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Version 147 in late July 2010 updates BT,  Andrews & Arnold (business and residential), Axis Telecom (business and residential), Coms.Com (business and residential), eZe-Talk (residential), Hive Telecom (residential), ICUK (business and residential), Jajah (residential), O2 (residential), Post Office (residential) and SuperLine (business and residential). Hive Telecom is the new name for Euphony Telecommunications Ltd, which bought the assets of Euphony Holdings Ltd and Euphony Communications Ltd that were placed in administration on 14th December 2009. Orange UK and T-Mobile UK are being integrated as Everything Everywhere Ltd, although the separate brand names remain unchanged.

Site news - made a lot of improvements to the numbering and locality databases, correcting various errors.  Now distinguishing  Newcastle-under-Lyme and Newcastle-upon-Tyne from Newcastle in Northern Ireland, Hull is now Kingston Upon Hull. The area or national code tables have been improved,  so while Newcastle-upon-Tyne previously had a single code 0191, it is now 01912, 01914 since the extra digit is needed to distinguish it from Sunderland and Durham.  Also added various missing area codes allocated in recent years, mostly for national dialling. Many more locality names now reflect geographical locations, rather than exchange names which are sometimes street names.

Ofcom is introducing two new free numbers, 116 006 which will be used as a helpline for victims of crime and 116 117 for a non-emergency medical on-call service.

BT increased various business calls costs from 23rd July 2010.  For standard business (not a package), local and national calls are now charged the same at 2/4/8p/min with a 9p set-up cost, which represents an increase for local calls and a reduction for national calls. Inland call prices for BT Business Plans have risen slightly. From 1st October 2010, BT is increasing residential rental and call costs.  Line rental is increasing 50p/month, call set-up is up 1p to 10.9p/call and inland calls by 0.5p to 6.4p/min, so a three minute inland call will now cost 30p. 10 years ago a local call would have cost 12p.

Version 146 in late June 2010 updates BT, 0844 Calls (residential), 24Talk (residential), AOL Talk (residential), Axis Telecom (business and residential), Call Happy (residential), Phone Cheap (residential), Resource Utilities (business and residential), Story Telecom (residential), Skype (PC only residential), Telediscount (residential), TeleSavers (residential), Telestunt (residential), TopUpNow (residential)  and Virgin Media (residential).

BT has added another WiFi mobile band FW11, and directory enquiry band DQ117 charged at about 50p/call.

Ofcom has announced that BT, TalkTalk and Virgin Media have all agreed to reduce their residential early termination charges for cancelled a one year or longer contract early.  For a standard landline, BT currently charges a reduced £7.50/month for the remainder of a cancelled contract which is further reducing to £2/month in October (Evening & Weekend to £2.50, Anytime to £5).  TalkTalk currently charges full monthly cost, but from June is now charging £3/month for phone line only, and £8/month for Essential Broadband with phone line.  Virgin Media also currently charges full monthly cost, but from August it will be £4/month for a phone line and £9/month for broadband L, but less for both phone line and broadband. 

Version 145 in late May 2010 adds Auracall (business and residential) and O2 (residential), and updates Gradwell (business), Opal (business), Phone Co-Op (business and residential), Post Office (residential), Sky Talk (residential), TalkTalk (residential), Telecom Plus (residential) and Tiscali (residential). CF1 Telecom (Consumer First) and Care Telecom have disappeared and been removed.

The presentation of the UK Telecom Tariff Cost Comparison web site has substantially changed this month, to improve clarity and offer improved comparison between the hundreds of telephone tariffs listed. 

Extended CodeLook now lists all numbers found, instead of one at time using next and previous, provided at least two or three digits are entered.  The new list allows clicking for full details of each number, also the charging band and operator.  The number and charge band pages show the cost of calling that number both as detailed call cost bands and sample costed calls of  various lengths on different days and times.  Calls may be costed by any residential or business package (around 500 at present) selected as the Charge Costing Package.  Because CodeLook now returns multiple numbers, the previous daily limit of 100 free look-ups has been reduced to 20, after which a membership login is needed.  We are however offering free membership for non-commercial use by the various authorities that use CodeLook to trace telecom operators.

The operators page shows the company address and telephone number and web link (if available) with details of Ofcom 'licenses' and numbers of number codes allocated.  When looking-up localities, all the exchange codes in a locality may now be listed.  These various pages that previously listed telecom operators and links have been consolidated into a single common new format, with extended information including many more external web links, with new links being added each month,

Business and residential tariff packages may now be listed alphabetically, or compared by different categorisation such as bundled free calls and broadband.  For any package, the complete list of call costs may be viewed.  Line rental costs may be compared. Call costs may be compared for 350 different charge bands  (instead of six before), with sample call costs shown for various call lengths between 30 seconds and 1½ hours. Various other reports are planned for future weeks. 

