[m419]

The termination rates have lowered over the past few years with O2 being the cheapest. Calls to mobiles through other providers seem a lot cheaper than Virgin Media.

Ok,agreed,local cable to cable calls would be a bit of a dead loss, maybe national cable to cable calls would work??? Thats what TalkTalk and Bulldog did. It raked in the customers for TalkTalk. Remember those ad's? ''We don't have to pay to talk anymore''?

Ported numbers shouldn't be a problem since mobile networks seem to manage it well, When I was on T-Mobile and bought the 5 day pass,one of my friend ported out to 3 which meant that the call was no longer included in the allowance, therefore it is up to the person your calling to tell you what network your on.

National calls more expensive? Yes because most people make calls to local numbers and since they abolished this we've seen prices for other calls shoot up. So customers wanting to call outside there geogrpahical area and make long durational calls could use XL package. Virgin Media probably have a revenue target so to ensure that is met, they would likely charge a higher rate for national calls if this tariff was ever considered, I reckon the high prices are to pay for all the advertisements currently being broadcast.

Also when you are on Talk anywhere calling a landline is to the equivalent of paying 4p per minute, so its not beneficial for calling landlines.