In our hobby of Amateur Radio and especially with my work in QSL management and areas of DXpeditioning I often find myself needing to make International telephone calls, and for convenience I use my mobile phone network “Orange” which has in the past 16 years that I have had a contract with this communications company their International phone charges were very reasonable, up until just recently! I was staggered to see a charge on my bill for £7 for 11 minutes of a call to Belgium. I immediately contacted the billing department to inform them of a mistake in the billing of this call, only to be told that the call charge was correct.
The chart on the left shows the new per minute International call charges for each zone.
On investigation it appears that the reason for this massive hike in International call charges is down to the regulators across Europe forcing down the cost of International Roaming charges, in an attempt to recoup revenue, Orange have stuck up two fingers to me and other loyal customers and raised Internatiional call charges from the UK to a these high charges.
Orange have refunded me the cost of my International charges for last month and apologised for not informing me of this price rise. However these International call charges are not going to change!
So beware! Check your network, you may be in for a shock like I was!
