Happy New Year to all our readers!

The team at FleXtel hope you had a restful holiday and that you found our service useful in handling calls efficiently, whilst your staff took a break. As usual any feedback is welcome, good or bad.

Now to the point of this email...
Next Wednesday, 7th January 2009 at 5pm, Ofcom's 070 consultation closes. This is your LAST CHANCE to help justify the powerful 070 service.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/070options/

It's easy to respond...
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/070options/howtorespond/

Why not simply fill-out Ofcom's online form? Here...
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/070options/howtorespond/form

Thanks to your help, Ofcom already seems to better understand the merits of 070. We're very encouraged with the quality and detail provided in this latest consultation, as mentioned in our Newsletter of October... http://www.flextel.co.uk/press/news.html

BUT CONFUSION IS APPEARING
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Last week Ofcom's enforcement arm PPP, seems to have jumped the gun...
http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/news/articles/nr_20081219.asp

FleXtel understands that "Due diligence for 070" is only a proposal at this time (see question 5 in Ofcom's consultation), so I have written to Ofcom seeking clarification and explaining why FleXtel believes this will be challenging, especially for those customers based outside the UK.
I understand that "Due diligence" means that FleXtel will be required to ask some customers for identification information e.g. passport, birth certificate, company registration documentation, driving licence and/or utility bills. Unlike premium rate users (to which due diligence rules normally apply), many 070 users reside abroad. It may be particularly difficult to transfer authenticated (legally notarised) documentation worldwide.

So it's really important you take a few minutes and tell Ofcom why you need 070 and answer their refreshingly simple questions.

FLEXTEL'S RESPONSE
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You may be interested to note how FleXtel is responding to these questions.
Our answers to Ofcom's consultation are broadly:
Q1 - Yes.
Q2 - Yes.
Q3 - Yes.
Q4 - Yes.
Q5 - Perhaps, but only where necessary, objectively justifiable and consistent with the need to avoid artificial barriers to EU and international trade.
Q6 - Yes. CLI is an important facility in normal use. If is is barred on 070 then it follows that it also should be barred from many other services. There are better, more generic, ways to deal with such scams e.g. the introduction of Call Price Labelling, so that callers can immediately check the call price and decide whether to pay for a return call.
Q7 - Yes. Patientline and similar services are clearly premium rate use, i.e. where the revenue is used to pay for equipment provision, not call forwarding. They should use 09x numbers.
Q8 - Yes. This concept was always fatally flawed, dangerous and not in line with EU and ITU regulations and recommendations. Ofcom had been warned about this several times, by industry experts, since 2004, but carried on regardless, in what appeared to be a reckless manner.

Question 2: Do you agree that the costs outweigh the benefits in relation to closing the 070 number range and migrating users to an alternative range?:

No I do not agree.

The cost to the citizen consumer of scams like Patientline's various successors being allowed to remain in business greatly outweigh any possible detriment in the business running them being forced to bear the full costs of using an 09 premium rate service charge at premium rate calling rates and having nothing at all to do with the 07 mobile phone code prefix.

But what can we expect from woolly minded Ofcom who still allows Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man to have mobile phone number prefixes in the 07 number range, even though they are not part of the United Kingdom and calls to these numbers are not part of bundled UK mobile phone minutes or calling plans. Ofcom seems to suffer from a form of complete moral autism when it comes to the allocation of UK phone numbers and its only concern seems to be that telecoms scammers should not be forced to give up any form of hidden revenue stream they have become used to due to Ofcom's and Oftel's previous complacency and lethargy.

All of Ofcom's previous pledges to end these scams and abuse and make phone numbering transparent (most notably of all by its former Director of Communications, Matt Peacock in an interview with BBC Radio 4's You and Yours program) have proved utterly worthless and instead Ofcom has persistently ignored its principal duty to protect citizen consumers in favours of the interests of the telcos, who it continues to meet with in smoke filled rooms at various clandestine industry group meetings not open to input from telecoms consumers, such as the NTS Focus Group.

All of Ofcom's consultations are totally dishonest as when Ofcom gets an overall response to a consultation it does not like it either makes a firm promise of action (as with 0870) only to retract its promised regulations at the last minute two years later or otherwise it just puts the consultation on ice (as with 070) only to come out with another consultation proposing precisely the opposite of what it originally proposed three years earlier. Ofcom is as an utterly morally bankrupt organisation that sides only with the telecoms industry and ignores all valid attempts by consumer groups to engage with it. It has absolutely no forums whatsoever for engaging with consumers other than its so called Consumer Panel to which it only even gives interviews to existing paid up card carrying members of the telecoms and broadcasting industry establishment.

