New Year cheer from BT

BT has become the first UK phone company to make calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers freein a £24 million giveaway.

14 million customers will benefit when BT becomes the first UK telephone company to make calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers free.

Many utilities, banks, insurance companies and doctor's surgeries use 0870 and 0845 numbers so calls to these numbers make up a significant part of the phone bill. Acknowledging that customers resent having to pay more for these calls, especially when they often get put on hold or have to wait in a queue, BT has decided to include 0870 and 0845 numbers in call packages.

Many companies using these numbers offer their services at the weekend so BT customers on the Weekend package as well as those on the Evening & Weekend package and the Anytime package will benefit from this change. Customers on a low budget haven't been forgotten either as BT Basic customers will be able to call 0870 and 0845 numbers for free on weekends from April 1st.

BT consumer managing director John Petter said: "We know that the public is frustrated by having to pay higher charges for these numbers - even though BT's rates were cheaper than our rivals - so we worked out a way to go further and include calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers in our call packages. Our customers spend 30 minutes a month on average calling these numbers so we hope we have taken the sting out of the price of these calls and also removed one of those irritations that customers believed was an unfair anomaly."

No UK phone company has ever included these call types in their packages before because 0845 and 0870 numbers generate large revenues for the utility firms, banks and other organisations that use them. It is estimated BT will give up £24 million in revenue in the 2009-10 financial year by not charging for the calls.

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