First Telecom

...have been a customer of First Telecom since the last 2 years and this opinion relates to my experience and recommendations of this company based on current Telecom affairs and more recently since Atlantic Telecommunications Group bought First Telecom.

First Telecom (FT) is one of the many new generation of Telecom companies that have sprung up in the last 5 years. Most of these telecoms can offer savings up to 70% against BT’s ...
...even!!*

FIRST TELECOM~

One such Telecom company is First Telecom formed in 1994. It aimed to offer lower prices both to its residential customers and business sector. First Telecom operates in France, Germany, Holland and the UK. The best thing about First Telecom is that it is convenient, simple and easy to set up an account, which you can access from up to 46 countries. In order to open an account there is no need ... more

Is your landline phone bill too high? Are you suffering by making expensive peak time calls in the day? Maybe your pre-paid mobile bill is too high? Well fear not, there are plenty of new hip telecoms about that offer you savings, and the ultimate flexibility!

I have been a customer of First Telecom since the last 2 years and this opinion relates to my experience and recommendations of this company based on current Telecom affairs and more recently since Atlantic Telecommunications Group bought First Telecom.

First Telecom (FT) is one of the many new generation of Telecom companies that have sprung up in the last 5 years. Most of these telecoms can offer savings up to 70% against BT’s standard call prices for residential customers (not including various add on BT packages). Other companies similar to FT include SwiftCall, One-Tel, Planet Talk, C2000, even Quip (part of BT!), etc to name but a few. These companies offer maximum savings on International calls as well as standard UK landline calls, mobile calls etc.

The concept behind using any of these Telecoms was quite simple, you set up an account with them without the need to change your phone number, supplier etc and access the service from anywhere or you can chose designated places eg. home, work, friends place, mobile even!!*

FIRST TELECOM~

One such Telecom company is First Telecom formed in 1994. It aimed to offer lower prices both to its residential customers and business sector. First Telecom operates in France, Germany, Holland and the UK. The best thing about First Telecom is that it is convenient, simple and easy to set up an account, which you can access from up to 46 countries. In order to open an account there is no need for a new phone number, line, there is also no line rental to pay (you can continue paying that BT!) and there is certainly no need to leave your existing phone company.
Now you may be thinking well just how reliable is the service, does it work? How good is the Customer Service? Are there any changes since take over by Atlantic?

Well, I have been a customer of First Telecom for 2 years and during that time I have not incurred any problems with the service.

SETTING UP THE ACCOUNT

Firstly decide what type of account you wish to open: there are 2 types of accounts you can open:
1) Pre-paid account whereby you pay a minimum amount of £20 (just like a “Pay as you Go” scheme)
2) Or you can have a “Pay Later” account.

PAYMENT

I opened a Pre-Paid Account with £20 to get me going and I am pleased to say that has lasted me over 3 months. You can access First Telecom’s service by inputting a 4-digit pin code e.g. 1639 and entering your account and pin number from anywhere in the UK. Each time you make a call you are greeted by a message telling you how much money is left in your account. There is also an Auto Top-Up facility, which automatically tops your credit if it falls below a set amount. You decide the level of the top-up i.e. how much you wish to top up your account i.e. £10, £20 etc. I did not chose this feature, I preferred to manually phone Customer Services whenever my balance was low, which wasn’t very often.

ACCESS TO ACCOUNT

When you open the account you are asked whether there are any places you will be using the service regularly from (so there will be no need to enter a pin number) i.e. from home etc. You can choose as many places as you like. I chose 3 numbers, home, work, mobile*. So whenever you make any calls from the 3 designated there is NO need to enter your account number, pin etc simply dial 1639 and you’re away! You can use your FT account from anywhere in the UK and from up to 46 countries, though different call tariffs will apply when calling from abroad.

You can also buy an auto-dialler (a plug-in box you plug your phone line) so all calls will go automatically via FT without the need to key –in 4 digit code. I did not buy this box, as I seem to have accrued a large collection of these auto-dialler boxes starting in the days of Cable & Wireless box! (now taken over by NTL)..It’s confusing isn’t it trying to remember who’s who in the world of Telecoms. We may wake up one day and find BT has bought all of them and there is One Global Phone company ..I dread the thought!

Many Telecoms use the 4 digit pin codes to allow customers to divert their calls away from BT e.g. for NTL service it is 1263. Using this method you can use whichever Telecom is most appropriate for you, after all you still paying full line –rental to BT or the other major Telecom whether you use the service or not.

If you are a non-BT customer you will need to enquire about how you use this service from your landline. For some customers who live in cable areas they may be able to benefit directly from Cable companies low phone costs e.g. NTL, but for many of us there is no alternative than BT.
Whilst BT do offer a reliable all year round service, the call costs are high and the waiting times to customer service Call centres has increased dramatically over the last couple of years - up to 20 minutes at peak times!

CALL SAVINGS

Now to the important part..how cheap is it really?
I will take examples of UK National calls, International Calls, and Mobile phone calls, which I will compare with BT and other cheap Telecom companies that I have used.

