Irish users of mobile phones will find it easier to cut through the near impenetrable jungle of call costs, thanks to an interactive website set up by a cross-Border research team.
The site uses specially developed software to allow users to calculate the cost of mobile calls from the various phone packages, at different times of day and within and between both jurisdictions on the island.
An initiative of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh, the website (www.B4UCall.com) was created by researchers at Queen's University Belfast and the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
Led by Prof Fionn Murtagh of QUB and Dr John Keating of NUI Maynooth, the researchers set out to analyse "the chaos of competing and utterly confusing prices published by the mobile phone operators".
Among their findings are that for calls from the Republic to Northern Ireland, Eircell monthly packages are in almost all cases cheaper than those of Esat Digifone. On the other hand, calls from South to North on Esat's prepaid packages are cheaper at all times than Eircell's.
Of the three Northern service providers, the study finds, Orange is now easily the cheapest for calls to the Republic.
A particular concern for the researchers was the high level of so-called "roaming" charges - where a phone from one jurisdiction is used in another.
On the issue, the authors find that Orange is also the cheapest network with which to roam for both Esat and Eircell customers, and Vodafone the most expensive. However, Esat users receive cheaper incoming call rates than Eircell from all three Northern networks.
For calls made within Northern Ireland on UK phones, BTCellnet rates are the most expensive "without exception", but BTCellnet customers receive the cheapest rates when calling national numbers within the Republic.
The research project was sponsored by Eircom, and the team is now seeking further funding to maintain and develop the website.
Concluding that mobile tariffs are "bewildering", even in a single jurisdiction, their report recommends that service providers be obliged to publish detailed but comprehensible costings of every call type to allow potential customers to determine the most suitable package.
