International business calls — typically 70–90% cheaper

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International calls are where retail providers quietly profit. The calls feel expensive, so nobody questions the bill — and because the rates live in a tariff document most customers never read, the margin stays hidden. It shouldn't work that way, and it doesn't have to. UK Wholesale has routed business calls at wholesale rates since 2005: same lines, same phones, same numbers, with the middleman's margin taken out of every minute. It's the same idea behind our business call charges generally — up to 72% lower than standard rates — applied to the most overpriced calls on your bill.

Wholesale rates, worldwide

• 70–90% below BT Business standard rates on international calls
• Same phones, same lines — just wholesale routing on the bill
• Big caller to specific countries? We'll check the exact rates for your destinations
• Per-second billing — you pay for the conversation, not the rounding

How international call billing actually works

Nearly every provider prices international calls the same way: per minute, by destination. Each country has its own rate, set by what it costs to hand your call to the network at the far end — and within a country, calls to mobiles are usually priced higher than calls to landlines, because mobile networks charge more to receive them. Your bill for any call is simply the destination's rate multiplied by the call's length.

That means two things decide what international calling costs your business. The first is the rate itself — and this is where retail and wholesale part company. The underlying cost of carrying a call abroad has fallen dramatically over the years; retail price lists have not kept pace, which is exactly why a discount of 70–90% against BT Business standard rates is possible without any trick. You're not getting a worse route or a thinner sound — you're getting the same call without the retail margin built into every minute.

The second is how time is counted. A per-minute rate tells you less than you'd think until you know the billing increment. Many tariffs round calls up, so a quick thirty-second confirmation call can be billed as a full minute. With per-second billing you pay for the conversation you actually had — and across a month of international calling, that difference alone is worth real money before the rate discount even starts.

What you pay vs what retailers charge

The honest caveat: "70–90%" is a range, not a promise for every destination, because every country prices differently. That's why we'd rather quote your actual countries than wave a headline at you — tell us where you call and the exact rates arrive in writing.

Four moves that shrink an international phone bill

• Get the rate for your actual destinations, in writing. A cheap headline rate to one country tells you nothing about the three you actually call. We check the exact per-minute rate for each of your destinations — landline and mobile — before you commit to anything.
• Switch the routing, not the phones. Moving your calls to wholesale routing is an admin change. Your lines, numbers and equipment stay exactly as they are — the only thing that changes is who prices the minutes.
• Fix the UK side of the bill at the same time. If international rates were inflated, the domestic ones usually are too. Calls to UK mobiles start from 8p a minute with us, UK call charges run up to 72% lower than standard rates, and heavy callers can look at capped and inclusive call packages for a predictable monthly figure.
• Stop overpaying for the line underneath. The same wholesale logic applies to rental: our business phone lines cost £13.99 a month — retail line rental typically costs twice as much or more — and the saving compounds with cheaper calls on every bill. See how the line rental saving works.

The small print that makes "cheap" calls expensive

Most inflated international bills aren't caused by one big rate — they're caused by small mechanisms nobody mentioned. These are the ones worth checking on any tariff, including ours:

• Rounding. A tariff that rounds every call up can quietly add a large slice to a month of short calls. Ask how time is billed, not just the rate. Ours is per-second.
• Mobile vs landline rates abroad. The advertised rate to a country is usually the landline rate; the mobile rate to the same country is normally higher. If your contacts abroad answer on mobiles — and most do — the mobile rate is the one that matters. We quote both.
• "From" pricing. A headline "from" rate often applies to one easy destination. What you need is the rate card for the countries on your own bill — which is exactly what we send.
• Special and premium number ranges. Some number ranges abroad — premium services, shared-cost numbers, satellite destinations — sit outside standard country rates on any provider's tariff. If a number looks unusual, it's worth checking before a long call.
• "Inclusive" minutes that quietly run out. Bundled international minutes feel safe until the allowance is used, at which point calls bill at an out-of-bundle rate you never chose. A low per-minute rate with per-second billing is often the more honest deal for genuinely international businesses — though if a fixed monthly figure suits you, inclusive minutes packages exist and we'll tell you straight which works out better for your call pattern.

If you recognise your business here, get the rates checked

Importers and exporters on the phone to suppliers daily. Firms with overseas offices, contractors or family businesses spanning countries. Recruiters, agents and consultancies whose clients happen to sit abroad. Anyone whose bill has a long international section they've stopped reading because it's always painful. The pattern is the same in every case: the calls are essential, so they get paid for at whatever rate applies — and the rate that applies is usually a retail one. Twenty-one years of doing this has taught us that the international section of a bill is where re-pricing surprises people most. It costs nothing to find out: our Poole and Hyde teams will re-price a recent bill and send it back, no obligation.