BT share price: Company granted favourable decision in call pricing case

The UK Supreme Court today ruled in favour of BT, dismissing an appeal by several mobile operators, which were disputing a rise in payments for calls to non-geographic numbers conducted in 2009.

Today’s decision could result in retrospective payments in the “low tens of millions of pounds” to BT.

In today’s trading, BT shares were 0.4 percent lower at 378.33p as of 13:25 BST.

Ladder charges

BT provides and charges for connection services to mobile network operators to enable calls to numbers with a prefix of 08 – such as 0800, 0870 and 0845 calls. In 2009, the company changed its pricing structure, introducing ladder charges, which increase the wholesale interconnect tariffs payable to BT according to the level of the retail charges for these calls.

Vodafone Group Plc (LON:VOD), Everything Everywhere Ltd, Telefonica S.A. and Hutchison 3G UK Holdings Ltd challenged the price changes. The mobile operators received refunds from BT after the industry watchdog Ofcom sided with them in a 2010 ruling. The Ofcom ruling was then overturned by the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

The Financial Times quoted a BT spokeswoman, who commented following the Supreme Court decision: