Hidden mobile phone charges: The Facts

When you call a friend on a different mobile network, or call their mobile from your landline, their network will charge your operator a fee for carrying the call.

This is called a Mobile Termination Rate (or MTR) and is currently charged at around 4p or more for every minute of the call. The billions of minutes for which this fee is charged adds up to billions of pounds for UK consumers every year.

We think MTRs are excessive and distort competition and we want the industry regulator Ofcom to lower the rate to reflect actual costs. Ofcom is now proposing to do this, but wants to bring in the changes gradually over the next four years. We want to make sure this happens as soon as possible and make sure that Ofcom’s proposal to bring down charges to reflect the real costs becomes a reality.


Number of signatures so far:

Sign the petition!

If you believe MTRs should be around 1p or less per minute sign here: "I am fed up with paying inflated mobile call charges. I want Ofcom to terminate the unfair mobile rate."




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Our Supporters

Latest news from the campaign

Three slams attempts by incumbent operators to overturn Ofcom's decision on MTRs

Terminate the Rate supporter Three has described the efforts by Vodafone, Everything Everywhere and O2 to overturn Ofcom’s decision as “an attack on the wallet of everyone who calls a mobile” in an article in today’s Daily Telegraph. Three has written to the Competition Appeal Tribunal highlighting the flaws in their claims and reinforcing the [...]

BT delivers on Terminate the Rate promise

In response to Ofcom's final decision to lower MTRs over the next three years, BT made significant cuts to the cost of landline to mobile phone calls from 28 May 2011. In the evening, the cost of calling a mobile on all major networks from a BT landline fell from 7p per minute to [...]

Ofcom faces appeals on MTR decision

Just as we predicted, the established mobile operators are continuing to fight Ofcom's move to reduce the cost of calling mobiles. Everything Everywhere, T-Mobile and Orange's joint venture, along with Vodafone have filed appeals to the Competition Appeals Tribunal in a bid to undo Ofcom's move to lower charges. They argue that Ofcom has got [...]

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Our support is fantastic!
Just look at the figures.

  •  More than 65 partners support Terminate The Rate.
  •  More than 260 MPs have signed the Early Day Motion.
  •  More than 40 Local Councils, representing almost 7 million people have joined the campaign.
  •  4 Unions with 9 million members between them support our goal of having MTRs lowered.
  •  7 major charities, which look after the interestes of more than 10 million people between them.
  •  4 Trade and Business bodies whose members have have turnovers measured in billions.
  •  4 telecommunications companies, who have almost 20 million customers.

 

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