Mobile phone users may pay to receive calls

Mobile phone customers could pay to receive calls as companies seek to protect their profits after being forced to cut other charges.

The European Commission has promised to bring down controversial termination charges – the fee that mobile phone companies charge each other as well as landline companies for connecting calls to their networks.

The charges, on average about 7p for each call, total an estimated £1 billion every year in the UK.

Viviane Reding , the European telecoms commissioner, is due later this month to unveil how she intends to slash these charges to about 1p – a move that has incensed some of the mobile phone giants, who believe her policies are a major threat to their profits.

Ms Reding last year forced mobile phone companies to lower the charges they levied on holidaymakers when they made calls abroad.

They have warned her – in private meetings with the Commissioner – that they could charge customers to receive calls, if termination charges were cut.

The prospect of being charged to receive calls will shock UK consumers but it is the norm in the USA.

Ms Reding said there were no laws stopping companies doing this. In an interview she said: "I think the business models are not for the European commissioner to decide. Business models are for the operators to decide."

Her spokesman, Martin Selmayr, later sought to clarify her statement, saying, "This is all part of the Commissioner pledging to drastically reduce the costs to call mobile phone companies.

"Companies could introduce tariffs that made you pay to receive calls, but most consumers will not tolerate this. They will go elsewhere. This is an empty threat from the mobile phone companies."

The Commissioner has promised that whatever changes she introduces, mobile phone costs will fall overall.

British customers currently pay 40 per cent more to use their phones than their American peers – even though most American phone companies charge you to receive calls.

Smaller mobile phone companies – which argue they unfairly subsidise termination charges of the larger players – have backed Ms Reding's proposals.

Kevin Russell, the UK chief executive of 3, said bigger networks were introducing a "scaremongering campaign to try and frighten people."

He added: "Any change would undoubtedly make the market more competitive, giving consumers much better deals than they can get today."

source : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/