BT has taken a sideswipe at Orange as it looks to poach more punters in the lucrative small biz market.

Last month, cellco Orange announced plans to offer fixed line phone services to business users in the UK. Piggybacking on Cable & Wireless' (C&W) network, the France Telecom-owned business said its Landline for Business service would provide fixed line services with call charges up to 20 per cent cheaper than BT.

Now, BT has launched its own fixed and mobile calls combo called "BT Business Plan with Mobile", which, it tells us, has been on trial since July last year. Apparently, it offers SMEs one bill, an annual five per cent discount on combined fixed and mobile calls, capped rates on fixed line calls, and preferential rates on mobile to mobile and mobile to the office calls.

And, in a pop at its rival, BT Business MD Bill Murphy said: "This plan goes significantly further than the offering from competitors like Orange. Their price comparisons are made against our standard rate, a rate which most of our BT Business Plan customers do not pay.

"What's more, this service is already working, it's available now and it's been on trial successfully since July, delivering tangible benefits to customers." ®

Related stories

• BT wants your small business juice (30 April 2007)
• Voda eyes Tiscali, Bulldog (24 April 2006)
• SMEs urged to adopt flexible working (6 April 2006)
• Top bean counter to quit C&W (30 March 2006)
• E-commerce not relevant, say SMEs (24 March 2006)
• Vodafone eyes fixed line service (20 March 2006)
• BT's new fixed-mobile combo NOT available yet (17 March 2006)
• Bulldog targets SMEs (15 March 2006)
• BT, Skype woo SMEs (13 March 2006)
• Small.biz ill-equipped for IT threats (2 March 2006)
• Orange offers SMEs fixed line phone service (24 February 2006)
• UK SMEs 'penalised' by inflexible licences (21 February 2006)
• Small biz owners' stress levels shoot up (20 February 2006)
• BT boss bigs up broadband for SMEs (17 January 2006)