This is a bit of a punt on my part but follows on from a rather interesting telephone discussion today with someone at a very high level in BT.

Basically the net upshot of that conversation was that whatever the historic rights and wrongs of BT having pioneered the whole 084x and 087x call industry may have been the fact was that its senior management was now very well aware indeed that this was a major public issue that could not go on being ignored.  This was why BT had made its own response to Ofcom's NTS Options for the Future consultation suggesting that 0845 and 0870 be charged as per 01 and 02 geographic calls.

At this point a light bulb lit up in my head which said "what if even though Ofcom does not make it compulsory to charge 0845 and 0870 as geographically priced calls BT decides to offer this anyway to all its own customers on BT Options 1, 2 and 3.

Why should BT do this?  Well very simple really as a  massively defensive measure in the huge war that is shortly about to break out from companies like Onetel, TalkTalk and Tele2 to take over a customer's whole line rental and billing under Wholesale Line Rental.

As we know under that environment Ofcom are actually requiring BT to raise their line rental prices (as they have already once done when BT abolished Standard Line Rental) so as to make it more attractive for BT customers to switch their whole phone line rental to BT's compeitors.

As BT aren't allowed to fight back by lowering their own phone line rental prices what if BT instead decided to charge 0845 and 0870 calls as national rate 01/02 type calls and carried out a massive marketing campaign to point out  that these now accounted for one in every 4 calls you make and that their competitors were charging a fortune to call these numbers.  That would also give the issue the oxygen of publicity which Ofcom so prefer as a solution compared to regulation.

Since BT make so much profit on their retail line rental customers (at least £16 to 21 each a quarter just on the line rental and so called call features)  this obviously gives them a huge scope to subsidise discounting NTS call prices and as BT also terminate a huge number of NTS calls they also have further scope for cutting the rates without having to pay a bill to any one other telecoms co.  By contrast BT's competitors will make almost no profit on offering wholesale line rental and have no scope to subsidise their 0845 and 0870 call prices.

If BT were to actively expose the current high cost of 0845 and 0870 and to make a virtue of their no longer not charging extra for these calls themselves this would really put the cat among the pigeons.

Perhaps this is Ofcom's secret way of curtailing 084/7 revenue share without having to make regulations to achieve it?

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Dave,

I have nothing definite on the fine details here but only a gut feeling that something like this may be going to happen.  For instance no one may have expected BT Privacy to appear before it happened.  I have personally cancelled my own 4 network Calling Features plan on the strength of that new product as I can't justify having to pay £5 a quarter to get the one other calling feature I make any real use of apart from Caller Display (Call Waiting).

Coming back to 0845 and 0870 perhaps BT would only in fact make them cost the same as geographic calls for BT Option 3 customers. At £17.99 a month that would give BT plenty of scope for being able to afford it compared to the £8 or £9 a month charged by their competitors for plans that only cover 01 and 02 calls (regardless of the lies that TalkTalk are currently peddling about getting "all uk landline calls free for 3 months" in their store advertisements that have no small print).

Also have you thought that a possible Ofcom compromise on its final proposals might be to cut 0870 revenue share rates to the same level as 0845 without abolishing it completely.  That would get Ofcom off the painful hook of creating a situation where 0845 calls end up costing more than 0870.

I think that at 0845 levels of revenue share the cost of the 084/7 calls can be paid for by the big profits BT still earn on 01/02 geographic calls with no revenue share on them.  So they might be able to afford not to charge extra on non geo calls on BT Option 1 and 2 as well.

I'm only speculating on all this here but from the tone of the comments made by the senior BT person I think they are going to do something on 0845 and 0870 calls that absolutely no one is currently expecting.  Of course they won't also be doing this on 0844 and 0871 calls which will continue with call cost announcements added.  But if BT does the kind of publicity about 0845 and 0870 call costs that I am thinking of (i.e. more national primetime with Jeremy Clarkson) then no call centre for a major respectable company is going to dare to move over to 0844 or 0871.

