Calls & Lines

Calls

Communications technology can save you far more than just a few pence on each call. However, call charges are important and at Solar our charges are competitive and transparent with no confusing gimmicks or packages that make it difficult to work out what you are actually paying.
Billing your calls with Solar means:

• Calls billed by the second to four decimal places
• No set up fees
• No minimum call charges
• Monthly billing either electronically or by post
• Online billing access with spend analysis tools that allow you to monitor your calls and charges throughout the month
• Call Alerts which will alert you to calls made outside your pre-set parameters – ie. outside certain hours, over a certain duration or cost, to certain destinations etc..

Calls Caps and Unlimited call packages may look attractive but all such offers come with less obvious charges and fees which make the perceived rates or offers considerably less attractive.  Solar’s charges normally work out 20% cheaper than our competition’s and to show this, against the bewildering array of billing methods out there, we ask for a recent itemised bill so we can analyse this and show exactly what you would pay with us.

Lines

In 2004 OFCOM (the telecommunications regulator) deregulated business  line delivery services to allow telecommunications providers other than BT to offer business line rental to their customers on the same bill as their telephone calls. 

Why bill your lines through Solar?

• One monthly bill for all your calls and lines.
• In the event of a fault on your line resolution is much easier and quicker - there is nothing more frustrating than your call provider blaming your line provider and vice versa!
• We bill for line rental one month in advance.
• Transferring your business telephone lines to Solar is a completely free and seamless procedure. There is no disruption to your service as the transfer is performed remotely and there is no requirement to change your telephone numbers.

Telephone Bills – Why cheap rates aren’t everything!

People often try to compare telephone providers by comparing the rates for the different types of call – local, national, mobile, non-geographic (0845,0870, and various premium rates and special services) and international.

However its very difficult to compare providers imply by looking at rates and here’s why:

1. Are calls billed per second or per minute? If a provider bills per minute then a call lasting 61 seconds is billed at 2 minutes as they are always rounded up never down. This typically adds 20% to 40% to the actual quoted rate.
2. Setup fees – some providers’ small print shows a call setup fee. This is worse than a minimum charge as it applies to every call so although the rate may be attractive every cal is then loaded with a setup fee of anywhere between 2p and 10p.
3. Minimum charges – some providers may offer a low rate but there is a minimum charge of 5p. So lots of 1 minute calls at 1.2p actually cost 5p. From a recent analysis the average business call duration was 2.1 minutes.
4. Call caps. Some providers including BT make a big marketing effort on capping calls at a maximum price – 5p or 10p for local and national, 20p or 30p for mobile etc. While this is great because you never have a very expensive call the provider is not giving things away. The call caps are usually balanced in favour of the provider by a mixture of per minute billing,  higher per minute rates, call setup charges and minimum charges. All these mean that while you have no expensive calls you have lots of very short calls with relatively high charges.
5. “Unlimited” call packages. These packages mean you pay a higher line rental which includes unlimited local and national calls. Note this does not include mobile, non-geographic or anything other than 01, 02 or 03 numbers. In most cases unless you are a telemarketing agency making hundreds of calls you will be better off paying for the calls. If you are a telemarketing agency you will probably fall foul of the “fair use” policy anyway.

So there is no such thing as a free lunch. All offers come with less obvious charges and fees which make the very low rate or incredibly good offer less attractive.

Solar Communications does not offer any of the above. Our call rates are competitive and are billed per second to 4 decimal places. There are no setup or minimum charges (except for fixed fee special services like Directory Enquiries). We normally work out 20% cheaper than the competition and to show this against the bewildering array of billing methods we ask for a recent itemised bill and analyse this to show exactly what you would pay with us.