Paraic,
I hope that you will be focusing in particular on how the BBC was sold its 0870 numbers, most especially for the massive daily call volumes that occur to 0870 0100222, used for BBC Information's vast outsourced call factory with Capita in Belfast. Also especially the fact that the BBC was one of the very first organisations in the UK to start using 0870 numbers in a big way and how exactly that came about (a comparison with the friendly old days of the BBC employees in the BBC Duty Office in London on a geographic phone number with the “modernised and streamlined” but seemingly uncaring outsourced 0870 Capita call factory workers in Belfast would also be good).
It would also be interesting if you could find out which members of the BBC management board are responsible for this issue and then to try to interview them on air about how they can possibly now justify still using an 0870 number rather than at least an 0845 number for BBC Information when 0870 is no longer (as of July 1st)the BT national daytime call rate for any standard BT customer.
Unfortunately a partially genuine defence to using 0870 numbers for a call centre like the BBC's is that you cannot get elaborate detailed information about the regional source of the calls or the call volumes and peak loads without using NTS but this does not justify using 0870 NTS instead of 0845 NTS or even 0800 NTS.
Also you should not only look at BT's own new standard daytime price for an ordinary national geographic (01 and 02 prefixed) call (3p per minute) compared to the 0870 price (7.5p) but also at the fact that with many rival companies, like
www.call18866.co.uk, the price of ordinary geographic calls in the uk is now much cheaper still (1p for the whole call however long). Yet mysteriously none of these companies like call18866 can offer anything better than the special high BT call rates for these non geographic 0870 and 0845 calls. I would also suggest a visit to
www.magsys.co.uk/telecom/residx.htm would provide rather useful further background on this issue.
The guy at Ofcom you interviewed, Matt Peaco-c-k, who I have since spoken to on the phone, has told me that Ofcom plans to name and shame people (like that doctor’s surgery ) out of using 0870 NTS numbers but this seems to me naive in the extreme when OFTEL (their predecessor) quite deliberately let the situation develop for 10 years (they even allowed BT to reclassify these numbers from the 09 premium price prefixed call rate code band to the 08 supposedly standard national rate call band) so that these numbers now constitute a huge proportion of day time customer calls to uk businesses.
They cannot now just close down 0870 and 0845 NTS numbers because big national organisations do find its other technical facilities, for instance to allow rerouting of calls to different call centres and to monitor the call loads at peak times, advantageous for reasons that are absolutely nothing to do with making extra money. However what is wrong is that these advanced high tech features of NTS were, in my opinion, tied in from the outset (10 or more years ago) with a secret money making plan by BT where NTS calls were also going to cost hugely more than all other calls by being excluded from Inclusive calling plans like BT Option 2 and 3 or TalkTalks (Car Phone Warehouse) Talk1, Talk 2 and Talk3 and even excluded from BT's modest Friends and Family and My Best Friend BT calling plan discounts.
You should really try and interview someone at BT about why Non Geographic NTS numbers are not allowed to be covered by BT Options 2 and 3 fixed price inclusive calling plans and also try interview someone from a discount call company, like Call18866, about why they cannot offer their usual bargain prices to these "standard BT local rate" and "standard BT National rate" code prefixes. Also you could interview Easyjet to ask why they have recently moved their telephone bookings line from an 0870 to an 0871 number that costs 10p per minute at all times 7 days a week and yet this does not force them to publish the additional cost of these calls (even though it is 5 times the cost of 0870 calls at the weekend) in either promotional material or on their web sites. Yet if they ran an 0906 number, subject to regulation by ICSTIS instead of by Ofcom, they would be forced to do this.
The solution, in my opinion, is not in fact forcing companies to publish the underlying real geographic phone number (much though I might personally wish that this was actually a viable option) because big nationwide firms do need to use the technology features of the NTS call routing system for other practical operational and non revenue making reasons.
So what Ofcom actually needs to do is to make regulations and/or to ask parliament to pass new legislation (whichever is required) saying that non geographic NTS numbers cannot be charged by your telephone service provider at a different calling rate from calls to any other normal local or national geographic (01 and 02) phone numbers.
I can't see the problem with Ofcom doing this and then if some companies still really want to scam their customers (or rather provide value added services as the telephone industry likes to call them) then let them set up an 0906 number and be subject to all of ICSTIS's very tight regulatory controls on how those numbers are used.
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Radio 4 Report Part Deux (Read 11,236 times)