Version 144 in late April 2010 adds Primus (business) and Tesco Broadband (residential) and updates BT, First Number (residential), FreeCall (residential), Gradwell (business), TalkTalk (residential), Tiscali (residential), and Virgin Media (residential).  Tesco Internet Phone VoIP service has ceasing and been removed.

BT has increased business calling and network feature prices, which are now all listed in the new Line Rentals table.  The special offer of Business One Plan Inclusive Call Packages and Unlimited Call Packages has been extended for another six months.  These is a new premium band P44 at £1/min, and two new directory enquiry bands, one for 118118 which now costs £1.68 for the first minute, BT 188500 is almost the same now for the first minute.

Version 143 in late March 2010 adds Mootel (residential) and updates BT, Andrews & Arnold (business and residential), Direct Save Telecom (residential and business),  First:Telecom (residential), Gradwell (business), Kingston Communications, Primus Saver (residential), Scottish & Southern Energy (residential), Smallworld Cable (residential), TalkTalk (residential) and Virgin Media (residential).  Tesco Internet Phone VoIP service is ceasing on 27th April 2010.

From 1st April 2010, BT is making residential price changes, increasing the call-set-up fee to 9.9p, daytime inland calls to 5.9p/min, and moving the day time charging period one hour later to 7am to 7pm (which mainly effects mobile and international calls).  Note business day time was already 7am to 7pm.  There is a new mobile band FM14, and the cost of calling BT directory enquiries on 118500 band DQ106 has increased to 49p set-up and £1.16/min.

Version 142 in late February 2010 adds 24Talk (residential), Daisy Communications (business), eZe-Talk (residential), IDNet (business and residential), OneBill Telecom (business) and TopUpDial (residential) and updates BT, Continental Telecom (business), My Mondo (residential), Phone Co-Op (business and residential), PlusNet (residential),  Saga (residential) and Simply-Fone (residential).

From 5th February 2010, BT has increased the residential call set-up fee slightly from 9.25p to 9.30p per call, presumably for easier VAT rounding. From 1st April 2010, BT making residential price changes, increasing the call-set-up fee to 9.9p, daytime inland calls to 5.9p/min, and moving the daytime charging period one hour later to 7am to 7pm (which mainly effects mobile and international calls).  Also from 1st April 2010, Virgin Media is increasing some residential prices, line rental is up 99p to £11.99/month, call setup is up 1p to 11p per call, and inland and mobile charges are increasing 1p/min. These April changes are not yet reflected in the tariff comparison.

For paid members, the spreadsheet includes two new sheets, Line Rentals and Tariffs, which replace the current Packages sheets with greater detail, some of which was previously available in Notes.  Line Rentals has about 36 columns including rental and connection charges for analogue and ISDN lines and most common network and feature options such as CLI.  Tariffs has about 49 columns many of which are Yes/No detailing features of each package including type of billing offered, broadband offerings, and contract and spend limits. Please note the content of these new sheets will take a few months to verify for all the various operators. The new content is not yet available on the web pages, but will appear (in non tabular form) in a major site redesign due shortly.  Also, the call price sheets have new rows for capped calls, changes in some time band names and some changed tariff and operator names, to provide consistency between various sheets. Most of these changes were done for a new tariff SQL database that will be announced shortly. 

Version 141 in late January 2010 adds 1301 (residential), and updates BT, 05pence (residential), 118185.co.uk (residential), 1899.com (residential), Abroadcall(residential), AbroadTel (residential), ACN (residential), Adept Telecom (business), Call 18866 (residential), Direct Save Telecom (residential and business), ICUK (business and residential), Kingston Communications, Post Office (residential), Scottish & Southern Energy (residential), Sky Talk (residential), TalkTalk (residential), Tesco (residential), Yellow Telecoms (business) and Vonage (residential). 

Ofcom is introducing a new short number 111 for non-emergency health services, which will be free to the caller. 

British Telecom is introducing new directory bands DQ113 and DQ114, and Wifi FW10. Band DQ112 for 118118 costs 85p for the first minute, then  35p/min, each about 5p more than the old DQ109 band.

Version 140 in late December 2009 updates BT, Cheapest Chat (residential), Euphony (residential),  Pipex HomeCall (residential), Phone Co-Op (residential), PlusNet Home Phone (residential), Post Office (residential), Resource Utilities (business), Simply-Fone (residential), Skype (PC only residential), TalkTalk (residential), Telecom Plus (residential), Tiscali (residential), Virgin Media (residential) and Yourcalls.net (residential). Maxtalk appears to have disappeared and has been removed.