Can't you just see it now.  Uncle Jeremy tells you that good old cuddly BT is no longer going to charge you premium rate for having to wait on hold at all those horrid call centres!  And if Uncle Jeremy says this is what has been going on then even Sharon and Dave Normal will probably believe it.

One wonders if Jeremy C would have even suddenly seen the light on Rover cars or possibly even on Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell if someone had paid him enough money to do so.  And lets face it Clarkson is definitely promoting the telecoms equivalent of a Rover.

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If BT do this it won't have any genuine ulterior motive other than to defend their own business.  This is the same motivation as with the new free BT Privacy.  At a stroke this master step stops BT's competitors from cold calling many of its customers through TPS registration and gives BT customers a feature that they would have to pay rivals extra for.  Since Caller Display costs BT nothing to run (the System X exchange investment was written off years ago) it can easily afford to do this.   And don't forget that Caller Display leads to people making extra phone calls when they see that Aunty Vera or whoever has called them.

I don't think they can offer 0870 at the same price as geo calls on BT Options 1 and 2, unless geo revenue share is cut to the 0845 level by Ofcom.  I can see Ofcom possibly doing this and pointing call centres at 0844 and 0871 if they need more money.  Meanwhile Jeremy Clarkson continues to appear every night on primetime television for BT, making people aware of 084/7 calling costs.......  Ofcom doesn't want to have to do advertising against 0845 and 0870 call costs itself but would just love BT to do the job for it.

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Dave,

On your various points:-

1. Yes the need for an even better resourced Saynoto0870 is likely to remain unless I have singlehandedly persuaded Ofcom to back track on their previous plans to fudge the whole 084/7 issue.  I personally will not be joining BT Option 3, even if it does now include 0845 and 0870, as I currently only pay 18866 £3 to £5 a month for my geo calls and the few 0870 calls I make with www.dialaround.co.uk at 5p per minute don't usually come to more than £2 or £3 a month.

2. The standard BT Option 1 caller will only end up paying the same for 0845 and 0870 if Ofcom cut the 0870 revenue share to the 0845 level.  If this happens there will be no point in a call centre changing an 0845 number to an 0870 number - the revenue share will be the same new lower level.

3. If 0844 and 0871 numbers have to have call price announcements before each call but 0845 and 0870 don't have these and Uncle Jeremy Clarkson is telling us on telly that 0845 and 0870 are free on BT Option 3 I think that people will start to get the message.

But the trouble is it will all look as though BT are the good guys and scupper Ofcom's plans for transferring many current BT line rental customers to wholesale line rental with other providers.  But its all legal because BT is more astute and quicker on its feet than good old sleepy Ofcom.

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I utterly agree with you Dave.  If these is a significant extra cost for the networks in delivery of NTS call routing features the call recipient should pay for all of the additional convenience.

But as we have seen a blank sheet and a fresh start is not vaguely within the ball court at Ofcom.  They prefer tinkering and changing the accepted order as little as possible.  This seems to be because they anticipate their lives being easier this way.

You still seem to try to complicate matters on revenue share.  Ofcom have the power to regulate to make over-riding conditions controlling maximum revenue share on 084/7 (they already use these powers now) so I am looking for them to revise things.  BT contracts and so on will then have to fall into line.  If any contracts are invalidated tough - this can be done on the basis that the organisations concerned were making unfair windfall profits before that they were not entitled to.

Anyhow lets assume that Ofcom will come out with something quite appalling and useless. They seem to have no capacity at all to judge the true level of public sentiment on an issue.

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Easily solved by a maximum limit on calls to any single 0845 or 0870 number in the course of a month.  Say no more than £3 of calls per individual 0870 number and no more than £1.50 per 0845 number in a month and no more than £20 of calls to these numbers in total during the month.

Of course I agree that abolishing revenue share altogether on these numbers (as BT has itself proposed) would be preferable.