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BT, 3, moneysupermarket.com, the Federation of Small Businesses, Carers UK, the GMB, (Britain’s General Trade Union) and the National Union of Students who are working together to help influence the decision Ofcom makes on reducing the charge of Mobile Termination Rates (MTRs).

MTRs are charged when you call somebody on a different mobile network, or call a mobile from your landline. Their network will charge yours a fee for receiving (or ‘carrying’) the call. This is a Mobile Termination Rate. The current charge is around 4.7p or more for every minute you’re connected – charges we think are excessive and distort competition. So we want the industry regulator, Ofcom, to lower the rate to reflect the actual costs.

We’re doing this because we want the future to be fairer. Inflated MTRs mean everybody pays too much for their phone bills and prevents innovative offers such as flat-rate unlimited calling plans. We think that all consumers deserve better value from the mobile phone market. And it won’t just be the individual consumer that benefit, we want public bodies like the NHS and local councils to make calls to mobiles, (which can be typically 10 times higher than calls to fixed lines), as well as landlines, without running up huge additional costs.

There is a petition that will be presented to Ofcom and other key organisations involved in the decision on resetting the level of MTRs from April 2011 onwards. Over the next three months we’ll be making UK consumers aware of this issue and aim to get as many people as possible to sign our petition. You can sign the petition here and add your voice to those already saying: “I don’t want to pay unfair Mobile Termination Rates.”