There were note in the October 2006 and July 2007 Village Magazines about dramatic rises in the cost of short phone calls via BT. Here an updated note that gives more detal.

Big increases in the cost of phone calls?

Call a mobile phone, and you'll often hit a Voicemail service. You don't want to bother leaving a message, so you hang up at once. From 1st August 2007, it will cost BT phone customer 18.5p each time they do that between 6am and 6pm, any day of the week.

How come? BT have changed the way they charge for calls, in a way that make short calls MUCH more expensive. On top of a new connection charge (introduced at 3p, but doubled to 6p from 1st August 2007), they now charge for each call in "full minutes". That means that even a 5-second call costs you a whole minute, which is 12.5p per minute to mobiles during the day. A 61-second call costs you 2 minutes.

"Full minute" charging may not make a lot of difference on a 30-minute call, but it adds a lot to the cost of short calls. For many people, short calls make up most of their call costs. And BT were already pretty expensive before the changes!

BT remain good value for long calls to landlines in the evenings and at weekends (5.5p for up to an hour); if you make a lot of these calls (and not many other calls), then you might do best sticking with BT, or finding another company offering an inclusive off-peak package.

But otherwise, most households would do considerably better if they stopped buying their calls from BT. There are dozens of companies you can use for your calls.

For simplicity, I would suggest that sign up to have all your calls routed automatically to a non-BT "carrier". You do this by registering with your chosen carrier company; they sort things out with BT (it takes about three weeks), and from then on you pay BT for your line rental (as now) and the carrier company for your calls. BT hate it, but they have to co-operate as part of the rules set up when they were privatised.

Things change quite fast in the telecoms market, and I can't guarantee that today's best bet will still be best by the time you read this. But as I write (6 June 2007), the best all-round bet seems to be "First Telecom" (www.firsttelecom.com or 0845 215 1640) who charge reasonable rates, per-second with a minimum of 1.2p per call. A one-minute call to a fixed UK number costs 1.4p (BT will be 9.25p during the daytime). That 5-second call when you hit a mobile's voicemail costs 1.2p (against 18.5p from BT).

Be warned that you will pay considerably more for long evening calls via First Telecom - unless you remember to dial "1280" (which sends a call via BT again). A 30-minute evening landline call sent via First Telecom will cost 24p against about 6p from BT. But even if you get hit with the odd call like this, the odds are that you will have saved a lot more from the many shorter calls that you also make.

Our family has been using FirstTelecom's "Saver 1" package for about a year and it has been good value even against BT's old rates. There is no monthly fee, and they include 150 minutes of weekend UK landline calls per month for nothing. They also have a couple of other plans where you pay a monthly fee for a larger quota of calls.

We also use call1899.com for calls which we know are going to last a long time - they currently charge a flat 6p per UK landline call, regardless of length. Once you have signed up to them (online only) you simply have to prefix a phone number with "1899" to send the call via 1899.com. They are also very good for international calls (eg 6p connection + 1p per minute to France). They charge per-minute, which makes their mobile rates a bit less attractive than they first seem.

One warning for anyone who has a BT line, but sends all their calls via another company. BT may charge you £21 per year for the "Caller Display" service (which is free if you register for their "Privacy" option) unless you make six paid-for calls each quarter. The prefix "1280" will send a call via BT rather than your alternative carrier - so you can make your six BT calls and keep the free service.

If you want to read up on ideas for reducing fixed-line and mobile costs, see the "Phones & Utilities" article at moneysavingexpert.com

John Geddes