http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/telecoms/groups/nts-focus-group/notes-of-meetings/nts_1012091

10|05|10

NTS Focus Group – 4th February 2010 – 2.00 pm Ofcom

Agenda item (1) - Introductions

Attendance:

Justin Hornby      C&W
Geoff Brighton      Ofcom
Sean Hartley      BT
Cim Manley      BT
Peter Farmer      Gamma
Kath Embleton      BT
Thomas Gransalke      Orange
Markham Sivak      Ofcom
Andy Martin      IV Response
Stephen Ornadel      T-Mobile
Laurent Pariat      C&W

By telephone:

Colin Scott      C&W
Kulshal Sareen      3
Sandra Reid      VirginMedia
Rickard Granberg      CPW

Apologies:

Will Goodall      Flextel
Sarah Godfrey      4D Interactive

Dirmuid Jennings announced that - had sold their NTS business and as a result he would no longer be attending the meetings.
Catherine Gerosa from Invomo sent her apologies and announced that she was leaving the company.

Agenda (1): Review of Actions.

Justin Hornby opened the meeting and confirming that no actions were outstanding following the last meeting.

Agenda (2): Update / progress report on the current 'live' NTS related consultations / investigations: (Ofcom/All)

   * PRS Scope Review

There was no update to give from the last Focus Group.

   * NTS Retail Uplift and PRS Bad Debt Surcharge:

Geoff Brighton reported that the draft BDO report was about to be submitted to Ofcom. BT has verbally informed Ofcom that the pointing of codings to Bad Debt have been found to include 0844 and 0871 traffic. Ofcom is currently awaiting amended figures from BT but it currently appears that the figures may have been overstated.

Geoff cautioned that this may have a knock on effect to the NTS Retail Uplift as the bad debt is reattributed. Once Ofcom is in a position to do so a new stakeholder meeting will be held.

   *   NTS Review

Markham Sivak provided a comprehensive update regarding Ofcoms forthcoming review which is better termed a Non-Geographic Review. The approach will be comprehensive and Ofcom intend to start from a blank piece of paper. The current approach is seen as no longer being viable due to the number of disputes between operators and complaints from consumers. Ofcom will examine the overall experience consumers receive from using NTS, PRS DQ, 03 and Personal number ranges. From there they will investigate both the overarching retail and wholesale models. 0800 is being picked out as a starting point.

In the first instance the review will be consumer focussed looking at the transparency of prices, how services are bought and any existing concerns of participants in the market. The new EU framework that is being introduced will give Ofcom greater powers to intervene at the retail level in instances of consumer harm. This is not yet domestic legislation and Ofcom will be seeking input to understand the Consumer Protection / Service Provider relationship.

Ofcom will seek understanding of how the industry works through a pre-consultation document. This will include engagement with industry groups in order to fully understand how the funding flows. This includes Section 135 information requests being sent to providers. Market research will also be conducted to understand whether any groups in particular suffer from issues to do with a lack of transparency.

Indicative timeline:

   * March: S.135 requests to operators and pre-consultation document
   * Middle 2010: Consultation
   * End 2010: Statement and possibly second consultation
   * 2011: Implementation work (initiative will depend on whether new legislation is required)

Markham confirmed that Ofcom would be looking at SMP condition AAA11 as part of the review.

Andy Martin asked whether the plan was to keep the current ranges in place or to close everything down, commenting that it may be easier to close everything down. Markham reiterated that nothing was being counted in or out at this stage.

   * NCCN 500

Geoff informed the group that Ofcom had kicked off work into the latest dispute between Cable&Wireless and BT as notified in the Competition Bulletin of 2nd February. Ofcom are still looking at the detail and it is too early to comment further at this stage.

   * 080 Termination Rate Dispute

Geoff informed that a decision would be issued to the parties of the dispute the following day with general publication following next week. It was possible that this may be delayed until next Friday. Geoff indicated that there would be no surprises in the document.

Justin asked for confirmation that interested parties would also receive a copy of the document at the same time as the parties to the dispute, which was given.

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Agenda Item (3) NCCN908, 958, 985 and 986 0800, 0845 and 0870 transit charging (All)

Andy Martin announced that the IVResponse SOR had been accepted and that rates had now been published in the CPL.

Laurent Pariat queried whether the CPL had only been amended for IVResponse in relation to 0845. Andy explained that the other rates appeared in 1.12 of the CPL.

Thomas Gransalke asked for confirmation that from 1st March only one operator had taken advantage of this SOR.

Stephen Ornadel raised the question of how T-Mobile or any other party were able to raise a dispute with carriers other than BT (such as IVResponse), were they to object to the rates. No contractual relationship exists between T-Mobile and IVResponse so it is unclear as to how this could be dealt with. Refunds from BT could prove to be very complicated if BT was passing revenue on to Service Providers and any dispute settlement would require financial recovery from Service Providers. The commercials between such parties may vary between service providers, but Stephen maintained that T-Mobile would be unable to dispute with anyone else other than BT. Therefore it would be BT that would need to refund any money due.

Sean Hartley agreed that it had the potential to be very messy and that BT did not have anything in mind to protect originators from such issues.

Stephen pointed out that future disputes were likely depending on BTs future actions.

Markham and Geoff countered that 080 was a distinct case due to the revenues flow being different to other NTS ranges.

Stephen raised the implications of revenues flowing from T-Mobile to companies that the operator would not normally deal with due to their credit worthiness. Whilst T-Mobile is able to reclaim money from BT, for other operators there was a significant credit risk posed to T-Mobile until BT was able to reclaim money from their Service Providers.

Peter Farmer pointed out that the current 080 Service Providers posed little risk as they were well known and unlike with some other number ranges were unlikely to disappear overnight.

Markham and Geoff saw T-Mobiles concerns as further evidence of why the review is required. They prophesised that it may be necessary for more bilateral agreements to be put into place as there was no simple way for Ofcom to act as an arbiter in future disputes between the various parties. Stephen pointed out that in such instance an operator like T-Mobile would not need 1, but up to 30 individual bilateral agreements. Such resource requirements would undoubtedly add considerably to an operators costs.

Agenda Item (4): Pricing transparency on mobile to NGN calls (Warren Berdo Skycom)

Stephen claimed that this agenda item was little more than mobile bashing and questioned why it was even on the agenda. Andy countered that the potential for consumer harm came from the high retail prices charged in this area and that was why the issue focussed on the mobile operators. Stephen responded that he did not see such issues in the complaints from customers and therefore this was an issue which originated from the NTS Forum.

It was agreed to remove this item from future agendas.

Agenda Item (6): Review of remaining outstanding actions

There were no actions from the previous meeting.

Agenda Item (7) AoB

Laurent informed the Focus Group that the novation of the Thus BT interconnect to Cable&Wireless had been completed.
Date of Next Meeting:

18th March 2010

[end]

What happened to agenda item 5 is a mystery.