26 January 2009
A £1 per month increase in line rental has been introduced by BT, bringing the cost for a standard landline customer to £12.50, from £11.50 previously.
All of BT's customers will be affected, although the telecoms provider said they will be able to mitigate the increase by switching to paperless billing.
BT claims 13.5 million of its 14.5 million customers still receive paper bills each month and could benefit from cheaper line rental of £11.25 by opting not to.
There will also be a 15% increase in the cost of daytime calls for home phone customers who are not on one of BT's call packages.
The move comes after the company scrapped charges for calling 0845 and 0870 numbers for some customers by including them in their call bundles.
A spokesman for BT defended the line rental increase. He said: "If you look at other sectors such as gas, food and electricity, the price of telephone calls have come down a lot over the last five years."
To find a better deal on your home phone now, compare packages online.