INDEPENDENT TELECOMS advisory service MinuteBuyer claims that Eircom's introduction of call set-up charges at the beginning of the month will increase the cost of an average business phone call by 50 per cent.
MinuteBuyer's research indicates that the average business call - whether to a local, national, mobile or international number - is of 2.19 minutes' duration. Before Eircom's introduction of a 4.92 cent set-up charge on all calls a local call of this length cost an Eircom customer 9.35 cent.
After September 1st, when the new charges come into effect, the same call will cost 14.27 cent.
""Eircom is, in effect, introducing a penal surcharge on businesses throughout the country," said Shaun Hayden, director of MinuteBuyer. "This is a significant negative development in the Irish telecoms market and is certainly not in line with prevailing industry trends, as was claimed by Eircom in the their recent statement."
When it introduced the charges Eircom said the average increase would be 3.8 per cent which it said was less than the rate of inflation.
Last night the former State telco issued a statement saying that the impact of the change in call categories "will vary". It cited the example of a 10-minute call to a mobile phone and a call of similar duration to Spain, which it says will increase by 2.7 per cent and 1.5 per cent respectively.
"Eircom is one of a number of telephone operators who have moved to a call set-up billing format and Eircom is by no means the most expensive," the statement read.
Eircom also says the new charges do not apply to approximately 500,000 customers who are on its Talktime packages, which include line rental and selected categories of calls.
Mr Hayden pointed out that over a million Eircom customers are not on a package. He also said bundled packages "are highly inefficient unless you use exactly the amount of minutes in it".
MinuteBuyer advises businesses such as Deloitte, Musgrave Group, Toyota, United Drug and Anglo Irish Bank on how to control their telecoms costs. He says business users should look for contracts that charge per minute or per second and which do not have set-up charges or minimum call costs.
"I strongly urge businesses to look at the marketplace offerings and see what the differences are," said Mr Hayden. "At the very least, you should know the price of your loyalty to Eircom and how much you are losing to the bottom line by staying with them."
