Why do Ofcom think that competition is everything?

Option 2: introducing price competition. For competition in a shop, the price can be varied at any time by changing the label on the shelf. There is no way for service providers to change their rates once they've chosen their number. I thought that the point of a NGN is that you should be able to keep it for life.

Businesses are naturally not interested in changing numbers every 5 minutes. Pay as you go internet is the only example of such services which started out on 0870, then 0845 and now some on 0844.

As for pricing information, how much does the price of a call concern people? Is it the same as browsing through the shops?

The only way they can have true competition is to be able to change rates whilst remaining on the same number. It appears that this is impractical, at least at the moment. If it does materialise, then there is the obvious issue of informing the caller of the cost.

Ofcourse, as we said previously, this could all be sorted by moving them to 09 numbers. This would sort out those who need the revenue and those who do not.

Ofcom has divided services up into ECS (Electronic Communication Services) and non-ECS. Would it not be better to define them as those with which the customer already has a contract/policy (eg. banks) or is ringing to purchase and those with which they do not (eg. information lines). It is the former group who are, at present, ripping us all off.

All 087X and 0845 numbers, indeed all “08” numbers except the free ones, should be charged and treated by all in exactly the same way as “01” and “02” numbers.  Revenue sharing should be prohibited in the 08 category.  All existing providers could keep their 08 numbers, but they would receive no revenue share. Telephone users would know exactly how a call was to be charged and treated. 

Any organisation who could not live with that, would need to provide themselves with a suitable and appropriately priced “09” number; a category which was set up to deal with revenue sharing.  This would also apply to internet dial up services, they would use a very low rate 09 number, no different to their present  “08” rate.

The above solution is simple and obvious; any other solution decided by Ofcom would be untenable and would raise the question as to whether Ofcom should continue to be financed by the taxpayer, as the telecom regulator, in its present form.

That is exactly the position which the template response on  http://www.freeweb.telco4u.net./rachelf takes and provides for you to respond easily to both of these consultations.  You have only just over 3 days left to submit your responses. Please don't forget to send them.

Why don't Ofcom fix the consumer 'awareness' issues with 0844/0871 numbers before creating a whole load more? That would allow us to see whether consumers will understand it all.

Hang on... that would mean 0844/71 sps could 'compete' but 0845/70 could not. So why didn't Oftel just implement this framework with 0845/70 instead of creating 0844/71? 

It seems as though the regulator keeps changing its mind about the direction it should be steering the ship. The end result, we have no chance of reaching our destination.