kk wrote on Nov 28^th, 2005 at 10:13am:

A call may go through one or more telcos on its way from caller to destination. The telco the caller is with is the originating telco and the telco that provides the 0870 to the company in question is the terminating telco.

It is the originating telco who can 'opt out' and thereby provide an announcement and not the terminating telco. For a terminating telco to make the announcement they would have to know what rate the call was being charged at, which they wouldn't as they don't originate the call!

I am annoyed by, and totally opposed to, the practise of placing your call immediately on hold and inflicting music(?) on you.  I fail to understand why I should be expected to pay for this privilege when I could be being dealt with by an operator, they could at least call me back when they are able to talk.
Also annoyed by Fat cats who live off the cream, for which I am expected to pay, but are seemingly unproductive and cannot even give you a straight answer to the most innocuous question, they always procrastinate.
I strongly object to making an 087/4 call and finding that I am in another country's call centre where the language is a barrier.  An example of this was from last Thursday when I asked to speak to a named emoployee only to be assured that she did not work there.
What really annoys me is that I am expected to pay the phone bill for a company from whom I am expecting a service, I had always understood thak it was a criminal offence to "obtain money by false pretences" and surely, that it what it amounts to when you come down to it.  If a company is unable to build the phone bill cost into their prices they ought not to be in business.
If Mr. B.Liar (whoops Blair) and his cohorts do not see what they have allowed to happen they should bee booted into the dustbin of history.  Of course, he could employ a panel of experts from the LSE to explain to me where I have gone wrong with my thinking.  After all, it would cost no more than cancellation one aircraft for the Royal Air Force and we all know where he stands on that.  I am in my 70s and remain working, due in part to the legalised theft from pension funds perpetrated by Reisch Chancellor Brown (sorry done it again, exchequer).
Perhaps it might be possible to regain the initiative from politicians if THEY were paid on a "results only basis".  It might sharpen up their thinking and give the rest of us a bit of a break.
If a football team is not doing well there is always the cry "sack the manager" I wish that could apply to government also as it could liven up the thoughts of our elders and betters (?)

Dave wrote on Nov 28^th, 2005 at 11:54pm:


Either way the questions asked are heavily loaded (eg asking is putting 0871 under ICSTIS regulation a good idea instead of asking shouldn't all revenue share numbers on 0844 and 0871 have to move over to 09 prefixes) so I would not recommend responding to them and instead simply saying what one thinks Ofcom should have proposed instead of the garbage they have come up with.  If you do respond to the questions please do it at the end of your response after you have stated your main views.  If you answer the questions at the beginning there is a high probability your response will never get read.

I am very suspiscious of all the many Name Withheld Yes, Yes, Yes responses now received and strongly suspect that some telco or NTS number vending merchant has been leaning heavily on everyone they know or employ to respond in this way.  For instance NTS number vending merchants can live with what is proposed (especially the replacement of 0871 with 0844 as an almost as profitable loophole) but could not live with a proposal to force all revenue share NTS use to move to 09.

Ofcom will try to ignore us unless we continue to shout very loudly to our MPs (especially the 45 MPs who have now signed the Parliamentary anti 0870 motion at http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=28872%09%09%09%09%09%09%09&...) whilst they are considering the consultation responses.

It is obvious that the questions in the consultation were all spun so that it was impossible to answer No to them unless one thought very deeply about the matter.  However Ofcom left out many questions they should have asked (eg should all micro payment and/or revenue share services be compulsorily moved to 09 and should all remaining 0870 and 0845 numbers be immediately priced at 01/02 rates instead of years down the road) and thus their questions were not fair or unbiased.

My summary of the Ofcom Workshop meeting/seminar is about to appear but in many ways what that reveals will be more useful to our actions after the consultation closes than beforehand.  I must however disagree with Sonny's statement that "revenue share" and "micro payment" are in fact the same thing.  After considering matters more carefully it is obvious to me that a "micro payment" is what you are left with on any 0870 number that continues to charge above geographic rates and has a call price announcement once "revenue share" is abolished.  A "micro payment" clearly goes to the telco for phone services provided (including services given in turn to the call centre for "free") whereas a "revenue share" goes into the pocket of the actual final recipient of the call.  This is the basis on which the Patientline scamming is also being allowed to continue by Ofcom because there will only be a big "micro payment" (more like a "macro payment" is you ask me) to Patientline but no revenue share with the callee (hospital patient).

And an utterly disgusting response as one would expect from Vodafone the biggest charger of and hider of all of inflated NTS call prices excluded from all of their normal geographic call packages.  Also a company that fullstop will not let any Pay as You Go customer know how much a phone call has cost them after the event and is also seemingly incapable of giving them accurate NTS call prices in advance.

www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/nts_forward/responses/sz/Vodafone.pdf

Vodafone considers that Ofcom should control prices to 0845 and 0870 numbers from BT lines because BT has a dominant market position but does not seem to think that the same is true of its own excessive dominance of the uk mobile phone industry which sets a precedent for its smaller competitors

Clearly Vodafone stands to lose a fortune on its current 084/7 ripoff if these proposals go through.

idb wrote on Dec 9^th, 2005 at 11:11pm:


I see these two private individuals have submitted 15 page responses which make interesting reading:-

www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/nts_forward/responses/sz/shersby.pdf

and

www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/nts_forward/responses/af/bottom.pdf

Although neither of them can match BT's 42 page epic on the subject:-

www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/nts_forward/responses/af/BT.pdf

BT seems to have weakened its position against NTS though since its last consultation.  This seems odd given the strong pronouncements made against NTS abuse in the interim by the Head of BT Retail - Ian Livingston.

There are still responses that I know have been submitted which have not yet appeared.  Or if they have appeared perhaps they are under Name Withheld?  A lot of the Name Withhelds seem to arise because people have not made a formal declaration that their response may be published in full and not because people actually wanted any anonymity.

Quote:
Yes, I am also somewhat underwhelmed by the Beeb's submission.

idb wrote on Dec 10^th, 2005 at 2:06am:


For instance this one from Neil Sherring of Windsor Telecom who writes to Clive Hillier and Gareth Davies as Dear Clive/Gareth and who has also been tipped off by the said gentlemen it would appear about our representation at the Ofcom meeting:-

www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/nts_forward/responses/sz/WindsorTelecom.pdf

I have just emailed him to advise that all three representatives of SayNoto0870 at the Ofcom meeting seemed to be on the right of the political spectrum because we despise the distortion of the free market in telecoms prices causes by companies such as his.