdf

In this submission BT suggests that revenue sharing on 0845 and 0870 numbers should be banned and that in future these calls can only be charged for by any telecoms provider at the same rate as they charge for other uk local and national geographic rate phone calls.  So it seems strange that BT's Payphone division seems wholly unaware of this proposed future BT policy in their recent payphone pricing changes.

Can I suggest that you email kath.embleton@bt.com (the contact named in BT's response) expressing your dismay at BT's massively increased call prices for 0845 and 0870 calls in their phone boxes which now cost 450% more a minute than for a geographic phone call.  This compares with no price premium for 0845 calls and a price premium of only 150% for 0870 calls when called using BT Option 1 on a weekday daytime from a home landline.

Whilst emailing Kath you may also wish to copy in the real villains on this matter in the form of the following members of the BT board:-  ben.verwaayen@bt.com; pierre.danon@bt.com; paul.reynolds@bt.com; ian.livingston@bt.com

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In my position as a local district councillor I have recently been challenging our Head of IT over his setting up of two 0845 numbers in connection with our new dual wheely bin recycling friendly refuse collection scheme.  The use of 0845 numbers was never specifically approved by any councillor or council committee and are our first non geographic numbers, apart from an 0845 number for a new telephone bill payment system that our same head of IT introduced about 3 months ago using the excuse that the out of house supplier of this platform did not offer geographic numbers, and that the only other possible option would have been an 0800 number, which would have cost the council a small fortune.

His excuse for using 0845 numbers for the wheely bin scheme (actually answered by council staff in the council offices and not outsourced) is that to have known the real geographic phone numbers at the time the leaflets were printed would have required him to have ordered the additional fixed phone lines supporting this service for our DDI PBX from BT several months early, thereby incurring additional phone line rental costs for which he did not have authority.  But he just simply seems to refuse to accept (a vision of an ostritch springs to mind) that 0845 calls are vastly more expensive for many of our residents than calls to geographic phone numbers, especially those poorest citizens who need to use a BT phone box to make an 0845 call.  He also seems to be unaware of the existence of intelligent call routing on geographic phone numbers which the latest guidance from the COI now confirms does exist (see www.coi.gov.uk/documents/ccg-update.pdf).  Although I bet that geographic Intelligent Call Routing would have to be paid for by the call recipient rather than being offered "free" (or rather at the caller's expense) as happens with 084/087.

One interesting point that did emerge from all this though was that the 0845 numbers we are using allegedly do not have a geographic DDI equivalent and that supposedly this will only be available when BT lines specifically allocated to the team involved are installed.  I actually find this rather hard to believe but that is what I have been told.

Does anyone have any idea how Ofcom is going to jump on this one?  It must upset them that things have now got too hot even for the BT board on this even though Vodafone have of course put in a predictably sickening response saying that there is no need for any change and that most of their customers think that using a mobile phone represents remarkabable value for money!

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I trust you will also be pointing out to the PCT that calling an 0870 number will cost their poorest patients 450% more a minute from a BT phonebox (for the first 15 minutes) than a call to a geographic uk phone number.

Also that even for people with a BT landline in their home the cost of a call to an 0870 number for anyone on BT Option 1 is 150% more than to a geographic uk phone number whilst for a BT Option 3 customer the increased cost is 7.51p per minute versus 0p per minute, with the percentage increase therefore involved being infinity.

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A good letter but a pity that it was not published in The Times and also sent to the Cabinet Minister responsible for the NHS and also to the CEO of the NHS.  Plus of course also to one's own MP.

If you were the writer of the letter in the Islington Tribune perhaps you might also like to consider those possible additional courses of action.

Not so sure you are right about the NHS always being free at the point of delivery though?  What about prescription charges for instance?  Although admittedly these are not paid by the poorest and oldest members of the community.

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A pity though that you didn't manage to mention the huge extra calling cost from a phone box compared to calling a standard geographic uk phone number from the same location.

I would also suggest raising this issue with your MP.

I am going to ask the COI why their advice on the use of non geographic numbers does not also appear to apply to local authorities such as district councils and county councils, all of which are public bodies.

And -  re reply 31

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No calls to 0845 and 0870 numbers from a BT Payphone box no longer cost the same as other geographic uk phone calls - they now cost a premium price of 10p for 55 seconds at all times.  Amazingly BT do not even charge a lower price for their so called "lo call" 0845 numbers.

Until some date near the end of 2004 BT were giving the 15 minutes for 30p deal on 0845 and 0870 numbers but they then withdrew this because in the words of one of the staff on the BT Payphones Helpdesk (0800 252541) "they did not think the percentage of calls made to these numbers would be a problem but it has turned out to be a problem" so was losing BT Payphones division lots of money since they must pay the terminating call party at least 5p+ per minute in the weekday daytime when they were only receiving 2p per minute for the call.

The BT Payphones website at www.payphones.bt.com/publicpayphones/paymentprices.htm merely now says these calls are excluded from the 15 minuites for 30p deal but it does not say what the calls actually do cost.  For this you will need to call one of the BT Payphones call advisers.  Or you can try and consult the full BT price list to try and find it hidden somewhere there in the deliberately incomprehensible and badly laid out labyrinthine depths of their list.  Of course they could alternatively just have told us that the calls cost 11p per minute in their main pricing section for BT Payphone but for some strange reason they choose not to.

Perhaps some of you may feel like calling BT Payphones on one of their 0800 support shown at www.payphones.bt.com/contactus/bytelephone.htm (sadly they are not open on Sundays) or by sending an email to payphonespaperwork@bt.com or alternatively to ben.verwaayen@bt.com (BT's CEO)