A fresh blow is due to fall over the common people of the United Kingdom that are already struggling to cope with an increasing petrol price. The new blow looming over the country is a hike in the landline telephone call costs of BT.

BT the leading landline telephone service provider and the telecommunications giant of the United Kingdom is understood to have decided to charge its 12 million customers by more than two times the value of inflation, for tackling the tuff competition meted out by mobile phones in the country.

The standard monthly line rental cost of BT is also expected to rise by 30 pence to GBP 13.90 from April 28.

The price of a landline telephone call in the United Kingdom after the new development will increase to 7.6p a minute from 7p per minute, while the connection cost charged at a call's start will increase to anything between 1p to 12.5p.

The lattest hikes come after BT had hiked its telephone call charges by 10 per cent by October 2010. BT had also increased its line rental by 50 pence then.