Ofcom To Make Major Changes To Telephony Pricing.

The cost of calling a business number will be made clearer Ofcom has announced. These major changes will come in to effect from June 2015 with further announcements being made in the spring. These measures will include clearer transparency on pricing by phone companies and bills will show a detailed breakdown of how the cost of the call has been established and by whom. For example people who call a 0845 number at the minute can be charged as much as 11pence per minute from a BT landline and as much as 41 pence per minute from a mobile. Phone companies and operators will under the new rules be made to detail exactly how much calls to these numbers cost to use when people sign up to using their services.   Non geo graphic numbers are used by millions of organisations and businesses in the UK and are used for many different services including customer service numbers, competitions and voting on TV programmes. Under the new proposals the use of 09 premium rate numbers will be capped ensuring greater protection to the consumer from unscrupulous service providers.   The changes announced today will only apply to residential consumers calling from a landline however it is expected that service providers will also apply these new rules to business customers. Making the changes Ofcom have announced will see the biggest change to UK telephone customers in over a decade and have to be seen as a major way forward in clearing up confusion in telephony pricing.