After months of speculation, British Telecommunications Plc announced yesterday that it is to begin charging for directory enquiry services from next April. The call will be charged at a fixed rate of 43.5 pence for two searches – if you want to try three different versions of the name or address you must pay again. The charges coincide with a reduction in other domestic tariffs – long distance calls are coming down by 7.3%, while local calls will be 4.5% cheaper. The tariff reductions correspond to the UKP250m that Telecom will save by charging for directory enquiries, which is cross-subsidised at the moment by domestic calls. The removal of that subsidy is representitve of British Telecom’s fierce drive towards ending its cross-subsidy system altogether and implementing a realistic pricing structure – but critics say the service is paid for already in the fixed line rental charges. Domestic tariffs, for example, are still subsidised by around UKP1,000m by inflated international call rates, the company admits. Telecom’s domestic long distance calls will now be closer to Mercury’s prices. As of April, a three minute cheap rate call – in the evenings and a weekends from London to Birmingham will now cost 16 pence via British Telecom, down from 18 pence. For the same call Mercury charges 13.1 pence. Mercury’s directory enquiry service costs around 55p for three searches. Directory enquiry calls from phone boxes will continue to be free as will those from blind and any disabled people unable to use phone books. Telecom has also introduced two services for frequent business users of directory enquiries, Phone Base and Phone Disc. Phone Base is an on-line dial-up service, connecting terminals or personal computers to Telecom’s phone book data-base. The service will cheaper than using the new directory enquries, ranging between 6p per minute cheap rate and 13p per minute at peak times. The service is currently available to Prestel users and it will also be provided over Telecom’s data network service, PSS. Phone Disc is an electronic version of the phone book on compact disk, aimed at companies needing more than 300 numbers per week. Users need an MS-DOS personal computer with compact disk read only memory drives to use the disk. The computer also needs to be loaded with Microsoft CD-ROM extensions, MSCDEX version 2.1 or higher. The annual subscription costs UKP2,200 a year and includes the disk, software and four quarterly updates. Phone Disc and Base will be available from next March.
