The Localphone Blog

On the 1st May 2008 the PTA in Pakistan increased the tax on incoming calls and mandated that all the licensed LDI’s in Pakistan charge calls at the wholesale rate of $0.10 per minute instead of the previous $0.025 rate. When we first announced this we had many complaints from customers that other providers were not putting up prices to the levels that the above increase dictated so we listened and we did indeed find cheaper routes and were able to reduce our rate accordingly. We have however found it increasingly hard to purchase routes that not only offer a good price but also quality and I am sad to say that one by one these routes have just disappeared and today the last of the routes at the lower prices terminated service without notice.

Quality is our number one priority and we just cannot buy the routes needed at the quality levels you expect so we are now forced once again to increase our prices. I am truly sorry that we are in this position but all I can say is that we will work hard to offer a great service at market leading rates. With this in mind we will no longer attempt to purchase Pakistan routes from anyone other than those provided by licensed LDI’s in Pakistan. This will not only ensure that the quality is great but the person you are calling will see your caller ID.

From 23:00 UTC Saturday 21st June our rate to Pakistan for both mobiles and Landlines will be 5.6p (inc VAT) / 10.5¢.

We will continue to negotiate hard with the LDI’s in Pakistan to get the rate down and I assure you we will pass any decreases down to you immediately.

Thank you for your loyalty.

Paul Cusack
CEO
Localphone

You may remember that we were recently forced to increase our rate to Pakistan. We are pleased to announce that after an exhaustive search we have managed to secure a new deal from one of our suppliers for cheaper calls to Pakistan. This will allow us to sell at the following rates…

While we will continue to seek out even lower rates, I hope you will appreciate that the situation in the Pakistani telephony market is volatile and the rate may fluctuate over the coming months. We will do our best to keep it at this new level, or below.

I would like to thank you all for your continued support.

Paul Cusack, CEO Localphone Ltd

We understand that many of our customers must feel angry at the rates to Pakistan increasing. We do not want to charge more but we have no choice. We all work very hard at Localphone to provide a high quality service at good prices. Every provider will have to pay this new tax to terminate to the PSTN in Pakistan. This tax by the Pakistani Government has increased from 1.25p to 5p (2.5¢ / 10¢) per minute!! This is the vast majority of the cost of the call we are charging. We are making less money now than before, and very much understand and share your anger, but please direct it at those responsible as we are powerless to change anything.

Read more about the tax increase.

I hope you understand that this affects every provider of calls to Pakistan and not just Localphone, and that moving to another company will not stop this charge. We will bring prices down as we get better rates, but anyone who offers a lower price than this will certainly only be doing so for a very short period of time as a trick to get customers. Please be patient and we will soon offer the best price in the market again, as we will demonstrate when the effect of the tax becomes clear over the coming days. There will be companies out there that have not yet realised their wholesale price has increased and may for a few days be charging the old prices, but no company will ever be able to maintain their old rate as the increase by the Pakistan government is so massive that to do so would mean financial disaster.

Please join us in signing an on-line petition to protest this unreasonable tax hike.

Paul Cusack, CEO Localphone Ltd.

Update: We have managed to source a new supplier and have reduced our rate to Pakistan

We’re sorry to announce to those of you who call Pakistan that at 9pm tonight UK time (20:00 UTC) our rate to Pakistan will rise to £0.06 / $0.12 / €0.078 per minute.

The government of Pakistan has increased taxes for incoming international phone calls massively by increasing the ASR (Approved Settlement Rate) from USD $0.025 per minute to $0.10. This affects all carriers who terminate calls to Pakistan and Localphone will not benefit from this increase.

Rest assured that we are constantly working with our suppliers to get Localphone customers the best possible rates and we hope to be able to offer price reductions in the near future.

You can read more about the Pakistan tax changes that have forced this price increase on the official PTA announcement here (63k PDF).

We still offer great quality, cheap international calls using a local access number.

Update: Our CEO discusses the rate increase
Update: We have managed to source a new supplier and have reduced our rate to Pakistan

We’ve just slashed our rates to call Bangladesh to 2p per minute. For our USA customers the rate is now 4¢ per min and for Europe the price is 2.6c per min. That rate applies to all Bangladesh phone numbers, mobile and landlines. So get calling!

As you may be aware we held a promotion for half price calls to India during the month of January. From the 1st of February we did increase our prices slightly, but not up to the original tariff that was offered at the end of December. We had hoped that we could keep prices lower by making use of lower cost termination providers in India. This has, however, resulted in lower call quality and reliability, and after feedback from our customers we have realised this is simply not acceptable.

At Localphone we want to give you the best price we can whilst maintaining a service which gives a loud, clear and good quality connection.

We feel therefore that it is necessary to increase our rates as follows, due to our increased cost of termination.

We think that you will agree our rates are still the best around together with local number dialing, no connection charges, no monthly or weekly fees and customer service that is there to help you.

Over the course of the next week we will be migrating all India calls to premium carriers that offer first class connections, loud and clear voice, and caller ID.

The new prices will come into effect at midnight on 11th March 2008.

We at Localphone appreciate the support that you have given to our new business and will constantly strive to give you the best possible service at the best possible price.

Today marks the end of our January promotion which was really popular, bringing in lots of new Localphone customers, and a lot of positive feedback about how easy to use the Localphone service is. So, a big thank you to all the customers who have called or emailed us feedback, and a warm welcome to all our new customers from the Localphone team.

We thought we would up the stakes for February: we are going to reward our loyal customers who recommend us to friends and family.

It’s simple really. Recommend a friend and whenever they add credit in the first 90 days you get 10% of whatever they added as bonus call credit, so if you’ve got lots of friends you could be making calls for free!

For Example…

If you recommend five friends and they each, in the first 90 days, add £100 call credit – you will get £50 of free call credit to use calling whoever you like!

So what do you have to lose? Recommend Localphone to your Friends now »

We’ve been busy again this week, and have cut the cost of calling 150 tariffs! Rather than list them all here why not head on over to our international tariff section and take a look for yourself. Here are just a few of the new rates that we’re particularly excited about…

That’s an average saving of 50% for our customers on these few countries alone!

Don’t forget to check out our full list of call rates, and make sure you don’t miss out on the final week of our half-price January sale!

We’ve been cutting the cost of calling even more countries this week!

That’s an average saving of 20% for our customers!

See our full international tariff, or sign up for your free account and start saving now!

In addition to our Half-Price January Sale on calls to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, this week we’ve reduced the cost of calling the following countries…

That’s an average saving of 31% for our customers!

See our full international tariff, or sign up for your free account and start saving now!