The UK’s Mercury Communications Ltd has announced a new Basic Rate ISDN service. Called ISDN 132, it is being pitched at existing British Telecommunications Plc customers, because it gives them the option of routing calls through Mercury by dialling a three-figure prefix (the ‘132’ of the service’s name): once the user is registered with Mercury, any calls prefixed with this number are automatically routed via Mercury. Mercury is emphasising cost savings for its service rather than enhanced functionality: it says that the new service can offer savings of up to 34% for long distance national calls, and 31% for international calls. The service is said to be particularly advantageous for short calls, since Mercury does not charge a call set-up fee as does British Telecom. The company quotes the example of a 50Kb file transfer running at 64Kbps which it says would cost 67.2 pence via British Telecom’s ISDN 2 service (including a 54.6 pence set up cost) compared with 8.36 pence via Mercury.
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