Member Article

North West companies could lose thousands over charges

WHYPAY?, a pioneering conference call service from Manchester based Nexbridge Communications Ltd., has reported demand for its services has doubled this year, amid new charges introduced by Ofcom for service numbers.

The call charges introduced in July 2015 by Ofcom for service numbers (numbers starting 084, 087, 09 or 118) has led many companies to receive an unexpected bill for conference calling services. WHYPAY? uses an 03 number, so is able to provide a free service that is not affected by the charges.

And thanks to keeping one step ahead of regulations, WHYPAY?‘s free conferencing service has saved UK businesses more than £2m during the last three months, a figure that is expected to keep growing as more businesses wise up to Ofcom’s regulatory changes.

Research into conference call service providers using service numbers shows that the average charge for a 40 minute call will now cost a whopping £11.31 from a mobile or £6.16 from a landline.

However, many of Manchester’s 90,000 businesses are unaware of the changes and, as a result, are being charged far more than they should for conference calls.

Kieron James, company chairman of Nexbridge and board member for the Federation of Communications Services (FCS) which has campaigned for more transparency on service charges, said: “There is very little awareness around the recent changes to call charges introduced by Ofcom in July and many conference calls are now costing businesses up to 95 per cent more.”

He continues: “Since Ofcom made its announcement, some mobile providers have significantly increased their access rates – 02 has raised its access charge from 25p per minute to 45p per minute with other mobile phone operators charging a similar rate.”

On top of this access charge, the average service charge for calling the 08 numbers provided by six other UK conferencing services is an additional 6.64p per minute.

Kieron continues: “We do not charge to use the WHYPAY? service or any of its extra features; nor do we insist you provide an email address or any other details to obtain a conference room.

“This is because we have the high capacity network infrastructure already set up and the service is supported by the fraction of a penny per minute which we earn from BT wholesale payments from calls made to 03 numbers.

“In addition, all of our calls are recordable meaning you can listen and transcribe any important information afterwards.”

Rapidly growing communications provider, Nexbridge Communications, established WHYPAY? in March 2014 and demand for services has doubled since its creation.

To find out more about WHYPAY? visit http://whypay.net/

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by WHYPAY? .