The UK’s mobile operators have told ZDNet that a move to a ‘receiving-party-pays’ (RPP) model is unlikely. This follows comments from EU telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding earlier this week that she would not oppose mobile operators wanting to change their business model and charge customers for receiving calls. Such a strategy is common in the US, China and Singapore.

A spokesman for Vodafone told ZDNet that the “likelihood of any new radical pricing is pretty slim” and confirmed that the operator had “no plans to introduce such a pricing model at the moment.” Orange confirmed it “has no intention to introduce charges for customers to receive calls domestically,” whilst T-Mobile said “we don’t plan to charge customers to receive calls in the UK.” O2 commented that “it is not clear that RPP actually conveys any overall benefit to consumers – in countries with RPP we tend to see much lower penetration than in the EU.” Reding’s comments were in response to a question that was related to the Commission’s proposals for cutting the termination rates that operators charge each other to interconnect calls. On Tuesday, the operator 3 said in a statement that “there is no reason for the EC recommendation to result in receiver pays.”