Mobile phone users may have to pay to receive calls, as they do in the US, the telecoms regulator said on Thursday. Ofcom called for “careful consideration” of the case for billing mobile users for receiving as well as making calls.

This would be a sweeping change, and UK mobile operators say their customers are set against the idea. Ofcom has raised the issue, however, because it wants to provoke debate over the charges that mobile operators impose on one another for connecting calls to their networks.