For those of you who wondered why 18866 and 1899 do not offer the convenience of CPS this latest announcement on the Ofcom website provides some rather illuminating facts and figures on the costs of an outfit like 18866 using the CPS service.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/carrier/statement/

The latest review and direction from Ofcom has cut the initial startup cost of getting BT to set up a CPS service for an outfit like 18866 but has completely negated this with even higher ongoing monthly running charges.

Ofcom's changes only make things any better for the big boys like TalkTalk because they have cut over £1 a customer off the signup cost to be paid to BT - this goes down from £3.79 to £2.72

But the bottom line is that for any telco to rent a CPS facility off BT costs an initial £13,449 setup and then £2418 monthly line rental.  In addition the CPS providers now pays £2.72 for every extra CPS customer they add to the service.

So if you are TalkTalk with expensive call prices and may be a million CPS customers these CPS costs are affordable but if you are 18866 or 1899 with no advertising budget, small margins and a small customer base these costs are absolutely not affordable.

Looks like we will all be dialling 18866 or 1899 for a while to come.  Its still a lot more convenient than dialling an 0844 number and then waiting for an announcement before you can dial the next number.

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Of course we don't know what it costs 18866 and 1899 to have the indirect access prefix set up on each of our lines?  Perhaps there is a table for this somewhere on BT's website?

I suspect though it is £2 or so per new customer which is may be why 18866 and 1899 don't want to add too many customers all at one go, as it then takes them quite a while to get this money back in profits on the calls.

Note that only 6 people/organisations responded to this consultation!

Do you think just a few more people might have responded if Ofcom advertised their consultations in the national press or had bothered to make a post on here about their consutation!

I get the impression that Ofcom prefers consultations where only the people that it already knows respond.

It seems to go to more trouble to advertise jobs with it than it does to let people know about the existence of its so called consultation papers.

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I think you will find BT's Chairman, Sir Christopher, is bland only by name but not by nature.

He seems to have some very powerful friends in government who have been persuaded to allow BT to continue to retain its natural monopoly.  BT should have had the network split from it in the same way as with Transco and British Gas.

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Yes but they are a well run monopoly and their customers are not us the consumer but the big energy companies who have big powerful lawyers and lots of clout to bring Transco into line if they misbehave.

And we the customer have a choice of 20 or more companies from whom we can buy energy at the door.  And we do not have to pay a standing charge of £126 a year to Transco just to keep the supply connected.

If you have a weekend cottage you only go to 3 times a year you can choose a No Standing Charge tariff, which will make the hidden standing charge included in  the higher unit cost a lot less than £126 a year to you.

My water supplier is a monopoly but  I have no complaints.  Standing charge only £20 a year and water cost only another £40 a year.  BT standing charges are a ripoff which is why I complain so loudly about them.

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So why don't you take your complaint to Ofwat etc for investigation?

I suspect that a fair few of us would pay good money to watch them wriggle.