BT cuts some call package tariffs

The UK telecoms giant said today it is cutting prices on the Option 2 and Option 3 packages. Customers signing up to Option 2 now pay £3.45 per month rather than £3.95 plus monthly line rental. They also get free evening and weekend calls for a year.

Option 3 is cut by £2 to £7.95 per month but daytime call costs will go up from quarter of a penny to 3.25p per minute, a change that will doubtless lead to the usual, possibly merited, hand-wringing about BT shafting the ordinary Joe.

BT will back up the deal with a new Kris Marshall ad, airing from tomorrow, according to Mad.co.uk. His recent ones as a hapless stepfather have been good but this latest smells a bit kipperesque, involving as it does that ancient chestnut of comparing a disappointing haircut with a price cut. Hmm.

BT may also be pushing its luck with the PR on the new tariffs.

"We're giving [customers] what they want. Why pay per call when you don't pay per email?" said BT consumer MD Gavin Patterson in a widely reported statement.

A word to the wise, Gavin. People have been asking this question for a very long time and one company has been in a better position to answer it than any other.

I'd tell you more on this but BT's media site would appear to be playing up. However, while we're on the subject of the dowager Lady Bell, disturbing news from our old stamping ground of beautiful Hexham, set like a grey and gold gem in the rolling country and under the glowering skies of God's most beautiful county, Northumberland.

According to the venerable Hexham Courant , BT is canning many coin-op pay-phones in the area. Londoners only recognise payphone kiosks as centres for the dissemination of call-girl information but, says the Courant, they still have some usefulness in the area because of mobile no-reception black spots. µ