This Is Money reports Virgin Media will become the first UK landline provider to offer free calls from Virgin home phones to Virgin mobiles to new and existing customers.

The service is due to be rolled out on April 1st and will be available on a variety of unlimited telephone service call packages, with prices ranging from £11.99 per month for free weekend calls to £19.94 per month for unlimited calls. Calls will be free for the first 60 minutes, after which callers will be required to hang up and redial in order to continue without being charged.

Graeme Oxby, executive director of mobile and telephony at Virgin Media told This Is Money:

“Our successful quadplay strategy has demonstrated customers are looking for exceptional value by bundling more services together, and this move to include free calls to mobiles with our home phone service underlines our commitment to ensure Virgin Media customers get the best deals possible.”

Millions of families around the UK who use Freeview set-top boxes to receive digital TV face being blacked-out unless they stump up £170 on new equipment. Even those whose HD-ready TVs already have built-in Freeview receivers are likely to be affected.

A report in the Daily Mail online claims the cost to upgrade equipment in order to receive new channels from the BBC and other broadcasters could run to more than £170. The BBC, along with other broadcasters are set to launch a number of new, free HD channels ahead of the World Cup this summer.

However, millions of TV viewers’ equipment won’t be able to receive these new channels and have been told they will need to upgrade their equipment. Already some 20 million digital TV set-top boxes and 8 million TV sets equipped with Freeview decoders have been bought in the past five years and viewers face the prospect of having to fork out again as many will not be compatible with the new HD-transmissions.

HD transmissions allow for greater clarity and picture detail, particularly in fast-moving broadcasts, such as sports.

Critics have already rounded on both the Freeview organisation and the BBC for failing to supply adequate warnings to customers, or alerting to them to the issues.

Barry Fox, a technology industry expert told the Daily Mail:

“If you bought a TV in the run-up to Christmas it will be described as HD-ready and it will probably have Freeview built-in. Similarly, if you have bought a digital set-top box it will be compatible with current Freeview services.

“But to watch Freeview HD, you will need either a completely new TV, which has a built-in HD receiver, or a new box that will receive the HD signals.”

HD channels are currently only available to Sky or Virgin Media customers and will remain unaffected, but for everyone else they face the prospect of having to buy new equipment or not being able to view the new channels when they become available.

New Freeview HD equipment is expected to be available from next month, but manufacturers and retailers are seemingly playing on customers’ ignorance by continuing to sell equipment to customers who are unaware their equipment will not work with Freeview HD channels.