UK Net dial-up charges among highest in Europe

UK Net users have to pay some of the most expensive call charges in Europe, according to figures from telecoms monitoring firm Phillips Tarifica. The cost of a half-hour local daytime call in the UK is £1.18, compared to just 50p in Italy. In Germany the cost is just 86p; in Spain it is 60p. And contrary to a report in today's Daily Mail, the cost of a half-hour local daytime call in France is not 29p, but 73p, a spokesman for Phillips Tarifica confirmed today. However, British Telecon maintains that the figures don't present an accurate representation of the market and that its clutch of user discount schemes can cut the cost of calls by as much as 43 per cent. ®