Connoisseur_Haggler’s Guide & Analysis to cheaper calls
----------------------------------------------------------

1) UK National Calls to Landlines

Most National UK peak time calls made in the day are generally expensive, for example a national peak time call made with BT it costs 8p/min with a minimum connection charge of 5p. However via FT it costs just 6p/min no matter where you make this call from! The call charges are even cheaper if you have a “pay-later” account with FT its about 4p/min (that’s 50% less than BT’s peak call prices). The minimum connection charge with FT is also lower only 3.5p.

2) CALLS TO MOBILES

A call to any Mobile will cost you a standard rate of 17.6p/min anytime of the day with FT. With BT a call to Orange Mobile for example, in the day can cost 21.67p/min. However BT have recently reduced the evening rate to call Orange mobiles to 16.18p/min and an astonishing 6. 98p/min at weekends!!
So the message is quite clear if you need to make an calls in the daytime i.e. peak time calls use FT over BT, as almost in every case possible the same peak call can be made much cheaper using First Telecom.

3) CALLS FROM MOBILES!!*

Now many of us own Mobile phones either pre-paid ones (Pay as you Go) or Paid via ongoing agreed contract. Many Users on the popular over subscribed “off-peak” tariff of Orange called Everyday 50, enjoy off-peak phone calls at 1p/min with 50 minutes included free daily. But if it is absolutely necessary to make a phone call at peak times it is horrendously expensive on this tariff about 35p/min. On other Mobile Networks, which have less generous Talktime/free off-peak minutes, have lower cost of “peak calls” - cheaper than 35p, perhaps 15p/min.

Many of the Users that use FT are on Orange services and you can use FT to divert your calls from your mobile and pay FT’s standard rate of 6p/min for peak-time calls to landline numbers, slightly cheaper than 35p/min peak! Using FT’s service from your mobile is different from using it from a landline i.e. you cannot key in the 4 digit code, you are given a free phone access number by First Telecom to access the service from your mobile. You simply dial the free phone number as provided by FT from your mobile and you will be greeted by a message saying you have xx.xx left, and then you will hear a dial tone, which is your key to dial the number you wish. When you are making/diverting calls via FT from your mobile you cannot use the stored phone numbers in your mobile if you do- the call will go through your Mobile Network and not FT! Any questions or queries please feel to contact me via e-mail or comments.

Certain Mobile networks may not allow calls to certain Telecoms for free, you may get a message “you are calling a calling card company” we will charge you for this call.” If you get a message like this hang up as some Mobile networks can charge up to 50p for access other Telecoms. It works from Orange phones but I have no idea if there are access numbers for Vodaphone etc.

To put this into perspective this is just like paying line rental to BT in advance but not making any calls using their service. So in a similar way should one desperately need to make daytime calls via the mobile this can be done using various Telecoms namely FT and Planet Rock!

4) INTERNATIONAL CALLS

Now the bulk of the savings are made on International Calls. I will mention a few examples to give you an idea of the call savings. First Telecom is much cheaper than BT for any type of call but they are also by no means the cheapest Telecom for all types of International calls. I will highlight the companies that offer the cheapest call with a **.

Country First Telecom/ BT/ NTL Saving
---------------------------------------------------------------------
USA 8p/min 24p/min 3.5p/min 66%
FRANCE 13p/min 28p/min 7p/min**
GERMANY 13p/min 28p/min 7p/min**
AUSTRIA 24p/min 39p/min
INDIA 48.4p/min 120p/min 38p/min** 60%
(98.4p/min wknds)

5) Use the Telecom service most appropriate for your type of call depending on a) where you are using the service from b) where you are calling to and c) what time of day you are using the service.

CALL QUALITY

Now those of you that regularly use telecoms for International calls e.g. Asia, Africa and so on will know at busy times it can be hard to get the call connected. 8 out of 10 times I get calls connected first time to India, with reasonable call quality. However it may not always be as good as BT’s or NTL or any Cable company, but in comparison with other cheap Telecoms it is quite good.
Calls to USA, France, Ireland..I have never had any problems. I have had perfect call quality on all UK landline calls and access to the FT network via mobile phone has been fine too.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

In the 2 years I have used the service I have not had any problems. I get an itemised bill every quarter and can see a breakdown of call costs from each designated number i.e. all calls made from home, mobile, any other place all on one bill. Whenever I have needed a top up of my account I have phoned customer services and they have topped my account up each time within 15 mins of my phone call.

Overall, First Telecom have offered cheap calls with a good customer service far better than the other cheap Telecoms with a fully itemised billing which many of the cheap teleccoms do not offer. The service has been efficient, the billing accurate, which is a big bonus in the world of cheap Telecoms (especially if any of you have had the misfortune to suffer at SwiftCall’s Billing Department (based In Dublin-completely inaccurate, with lots of lost calls, missing balances and no effective customer care!) So in comparison FT have offered a fine service, they used to have many promotions on for free £5 in new accounts etc, but I assume once Atlantic allow opening of new accounts again they will resume these activities.

LASTLY

As I mentioned at the beginning of this opinion First telecom is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Atlantic Telecom group. This does not affect existing customers or service. However Atlantic are not taking on any new customers for 4 weeks as they are in talks to acquire another Telecom..couldn’t speculate which it may be Alpha Telecom? Axa, and once this is finalised they will be taking on new customers. If I hear any news in the meantime I will update this opinion as soon as possible.

First Telecom now part of Atlantic Group can be contacted on:
Tel 0845 458 0000

All Disclaimers apply!
 

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