dorf
Supreme Member
Offline
I hate Qs on Premium NGNs
Posts: 575
UK
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Firestop, the problem I believe is that now the only assault which could be made against these scams would require vast amounts of money, to firstly publicise the details and raise widespread awareness of the campaign, and secondly to actually take action against the corruption which is at the root of it all in the courts and with the European central court.
You would be fighting an effective syndicate which is now making a vast amount of money every year, and they have a vested interest in the continuation of these abuses. They will fight extremely hard to maintain the status quo and have large sums of money to do so. Then you have the vested interest of the government, who are collecting large amounts of "stealth tax" out of these scams; they control Ofcom.
So you can see that since it is unlikely that it would be possible to raise the sum of money needed to fight these abuses effectively it is very difficult to see any way that can now achieve an end to them. Either you need the large amount of money necessary to expose the scam widely and then fight it in the courts, or you need an end to the corrupt form of government which we now have, which allows and encourages the abuses to proliferate. (People get the governments which they deserve - and vote for!)
I would suggest that we can only continue to do what we are doing but try to do it better. If everyone who wants to fight this added a signature to their e-mail stating the brief details of the abuses (e.g. "0870, 0871, 0845, 0844, 070 and other non-geographic telephone numbers are being used as PREMIUM numbers with queuing, costing you 100s of times what calls should cost. Complain to Ofcom"), that would help to spread the awareness. Then if everyone who wants to fight it put up a site on internet publicising the scams, so that many sites came up on search engiines, that would help. The other key thing is to cease to do any business with companies who abuse NGNs (such as using 0845, 0870 and 0871), and to write to them stating why you are not doing business with them any longer, or at all. Also communicate with any companies you are already locked into a situation with via e-mail or letters only and state why you are doing this.
If everyone who wants to fight this did all of these things it would at least begin to more vigorously address it, and as awareness grew it would have more effect, growing exponentially.
That is all we can do at present I believe. When the proportion of numbers which are NGNs has increased to 90% or so (relative to GNs), which it will, then I believe that will open up new opportunities to contest these abuses on the clear grounds of them having destroyed free and reasonable competition. At that time I believe it will become possible to do something effective. The only question is how VOIP will affect this progression. However the other issue is that more and more of these abused NGNs are being extracted from having a specific associated GN termination which can be used if discovered. This I believe will eventually affect the usefulness of saynoto0870 as a means of circumventing paying the premiums.
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