UK Landline-to-mobile fees to be cut sooner

Phone users may benefit from cheaper landline calls to mobiles after the Competition Commission told Ofcom, the UK telecoms regulator, to enforce steeper cuts sooner in how much companies can charge to connect phone calls to their networks.

The cuts could reduce mobile companies’ revenue by as much as £800 million a year in the UK, but would result in cheaper calls only if the savings to fixed-line operators such as BT are passed to the consumer. The decision is a blow to the large mobile operators such as Everything Everywhere and Vodafone who had appealed the Ofcom decision to cut so-called mobile termination rates under a four-year plan that began in April 2011.