Phone Operators Access Charges – from 1st July 2015

From July 1st 2015, calls to 084, 087, 09 and 118 numbers will be made up of an Access Charge (the charge made by the phone company you make your phone calls with) and a Service Charge (this is the charge collected by your phone company and is passed to the service provider of the NGN you’re calling – for example, Planet Numbers).

This is to make it easier for consumers to understand the cost of calling non-geographic numbers.

Access Charges are always charged by the minute, and will normally be charged for a minimum of one minute, but should now not have any additional call setup cost.

This new charging rule applies only to residential customers. Business customers may continue to use the old charging scheme or the new Service Charges.

In the past, many operators have added a surcharge to calls to non-geographic numbers, which could cost significantly more, so these new Access Charges will reduce the variation in call costs between operators.

Business tariffs may continue to use the old charge bands instead of Access and Service Charges.