Has anyone thought of putting in an FOI to Ofcom as to how they conducted this market research and especially how they decided to ask their questions in a way that would not automatically be likely to prejudge the likely range of responses.

As far as I can see Ofcom asked questions like "as you know these 0870 numbers are charged at a higher rate than calls starting 01 or 02" so can you tell us how much per minute they do cost to call.  To which the confused questionees realised something was up and gave price answers close to 50p per minute, thinking that this was what Ofcom's clearly biased question was getting at (given that most members of the public are readily aware of 09 numbers costing 50p to £1.50 per minute even though some in fact cost less than this).  Whereas had Ofcom listen some 0870, 0871, 0844 and 0845 numbers in a long list mixed up with plenty of 01 and 02 numbers and asked people what rate they thought they were charged at they would have got the answers "local rate" and "national rate".

But because Ofcom are so blatantly biased that they even actually always announce their preferred solutions on various alternate proposals in documents they misleadingly call "consultations" I suppose it was almost second nature to them to rig the way the questions were asked to pull in the answers that would best suit the agenda of their telco chums at the NTS Focus Groups.

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Wasn't a new number range set up specifically to allow chargeable, Dial Up,  Internet Access ?   Wasn't  it 0844...  ?  If memory serves, didn't even BTInternet use this initially.     But then a number of ISPs switched to using 0845.    0845 was specifically NOT set up for providing Internet access.   Any operators who may have ventured to use it for such, however unwittingly, should bear the consequences.
   So a number of users may be inconvenienced by having to change their Dialler numbers, if these ISPs are 'forced' to change their 0845 access number, by losing revenue share.    Anyone who doesn't know how to check/change their dialler number is already vulnerable to the scamsters who'll do it without their knowledge.
 Changing the Dial-Up access numbers would be a marvellous opportunity to educate the users for their own protection, as well as no doubt leveraging a lot of them off -dialup and onto broadband.
  I completely fail to see any credible reasoning to omit 0845 numbers from this review.      I can just envisage  the subsequent surge in demand for them ... as scamsters scurry for this last unregulated rock to hide under.

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I'm just limbering up to it ..

Maybe I should just make a separate response for each point then.... as it occurs,   to avoid that danger of a masterfully crafted, substantive & comprehensive response, missing the boat.    It should add to the impression of a large response too.

Much as I hate being made to use these non-geographical premium rate numbers for calling UK organisations, they do have one useful application: they are used by Telestunt, Telediscount etc to give us cheap overseas calls.  What would be the effect on these companies and the services they offer, if these numbers were done away with?

But the one issue that you guys are missing and which must predominate in any rational response to Ofcom's consultations is that all of these uses of any 08 prefix as disguised Premium numbers (i.e with any form of revenue sharing to end subscribers or their cronies) are illegal according to their own NTNP. All Premium numbers must be in the category 09 with call queuing prohibited.

I must emphasize yet again that the root of all of this is queuing, because at present they can have queuing with illegal Premium numbers. That is what they do not want to stop. This abuse clearly is against the interest of the Citizen Consumer and as NGM rightly points out, it is supposed to be the predominant remit of Ofcom under the Acts to protect the interests of the Citizen Consumer. This is exactly what Ofcom are so blatantly refusing to do and as such they are actually breaking UK Law.

The strategy of Ofcom is to get you all worrying about where else in the 08 range or 05 range or whatever they could move these abuse, since their objective is to be able to continue these abuses in a similar form by just mixing things about. They do this to take your eye "off the ball". They do not want to face the real issue which is that all these abuses should be moved to 09 where they belong because then all their cronies would loose the queuing revenue! This is why they continuously fail to do their duty under the law to protect the Citizen Consumer, and why they will never undertake their legal remit until Parliament censures them and clears out the deadwood and corruption at the highest level within this organisation.

Sorry NGM, I do not have a url for it to hand; but it was originally an Oftel document I believe, so you will find it on the Ofcom site probably listed under old Oftel documents?

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It turns out to in fact be a current Ofcom document having been inherited from OFTEL but then maintained by Ofcom and last updated as recently as 11th August 2005.  Only a very brief 29 pages by Ofcom standards so has to be worth a read given its relevance to this issue and to the 084/7 consultations too.

A quick check shows that 199 has not been assigned to any specific use in the current NTNP. 101 is plain dumb as a choice as it would obviously be confused with being a variant of Operator Sevices.

Now didn't all those Police forces who adopted an 0845 number maintain that the main advantage was that they wouldn't have to to change their number again in future?