Do peak and off-peak times still matter?

“Peak” was always defined by GPO telephones, later BT, and then all competitors when the market opened up, as 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., because “Peak” was when business users would be on the line.

In fact, right into the mid 1990’s, I’m not sure exactly when as I had gone back to university, so after 1994, there was a two-tier “peak” rate – 09:00 – 13:00 was the most expensive and 13:00 to 18:00 was a little cheaper.

The “evening and weekend” off peak is just a relatively modern phrase to cover the hours when traditionally businesses were not on the line and so the demand was reduced.

If you think a tiny bit about the history of the telephone it is very easy indeed to see how the “peak” and “Cheap Rate” (as it used to be called) hours came about and why: Telephones were originally only available to businesses and the very wealthy (by definition probably businessmen) and all calls had to be connected manually, by operators in exchange buildings. Ergo when the businesses were trading (office hours, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5) the vast majority of calls were made and so the operators had to be employed in maximum numbers. When the businesses were not trading only a tiny number of calls could be made by a tiny number of subscribers and so it was only necessary to have a skeleton staff of operators at the exchange. Majority of calls = Peak Rate = more staff = more wages = higher call costs. Few calls = Cheap rate = fewer staff = less wages = lower cost calls.

Now that businesses trade almost 24/7 and virtually every home has a land line (even if only for broadband) and millions of us have mobiles there is a vast demand which is much more constant so these differences in cost and demand are much less noticeable or predictable. This has lead to the changes.

Interestingly since 1986 when I left my parents home and lived alone I have always been a very heavy user of the telephone (land line) and yet the changing and falling tariffs means that in 1986 I was paying about £120 per quarter for my phone (line rental plus instrument rental (who remembers that now?!) plus call costs) and here I am in 2011 paying about £130 per quarter for line rental plus broadband plus call costs – so in 25 years my ‘phone costs are pretty much constant yet I get far more for the money now than I did a quarter of a century ago.

As for selfish and smug people like Zag, perhaps he or she should consider those people unable to use a mobile perhaps due to disability or infirmity or maybe due to living in a remote area with no signal. I am lucky: I have the choice as I have a mobile and a good signal. I guess Zag also has a choice, but we should not forget that some people don’t, and the next person that hasn’t could be Zag’s nearest and dearest.

Anyway, to conclude by going back to the question: Personally I thin it’s time we abolished the off peak and on peak idea all together since there is no longer a definable peak demand, but instead we should have more options for “light users” and those with no choice of phone provider to ensure that they are not ripped off.

You wrote “Now call me cynical …” – but I reckon your attitude is quite justified. When British Telecom announced the change in off-peak hours, this was tucked away in *very* small print in a letter to subscribers. As a paid-up cynic would expect, the message they wanted readers to go away with was the good news (sorry, can’t remember now what it was) they were announcing in the main part of the letter. I do remember that I thought it wasn’t news worth a special letter; this aroused my suspicions, so I did read through the small print and therefore spotted the bit about changing the off-peak hours.

Rather than your point about just trying to “get people to pay more”, I thought it was an attempt to trick people into continuing to phone for a chat at 6pm without realising that the call was now treated as peak time.

I did contact the consumer advice page on one of the papers to encourage them to publicise the change and therefore reduce the number of people tricked, but I don’t know whether any publicity came by this route. It would be very interesting to get the hour-by-hour breakdown of calls before and after this change came in.

So how long do you think it will be before Peak time is changed to 8pm because people are waiting til 7pm to make thier phone calls in the evening. This is just BTs way of making more money by changing the goalposts. they shouldn’t have been allowed to change the time for customers who were tied into a 12 month contract at least new customers would be going in with it upfront.

How about sending messages to the recipients recorders at your off peak times and getting a reply at the recipients off peak times – Take a little longer but cheaper.

But I’m all in favour of a “Light User” discount – as I only use my Land Line about once a month – and my mobile less than once a year ( bought for car emergencies)

did these suppliers make it clear and in advance that these changes would occur?

or was it kept low profile?