Question 3: Do you agree that Ofcom should keep the 070 range open and monitor the market in light of enforcement action by PhonepayPlus?:

No I believe that the 070 number range should be forcibly migrated immediately and without further notice on to a section of the 09 number range with all similar requirements to 09 numbers regarding call price announcements etc being immediately required to be applied to those former.070 numbers

Question 4: Do you agree that Ofcom should require OCPs to give greater prominence to the cost of calling 070 numbers in published price lists and promotional material?:

I believe there should be voice based pre announcements of the call rate and that the caller should be offered a free of charge voice based computerised call back at the end of the call or a free text back to tell them what the cost of the call has been.

It is imperative in particular that no user of a uk mobile phone should call an 070 number believing these calls will be charged out of their bundled mobile phone inclusive minutes only to find this is not the case. Equally pay as you go mobile phone users and landline phone users should not dial 070 only to find the call costing vastly more than a call to a normal UK mobile phone number,

The Pay As You Go mobile phone operators such as Vodafone should be forced to offer either free of charge itemised billing and/or free call back with the call charge of a call and/or a pre-call announcement of the cost per minute of a call for every call a customer may make if they wish to enable this facility. The fact that Vodafone makes it near impossible to find out the rate of calling an 070 number or the fact that it is different from a mobile call before a call is made and that it does not offer Pay As You Go customers itemised billing as standard is truly shocking and a complete indictment on the calamitous regime of regulatory non control of this sector that has prevailed under Ofcom's stewardship and also under that of OFTEL before it.

Additional comments:

Ofcom originally proposed a clear cut solution that was its own suggestion to move 070 numbers to the 06 code prefix in its review "Safeguarding The Future of Numbers" so that all of the abuses associated with consumers mistaking 070 premium rate numbers for mobile phone numbers and thinking they would be included in mobile phone bundled minutes would be brought to an end.

Now some two to three years later Ofcom spinelessly caves in over the implementation of its earlier proposals and now claims that 070 numbers don't really do too much harm old chap and that consumers don't mind regularly having to pay several quid extra on their phone bills for calls that they thought were to normal mobile phone numbers.

All of the companies who operate on 070 use some of the most dubious and deceitful selling methods to obtain their customers ever known in almost any industry and it is utterly shocking that a so called regulator should be prepared to sanction and endorse this continued abuse of UK citizen consumers.

Ofcom tells us it will all be alright because it will ensure greater price transparency for the cost of 070 calls on phone bills but what confidence can we have in the word of or the competence or professionalism of a regulator who went back on its word that it would make 0870 call costs the same as call costs to 01/02 numbers and that still allows the vast majority of fixed line uk call carriers to issue bills to their customers that show 0845 and 0870 calls are "Lo-Call" and "National Rate" calls, even though both the ASA and Trading Standards have prevented the continuation of this activity in paid advertising. However unfortunately phone bills are not considered advertising but are subject only to Ofcom's own General Conditions regarding phone bills and call charges. Conditions which it, Ofcom, is so spectacularly lackadaisical in ever managing to enforce in the best interests of the UK citizen consumer.

While the saynoto0870 campaign of which I am member has more supporters than ever sadly very few of them will bother to respond to this consultation as after thousands of campaigners responded to previous Ofcom and ICSTIS/PhonePayPlus consultations on 0845, 0870 and 0871 numbers and were then resoundingly ignored in favour of the telecoms industry most UK citizen consumers have rightly come to realise that Ofcom is a body they cannot trust in any shape or form.

Well said and an entertaining and informative read, as your submissions usually are.

You have my support and I would be interested in any response or feedback you may get from Ofcom.

I regret that I didn't make a submission myself though I know very little about 070 numbers other than they are very expensive to call and can be easily mistaken for mobile numbers.   I could not have added anything to or improved on anything you say.

I don't see the point of trying to confuse them with irrelevant other sniping comments, particularly on this subject, especially when you seem slightly confused yourself about some details.

2 main networks and some mvno providers include such calls in their contract bundles or at the same pay as you go rates as UK mobiles.

Ofcom don't mandate networks which calls they may or may not include. Instead you might lobby your own network to include the calls, rather than trying to wind up Ofcom into changing the numbers of such phones, to the probable paradoxical effect that they then would be excluded by all main UK networks, and cause needless disruption for the customers of the networks on the islands.

These territories don't pay UK taxes and they have their own internet domains and their own car registration number system.  So why therefore should they have a UK country dialling code?

Also what concerns do you have about any UK callers to any mobile number in these territories that you may yourself use who are not dialling from one of the two UK networks you mention and so who may think they are calling out of bundled minutes only to discover they have been charged at international rates?

They share the UK's country code because that's the way it was done.

I don't know why that is. In an ideal world, perhaps they should have their own ones. Are we to assume that you would like Jersey, Guernsey and IoM to change to their own country codes?

The issue of some 07 mobile numbers being outside of inclusive bundles does not just affect the three islands. I expect that other 075/077/078/079 numbers which are not allocated to the main networks (O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange and 3) will also be outside of inclusive minutes. It's strange that you don't mention these.