UK mobile customers feel the pain, MO-Callers feel the gain

Last week, the UK government increased the Value Added Tax (VAT) from 17.5% to 20% which is set to affect UK mobile customers’ phone bills but this will vary depending on your network operator. This will affect Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) and monthly customers with UK networks amending their prices differently, with some increasing their prices beyond the 2.5% VAT increase.

If you are on one or more of the UK mobile networks, be prepared for a little shock when you next check your balance or receive your monthly bill:

• O2 PAYG customers will see the price of sending a SMS text message increase from 10p to 12p (20% increase) with the cost of sending an international SMS text message at 20p (100% increase).
• T-Mobile pay monthly customers will see the cost of voice minutes go up from 30p to 30.6p that go beyond their free minutes.
• T-Mobile PAYG customers will see SMS text messages go up from 5p to 6p (20% increase).
• Orange PAYG customers won’t be affected, with no new charges to the cost of calls and SMS text messages with only the VAT increase to paying monthly customers.
• Three will increase their prices, which will affect both PAYG and monthly customers and if you're used to receiving a itemised bill through the post each month, the price will go up from £1 to £1.50 (50% increase).
• Vodafone will be following Orange by only passing on the VAT increase to their customers but will also increase the cost of calls between Vodafone customers from 20p to 20.3p.

At MO-Call, we will be keeping our prices fixed and won’t be increasing our already cheap rates any time soon. It may well be worth checking your next phone bill and thinking about a switch to MO-Call.

Will you be affected by the above price increases? Leave your comments below.