The offer, which runs until December 31, continues BT’s commitment to take advantage of the lower costs of providing calls over the internet in order to offer much cheaper rates. Currently, the company offers calls to Australia with no call charges for up to one hour with BT Communicator with Yahoo! Messenger.
BT is also offering customers the chance to make BT Communicator calls from their laptops at 7,800 BT Openzone Wi-Fi hotspots without paying any access subscription or per-minute charges.
Gavin Patterson, BT group managing director, Consumer, said: “We were the first telecoms company to offer voice over internet two years ago and we intend to keep ahead of the game. There’s been a lot of hype about Skype, but these international calls are half their price. .
“We are not going to sit back while competitors lure our customers with cheap internet calls. We will fight for every customer by offering our own attractive prices for these calls. And with BT Communicator you can make the same call at a BT Openzone hotspot when you are out and about.
“Unlike traditional telephony, where we are heavily regulated, for internet telephony we can compete on an equal basis and offer customers the same advantages of low cost calls over the internet, but from a global, trusted brand.
“But customers need more than just cheap prices and we are confident that we can provide them with top quality calls with excellent customer service.”
From October 3, calls to 30 popular international destinations with BT Communicator, such as the United States, Australia, Spain and France will cost just 0.5p a minute. A 60 minute call to a US landline, which would cost 72p with Skype, would cost only 30p with BT.
With BT Communicator the cost is charged to your usual BT phone bill, whereas you would have to buy pre-paid credit with Skype. And BT uses their telephony experience to prioritise internet calls and ensure they are top quality.
Patterson added: “We believe voice calls over the internet are going to become much more prevalent in the future. There’s been a lot written about this being a threat to BT, but actually we see it as a great opportunity to offer customers a range of exciting new services in the future, like video calls and combining voice with text at the same time.
“This latest offer will be going out on email to millions of BT customers to try to encourage them to download the free BT Communicator with Yahoo! Messenger software and start making high quality cheap and easy calls.”