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.

“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”

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

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

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...

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.