For those smartphone users in the United Kingdom who prefer to go the Pay As You Go route with their chosen handset rather than contract, it appears that if you are with Vodafone, you can look forward to a PAYG prices hike by the UK carriers later this month while Orange UK Pay As You Go price increases came into force last Friday.

According to an article over on ZDnet, Vodafone plans on raising their Pay As You Go prices as of the 14th of this month, which will see the PAYG call charges rise from 21p to 25p a minute and text messages rising from 10p up to 12p.

As for the Orange UK Pay As You Go price hike, Orange calls will rise from 20p to 25p a minute and text messages will go up from 10p to 12p.

Apparently Vodafone lays the blame for the Pay As You Go price hikes firmly at the door of an Ofcom mandate that cuts the mobile termination rates (MTRs), which is the charge carriers levy on another operator to enable the second operator’s customer connect a call to the first operator’s customer.

The MTRs cut came into force as of April and is designed to lower the cost of calls from any phone to a mobile phone and after the cut came into force both BT and Talk Talk delivered cheaper landline to mobile phones deals.

Vodafone issued a statement on the matter of PAYG price rises, which said, “This price rise comes after recent regulatory changes. During our discussions with Ofcom over mobile termination rates, we stressed that if the rates came down rapidly and dramatically, the cost of Pay As You Go was likely to rise as a consequence.”

Apparently O2 UK, Three UK and T-Mobile all have no plans to raise the pricing of their Pay As You Go plans, but apparently this will not cause any inequality between the operators as the Vodafone and Orange PAYG price hikes bring them more into line with their rivals.

Apparently a spokesperson for Ofcom contacted ZDnet saying that basically the benefit from the MRTs cut outweighs the Vodafone and Orange Pay As You Go prices increase and suggested, “There is a lot of competition in the mobile market and we urge consumers to shop around to get the best deal for them.”

So there you go, if you are on Pay As You Go you’ll notice that the cost of texting and calling on Vodafone and Orange is now going to cost you more, and as for shopping around, well no doubt even though the charges are roughly the same on most carriers, you can bet each operator will come up with something to entice customer to their network.