Our position on dirty origin surcharges should be pretty well known to readers of this blog, or attendees at events by now. We think they’re toxic and we’ve said very publicly all along that we will not profit from them. We remain the only UK carrier not to levy them on our customers, not to blend them and to create a new supra-normal profit stream at the expense of our customers. We will continue to fight them until they’re removed (Pete has already foreshadowed 100 pages of evidence and argument for the regulator in 2027), but the question is: how much harm will they have done?
Many of you might not care about surcharges if you’re not directly paying them, but you need to, because they are likely killing your business without you even knowing it.
If your carrier applies a surcharge deck (i.e. if your carrier is not Simwood), they are complicit. Sure, there were some cheerleaders who gave Ofcom the genius idea, but the others jumped on it shockingly quick and are profiting handsomely. And that is all at the expense of your business.
How so?
We speak to global operators all the time and as the only gateway into the UK that takes a sensible approach to surcharges, those conversations are positive. They get even more positive when we explain how their existing bilateral partner might be shafting them by charging surcharges where none exist, as Pete explained recently. We’ve learned some things from those conversations, which I’d like to share here because they directly affect you.
The first is that many have reported that their traffic to the UK fell by 85% literally overnight when surcharges were introduced. We went from being a top 10 destination to not even in the running. Faced with call charges rising several orders of magnitude, consumers did what consumers do and found an alternative.
That alternative is generally WhatsApp where they can not only avoid the egregious increases in charges but can eliminate call costs altogether. “So what?” I hear you cry. Well those calls to the UK were going somewhere. In fact, they were undoubtedly going in part to your platform for your customers. They may not have made you money on a per call basis but whether that volume is 10% or even more of your customers’ calls, your solution just fell in value to them by a similar amount. Is your solution more valuable to them if the phone rings continuously or rarely rings at all? At what point is it of no value at all?
I put it to you that surcharges have directly resulted in your customers being closer to seeing no value, and already seeing less value, and continue to reap harm. How long before WhatsApp for Business expands and adds functionality to compete with your UCaaS solution, charging a premium, while attracting your customers’ calls, because your carrier is engaged in the industry’s dirty money-grab on calls that would otherwise land on your platform?
But wait, it doesn’t stop there. Like the late-night shopping deal that keeps getting better, some of our overseas customers are less affected by surcharges. How many have just upped their own termination rate in response? We believe some have. So it’s a race to the top in price, causing a race to the bottom in volume. Yes, you heard that right. The very things that were allegedly necessary to prevent UK consumers from seeing inflated call costs are directly achieving inflated call costs. UK consumers are just as adept as their international counterparts so what do you think they are doing about it? Yep, WhatsApp can make free phone calls in both directions, and your solution just got even less valuable to your customers with every overseas call they now don’t make on it.
Sorry to be blunt but I couldn’t countenance paying money to someone who was actively doing me or my business harm so I have to ask: how can you? We’ll happily help, probably with a better feature set on better terms, while not passing on surcharges to you and doing our damnedest to patch the harm done to UK call volumes overseas. Your vote of support would be greatly appreciated.
