Vodafone rebuffs price hike criticism

The world’s biggest mobile operator in terms of revenue, Vodafone, has countered claims that it is increasing call prices for already hard up Brits.

On Tuesday, a number of UK newspapers reported on a tariff change that Vodafone said it warned its users about in July.

The cost of a call outside of a customer’s bundle of minutes will go up from £0.12 per minute to £0.15 per minute from September 1, while non-geographic numbers will also become 25 per cent more expensive to call.

Similar moves were recently made by UK rivals T-Mobile and O2, which many believe are in response to the European Commission’s roaming price cuts and proposed reductions to mobile termination fees.

However a Vodafone spokeswoman told telecoms.com that when the company revised many of its tariffs in May, it increased the number of minutes in its bundles so users, “Get more for their money,” as well as adding web access as standard. The Voda spokeswoman said that not many users go over their allocated bucket of minutes, so not may should be affected.