Value Added Tax reverts from 15% to it's original rate of 17.5% from 1st January 2010, so all residential prices including VAT have been increased appropriately.  Unlike the reduction 12 months ago, it's not expected that many companies will ignore the VAT change and effectively cut prices.  Some companies had pricing that, once updated, were nicely rounded price points (like 10p call set-up for Virgin Media), while other companies will be rounding prices up, or maybe down (Virgin Media has absorbed the VAT increase for rentals), over the coming weeks. 

Version 139 in late November 2009 updates BT (business), Call 18866 (residential), 118185.co.uk (residential), 1899.com (residential), CF1 Telecom (business), Post Office (residential), and Virgin Media (residential). 

BT business has increased many business call costs from 1st December 2009, a month after increasing line rental. For BT Standard, call set-up is up to 8p, local peak up to 6.5p/min, and peak mobile up to 14p/min. For BT Business Plan, all inland, mobile and international call costs are up about 20% for spending levels of £5,000/month and less.  Currently, call prices for Business One Plan (and variants) appear unchanged, despite previously being similar to Business Plan.

There are major numbering database changes, with almost double to number of records and vastly improved locality information. The main allcodes table now includes numbers that are currently free, reserved or protected, as well as allocated, indicated by a new Status column. The localities table now includes the full postal postal code separately to the previous partial code, which is for the 'centre' of the locality, there are also grid eastings and northings (in metres) and latitude and longitude of the locality (except for some islands). Numerous area code names have been updated to mostly match those now used by Ofcom rather than the original BT names, and this change removes all duplicate names for four digit areas. Note some Ofcom area names have been ignored or changed, due to spelling errors or because the name referred to an exchange in a different area. The locality names have been improved, with all postal code changes in the last 10 years reflected, many moved to the correct postal towns and strange names corrected. Note some county names are yet to be updated. Some of these changes are in preparation for a new SQL database that will be announced early next year and which will include tariff information. 

Version 138 in late October 2009 add Wizards (business and residential), and updates BT Business, AOL Talk (residential), Orange (residential), PlusNet Home Phone (residential), Scottish & Southern Energy (residential), Simply-Fone (residential) and TalkTalk (residential),  Swiftcall has been removed due to KDDI Europe discontinuing prepaid services from 30th November 2009.

BT has increased business line rental from 1st November 2009, an analogue line is up 2.5% to £15.24/month, ISDN-2e £34.47 and ISDN-30e to £16.90 per channel. BT Business One Plan Inclusive now includes free inland calls (500 minutes/months) although this seems to be a restricted period offer to next April, also a new Unlimited Call Plan for between £12.50 and £22.50/month depending on plan type and spend level that includes unlimited inland and international calls to about 200 countries (max one hour).

Ofcom is introducing three new 116 helpline numbers, 11600 for a missing children helpline, 116111 for ChildLine and 116123 for the Samaritans.

Version 137 in late September 2009 updates BT, Andrews & Arnold (business and residential), Axis Telecom (business and residential), Demon (business), Direct Save Telecom (residential and business), Euphony (residential), Kingston Communications, Saga (residential), Sky Talk (residential), Virgin Media (residential) and Vonage (residential).  Demon Voice over Broadband has been removed since the service is ceasing.  AOL, Scottish & Southern Energy and TalkTalk are increasing call cost from November.

BT residential has increased the call set-up cost from 8p to 9.05p, and daytime inland calls from 4.5p to 5.25p/min, so a 30 second daytime call now costs 14.3p. This is the second set-up increase this year, last September it was only 6p.

BT business has doubled the surcharge for payment processing other than direct debit to £3/month and increased the paper free billing to £3/month credit.

Following a recent rule relaxation by Ofcom, BT is now offering combined Calls and Broadband plans. Get Connected costs £16.65/month combining Unlimited Evening and Weekend Plan and BT Total Broadband Option 1 (up to 20 meg), Home and Away costs £24.46/month combining Unlimited Evening and Weekend Plan and BT Total Broadband Option 3 (up to 20 meg and BT Mobile Broadband), Unlimited costs £29.41/month combining Unlimited Anytime Plan and BT Total Broadband Option 3 (up to 20 meg). All prices exclude BT line rental, require an 18 month contract, include a BT Home Hub, broadband dongle extra.

Version 136 in late August 2009 updates BT Business, 0844 Calls (residential), ICUK (business and residential), Jersey Telecom (residential), Kingston Communications, Phone Cheap (residential), Phone Co-Op (residential), Post Office (residential), Sky Talk (residential), TeleSavers (residential) and TopUpNow (residential).  Carphone Warehouse TalkTalk is now just TalkTalk. 

There are a lot of changes on the State of the Industry page this month, including Redstone, Symphony, AT Communications and Eurotel being taken over by Daisy Group.  The Telecom Links page has been cleaned of many old and changed links.

BT has increased BT Commitment business inland and mobile call charges by about 10%, and increased the minimum call charge for Option 1 to 4p.  Otherwise very quiet.