Students forced to pay big for small talk

by Tom Lowe

STUDENTS in Mildmay halls of residence are being cut off from friends and family by the extortionate costs of receiving phone calls.

Instead of having ordinary landline phone numbers, students can only be reached on so-called “national call rate” 0870 numbers, which can cost up to 25 times more to call than standard geographic numbers.

Resident Antonis Karipidis said: “It’s disgraceful. It costs me a fortune to phone Greece – and for my parents to phone me. I can’t speak to them as much as I’d like because of it.”

Alliance House Student Residence on Newington Green supplies a telephone handset in each of its 213 rooms, but the company that provides phone services for residents, Keycom, uses 0870 numbers for incoming calls in order to apply national call rates,

There is no alternative to the set-up for those wishing to have a phone line, since terms in the 7,000-word tenancy agreement from residence managers Shaftesbury Student Housing forbids the use or installation of any other telephone equipment.

Phone credit must also be purchased from Keycom for outgoing calls, leaving the 200 plus students – many of whom are from outside the UK and are unfamiliar with 0870 numbers – in a no-win situation.

Companies like Keycom are currently under no obligation to make their billing rates clear, which makes it even more difficult for callers to know what tariffs they are paying.

Keytalk.net, the website of Keycom’s student phone service, tells customers: “Calls to your Keycom phone are free for you and callers pay standard national rates.”

According to moneysavingexpert.com, a normal 20 minute evening call with Toucan Telecom costs 3p – but the same call is 78p to an 0870 number.

New consumer protection measures announced by Ofcom, the communications regulator, will mean service providers can no longer charge more for 0870 calls than ordinary calls, unless they make a free-to-caller price announcement at the start of the call.

There will also be an end to revenue sharing, preventing companies from profiting by charging on 0870 number ranges.

But some fear that companies will simply side-step to 0871, which will continue to offer a charging option, but this number range will be subject to strict guidelines.

Ofcom spokesman Ed Nyes said: “0871 is slightly more expensive. We want to re-categorise it as a ‘premium rate’ number.

“The Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services (ICSTIS) code of practice lays out very specific requirements for organisations using 0871, including clear advertisements, which must be very specific about the cost of calls.”

0871 charges will also be offset by the introduction of a new non-geographical 03 number range.
Mr Nyes said: “The key thing is that 03 numbers will cost the same as an ordinary phone call.

“It’s not for Ofcom to decide [whether organisations use 03 numbers], but we are giving them a choice.”

These Ofcom measures will come into force at the end of 2007 at the earliest.

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