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The Minimum Call Charge Jim Buckley has been campaigning agains the minimum call charge for some time. He has eventually managed to get a response from the DTI to his questions: I am sorry to hear that [the correspondent] finds BT's minimum charge expensive. Telecommunications operators like BT do not have specific provisions in their licences covering whether or not they should charge a minimum fee. BT connect a customer to the other end whether the call lasts 1 second or 10 minutes. The minimum charge covers the cost to the company of "set-up" (the initial connection), the first part of the call, and the cost to the company of closing down a call. The minimum call charge ensures that the company recovers the cost of setting up a call irrespective of whether the call is of a long or short duration. A customer who makes a short duration call is in fact making use of the network, and BT see it as fairer to charge customers for this use rather than waive the minimum call charge altogether. If BT were to remove the minimum fee altogether, the per second charges for calls would have to be increased to ensure that BT covered the cost of setting up and closing down each call. Without a minimum charge, therefore, short duration calls would be underpriced, whilst longer calls would be overpriced. A price cap controls BT's overall prices such that the prices of BT's services are not permitted to rise at a rate higher than 4.5% below the current rate of inflation for the first 80% of customers by bill size. The Government is however content to leave to the company's discretion the details of how it meets its obligations under the price cap in terms of the balance between the minimum charge and subsequent per second pricing. I hope this helps to explain why BT levy the minimum charge. A few points to think about, ignoring the irrelevant third and fourth paragraphs: Why is a Government department answering for a private company? Where are the numbers to quantify 'cost', 'charge', 'fee' and 'price'? With the argument given, surely a call which is made without being answered is 'making use of the network' and should be charged for? The reason for the lack of hard facts is because the numbers are negligible as the Matson interview suggests. Whatever the 'cost' of opening and closing a call is is it is not 5p. We have rather a lot more to say about the secrecy which prevents any discussion of what the real costs are. Text by Jim Buckley