I have just received a rather interesting email from Mark Michaels, Director of Direct and Relationship Marketing at the COI.

This email indicates there has been a further update to the COI guidance regarding appropriate use of phone numbers for government contact centres.  You can find this at www.coi.gov.uk/documents/ccg-update.pdf

The interesting change is that the new revised guidance now states that "non-geographical numbers have traditionally provided advantages in terms of intelligent call routing", as presumably a kind of defence of the current extensive use of these numbers by the DVLA and Inland Revenue.

However the new revised guidance then goes on to drop the bombshell by stating that "the more advanced networks can provide intelligent routing on standard geographic numbers".

I shall be very interested to bring the contents of this new guidance to the attention of Terry Hawes, Director of Online Services at the Inland Revenue who, in a recent letter to me, defended the extensive use of 0845 phone numbers by the Inland Revene on the basis that "0845 numbers are intelligent where geographic numbers are not"

It will be interesting to hear what excuse Mr Hawes can now offer for the continued use of 0845 numbers by the Inland Revenue.

Any of you who have further comments or queries on the new COI guidance have the opportunity to address these to robert.irons@coi.gsi.gov.uk who is named as the contact point for further information in the email I have received.

This is the contents of the email I have received:-

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COI - Better practice guidance for Government contact centres update

Cost to the citizen - update

Some time ago you downloaded the guidance from our website and indicated that you would like to have updates in future.

The better practice guidance is currently being updated for a second edition. However, because of movement in tariff structures, one section required more immediate attention in light of developments in the industry, and debate with Ofcom and it was felt to be prudent to circulate this as a separate section so that you have the most up to date guidance.

To access the update please go to www.coi.gov.uk/ccg.

If anyone has any specific comments on this, please could you direct them to robert.irons@coi.gsi.gov.uk

I hope that you continue to find the guidance useful in your quest for improved contact centre service to the public.

Yours sincerely,




Marc Michaels
Director of Direct and Relationship Marketing
COI Communications

“non-geographical numbers have traditionally provided advantages in terms of intelligent call routing”

Utter garbage, anything routing wise that can be done with a 08xx number, can also be done with a geographic number. I have 11 geographic number connected to my SIP PBX that can allow members of my family to call me via a number local to them, allows my father-in-law to call his brother in Australia for the cost of a real local call + 1p/min. I can receive calls to any of these regional number on any SIP device, PSTN phone or mobile anywhere in the world, I can transfer them to voicemail etc when busy, and if I wanted to, I could annoy callers by invoking IVR


Maybe it should have read

“non-geographical numbers have traditionally provided advantages in terms of hidden taxing”

wrote on Feb 14^th, 2005 at 3:00pm:

Utter garbage, anything routing wise that can be done with a 08xx number, can also be done with a geographic number. I have 11 geographic number connected to my SIP PBX that can allow members of my family to call me via a number local to them, allows my father-in-law to call his brother in Australia for the cost of a real local call + 1p/min. I can receive calls to any of these regional number on any SIP device, PSTN phone or mobile anywhere in the world, I can transfer them to voicemail etc when busy, and if I wanted to, I could annoy callers by invoking IVR

You can do all those things with your PBX for routing your relative's calls etc but can you do them all with zero cost to you?  Aren't you paying some of the call rerouting costs and don't you require to have real physical phone lines to do it all with?

The thing that people seem to like about 0845 numbers is that the call can be rerouted to another destination at no cost to them and originally it didn't cost most of their callers any more even though it has always cost me more to call an 0845 number for several years now.

So can you actually Intelligently Route on the same cost free basis to you as 0845 and 0870 number subscribers can get? If not what we are really talking about here is that the people who currently get Intelligent Call Routing paid for by their callers object to the idea of having to pay for the additional call forwarding and call diversions costs themselves?

I think he's talking about VoIP - the next big thing.

Basically all calls will in the future be via the web; and FREE.  ;D

Just like all companies and government depts have email; soon they will all need to have VoIP numbers. This means it will cost ZERO to call them.

Bye bye 0870 and 0845...

wrote on Feb 14^th, 2005 at 7:18pm:

Just like all companies and government depts have email; soon they will all need to have VoIP numbers. This means it will cost ZERO to call them. Bye bye 0870 and 0845...

Yes but I think the VOIP transition time frame is at least 10 years given how irregularly big government departments make vast investments in new technology platforms.

Also I am quite sure that it will be perfectly possible for people to charge you to voice access them via VOIP if they want to.

Do you think Easyjet is going to let you call them by voice for free or that 0906 legal advice lines are going to let you talk to them for free just because the means of communication is VOIP.  It won't be 0870 that we then need to avoid but IP addresses commencing 087.00x.xxx.xxx etc.  Those IP addresses will ask for our credit or debit card numbers before then making the VOIP connection.

You can do all those things with your PBX for routing your relative's calls etc but can you do them all with zero cost to you?  

Yes, when I first wrote this it would have cost me 1p./min, but now it is Zero, there are at least two SIP to PSTN providers that I can route via for Free, even to Australia

Aren't you paying some of the call rerouting costs
No, not a penny

and don't you require to have real physical phone lines to do it all with?

Not for telephone, just to delivery my ADSL service, if I lived in a cable TV area and had say an NTL Internet access then I wouldn’t need a real BT line at all. My local area code is 01580 and I also have an 01580 number without a line, I can make calls from it and receive calls on it.

Do you pay to send and receive email messages? Let me assume the answer is No, did you used to spay to send letters to friends and family, or to businesses? Yes. Once you have paid for your Internet connection, why should you pay for telephony?

I agree with the concept of paying for a service via a higher rate call charge, for low value items, it’s cheaper and more appropriate than using cheques or credit cards (for the business and retailer).

I wasn’t having a dig at you, just the way in which official bodies and businesses try to justify premium rate numbers.